Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Will We Let the Text of Scripture Change Us?

    On The Rev’s Rumbles (HT: Shuck and Jive) there is a discussion of Biblical authority. The writer quotes the following assertion favorably (from Kenneth Cauthen):

    NO CHRISTIAN ALLOWS THE BIBLE TO TEACH AS THE AUTHORITATIVE WORD OF GOD WHAT IS KNOWN OR BELIEVED (FOR WHATEVER REASONS) TO BE EITHER UNTRUE OR IMMORAL.

    EVERY CHRISTIAN FINDS WHAT THE BIBLE TEACHES AS THE AUTHORITATIVE WORD OF GOD TO BE IDENTICAL OR CONGRUENT WITH WHAT IS KNOWN OR BELIEVED (FOR WHATEVER REASONS) TO BE TRUE AND RIGHT.

    There is a great deal of truth in that statement. I can certainly observe these mechanisms in place as I discuss interpreting Bible passages. Try asking a group of Christians why they regard Leviticus 19:18 as a universal and binding command, but feel that they can ignore Leviticus 19:19, for example. There are certainly good reasons in Christian hermeneutics to do so, but those hermeneutical reasons are not the ones you are likely to hear.

    At the same time, such a statement can certainly be taken too far, whether or not it was intended by the author. (My own exposure to this particular author is limited to the quotes in this blog post, so please don’t take me as commenting on him; rather I’m commenting on the blog post that contains them and on some general approaches.) It’s easy to assume that nobody can change their impression of what is right and wrong based on their reading of a work they regard as authoritative. Such a change can be good or bad.

    It’s because of such issues that I think we should all spend time thinking about why we believe what we do, how we come to ethical decisions, and if we believe we base our decisions on the Bible, how we interpret what we read.

    I have frequently heard someone say that they do something because the Bible plainly says so, but when I point out another passage that speaks just as plainly taken at the same level of context as the first, they find a quick explanation for why it does not apply. The interesting point is to ask whether the same explanation will work for any similar scripture.

    Since one of the reasons one might reject Leviticus 19:19 while accepting Leviticus 19:18 is simply that Jesus reaffirmed Leviticus 19:18 (Love your neighbor as yourself), let me try again from Leviticus, this time with passages not so clearly affirmed (or not). Leviticus 18:22 is commonly read as forbidding homosexuality, and is used regularly by Christians as such. It is one passage regarding which I have heard the expression “the Bible plainly says.”

    When that was once quoted to me, I referenced Leviticus 19:33-34:

    Do not take advantage of foreigners who live among you in your land. Treat them like native-born Israelites, and love them as you love yourself. Remember that you were once foreigners living in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God. (NLTse)

    The immediate answer? “That’s different. Things are different now.”

    Now my point is not to debate just how these two texts would apply today. Rather, I would like to point out that if you quote one as “what the Bible plainly teaches” and then find reasons to avoid the other, you are not truly advocating “what the Bible plainly teaches” (an impossible task in any case), but are applying some other means of producing your result. That doesn’t mean you’re wrong on the result, but the process is not what you claim.

    I would argue that if “confirmed by Jesus” is the key, then Leviticus 19:33-34 has much better evidence of having been reaffirmed by Jesus than does Leviticus 18:22, though I actually think the “reaffirmed by Jesus” is not the best approach in any case.

    For me there’s a three step process, broadly described. The first is to ask just how I’m approaching the scripture. The second is to try to look at scriptures consistently. the third is to ask just how that might enlighten my decision making. I think God intentionally didn’t give us a working “plain meaning” model because he preferred us to go through the hard work of evaluating and making decisions.

    There is much in scripture that I believe should change me, or to be more accurate that God the Holy Spirit should use in changing me. I have to intentionally get away from using ad hoc interpretation to support my own view in order to let that happen.

  • 1 Corinthians 13 for Academics

    From James McGrath. Excellent! (Note to self: Laminate it and hang it on the wall in plain view.)

  • Checking on ex-Hurricane Ike

    First I want to say that my thoughts and prayers are with the folks who experienced Hurricane Ike. Having lived through a couple of interesting storms, such as Ivan and Dennis, I empathize with their position. I’m not very good at writing condolence blog posts, largely because I think they are empty gestures for the most part, but sometimes we can’t help making a gesture, even if it’s pretty empty.

    In the “not making it empty” category, let me provide the United Methodist Committee on Relief hurricane response page. I complain about many things in the Methodist church, but when it comes time for relief, they’re the ones I trust. There are donation buttons on the page.

    What got me writing, however, was this story from MSNBC.com, really a totally unremarkable, even routine story, but one that bothers me.

    Why is it that we expect politicians and national leaders to make a personal appearance in a disaster area? What good does it do? Please note that this is not a criticism of President Bush. This expectation that our leaders will show up and sympathize in person and “assess the damage fore themselves” seems to be well-nigh universal. Any mistakes in this area are politically costly.

    But the people who really do assess the damage are professionals who are quite efficient, I believe, and one gets a much better picture of the damage for management purposes from their work. The people who actually help are the folks who show up to restore power, rebuild, clear roads, and so forth.

    I recall our elation when the power company trucks showed up on our street–actually at a friend’s place to which we had gone ahead of the storm. They were from Quebec, a long ways from home, and we were glad to see them. I can’t imagine that I would have welcomed a tour by the president in a similar way.

    I’m sure it’s an emotional relief, a sense that someone with power cares about us in our hour of need, but I confess I have never comprehended it. I’d be much happier with a president and various management level folks hanging out at headquarters and managing, while the folks who do the work travel to the area and do their jobs.

    I’d be interested in other people’s thoughts. Do managers really handle such a situation better after they fly by some of the damage? Is any understanding they may gain tangible and measurable?

  • But the Whole Election is Out of Context!

    So much of the way in which we understand language, not to mention pretty much everything else, is simply context.

    Thanks to the folks at Language Log we have a discussion of how Sarah Palin was taken out of context when some claimed that she thought we were on a God ordained mission in Iraq. A simple matter of understanding both the situation and reading the whole passage is all that is necessary to understand what is being said here.

    At the same time we have ridiculous attacks on Obama regarding sex education for kindergarten children and the “lipstick on a pig” thing. There is so much really stupid stuff being said one can hardly keep up. I’ve been limiting my reading on most of these issues to Politifact and various headlines. I note that Politifact has a very large number of “pants on fire” ratings right now, as well they should.

    But the fact is that the entire election is out of context, and apparently there are few people who are willing to look at things in their context. The special pleading from all sides is truly astounding, and I have a very hard time believing that the folks who write or say all this believe what they’re saying.

    When it comes to politics, the technology of the information age is facilitating a misinformation age.

    Demand better!

  • Using the NLTSB, NISB and NOAB: Exodus 15:1-21

    I’m continuing looking at the NLT Study Bible (NLTSB) in comparison with the New Interpreter’s Study Bible (NISB), which I have also acquired recently. Today I’m going to add a comparison to the New Oxford Annotated Bible (NOAB). Note that I am still working from the second edition.

    I think many Methodist ministers or ministerial candidates may be looking into the NISB as an alternative to the NOAB, and thus far my impression is that this is a good direction to go in terms of having a Bible that lays out useful sermon material for you efficiently.

    This time I’m covering Exodus 15:1-21, also a lectionary passage this week. I will try to complete this comparison on this week’s lectionary passages by looking at Matthew 18:21-35. The actual lectionary passage is only Exodus 15:1b-12, 20-21, but I am making my comparison for the entire block of text.

    Quantity of discussion. The NLTSB continues to surprise me by having the most words, over 800 this time in notes on this passage. (I am using an average line length for each edition and multiplying lines to get these approximations.) That compares to the NISB at just over 400 and the NOAB at just over 320. I don’t think any of them are wasting words, so there is more discussion in the NLTSB.

    In addition, the NLTSB has an excursus titled The Exodus as History which presents an essentially conservative view of the historicity of the passage. This discussion is not part of the 800 words, and it is not matched in either of the other works. Each of those does discuss historicy in general in various essays, they simply don’t do it as part of this passage.

    Themes. The NLTSB focuses on the power of God, his care for the Israelites, and the faith and trust that would result from these action. This theme goes well with the excursus on historicity. Both the NISB and the NOAB emphasize the literary relationship between this song and ancient near eastern literature about the battle of various gods against the sea, and to the idea of gods dwelling on mountains.

    The NOAB is more specific, but provides less explanation than does the NISB. The NLTSB avoids this mythological connection altogether and emphasizes the uniqueness of Israel’s religion in the ancient near east. The excursus (The Exodus as History) includes this: “The most reasonable explanation for the distinctiveness of Israel’s understanding is that, as the Bible describes, God broke into their experience and showed himself to them in events that have been recorded as history.”

    General Impression. The NOAB is extremely abbreviated and data oriented, a kind of “just the facts” approach, though along with much of secular Bible scholarship it focuses on the similarities between Israel’s religion and literature rather than the distinctive points. The NISB lessens this focus and looks a bit more at the implications. The NLTSB provides a moderately evangelical explanation of the data.

    Obviously none of these will replace a good commentary, but they do each present some unique value for someone preparing a sermon or Sunday School lesson.

  • Textual Criticism Summary from Parchment and Pen

    C. Michael Patton presents Textual Criticism in a Nutshell, though what he means more precisely is New Testament textual criticism in a nutshell.

    It’s quite a good introduction giving a feel for the types of variants and why they might occur, and also why we might prefer not to call them “errors” considering that some are intentional, and some are stylistic variants and so forth.

    I would note only one caveat–I think he is a bit optimistic on how much impact the few substantial variants would have. I recall one correspondent who noted that of course variants in the New Testament text made no difference on doctrinal issues, since we don’t truly base our doctrines on the Bible in any case. That’s also overstating the case, in my view.

    Certainly there is a great deal more in the church’s doctrinal statements than is in the texts themselves. I regard this as a good thing. I think the church was supposed to grow and that the doctrinal statements express the church in that process. At the same time, they did take care within their approach to the study of texts, to provide some basis in scripture.

    We would hardly have the debates we do about some variants if there were no doctrinal issues. Thus it is good to realize that while the support orthodoxy may be strengthened or weakened by particular variants, there are no smoking guns that say “that doctrine is wrong,” or “this other doctrine should have been there.” It’s more a matter of the weight of textual support for the elements of doctrine.

  • Who Are We After 9-11?

    Any number of speakers and writers, myself certainly included, have talked about the various things we need to do to make our country safer from terrorist attacks. We’ve also sung the praises of rescue and relief workers and of various leaders during the time of crisis.

    Other countries of suffered greater losses proportionally than we did, but I’ve learned that one cannot compare one type of grief and loss with another. Besides the grief and the loss, the attacks of 9/11 made us feel vulnerable. I didn’t lose anyone I knew personally, so there is a bit of distance, but in the time immediately after the attacks we were united as a nation in a way very rarely seen.

    There’s a question that I think is more important than just how safe we are, how we will prevent such attacks in the future, and the general strategy of the war on terror. In what ways has 9/11 changes us as a nation and as people?

    An individual who goes through tragedy, loss, or extreme hardship may come out of it stronger and as a better person. He or she will undoubtedly come out changed, but that change can be for the better.

    But it is also possible for a person to come out changed for the worse.

    • Fear can grip one’s life, so that all focus is on preventing any such tragedy again. A parent who loses a child can constrict the lives of her other children so that there is as little risk as possible of a repetition.
    • Anger can take over, so that revenge is the only goal, and one can no longer deal reasonably with people who are related in any way to the cause of the tragedy.
    • Resentment can poison one’s mind, so that one cannot see clearly what needs to be done.
    • One can lose all sense of balance, resulting in a continued life of misery

    I think a nation or a group of people have many of the same options. What will you become as a result of what has happened? This question goes far beyond the immediate response to danger. I’m not chiding anyone for responding to danger. My own objections to the war in Iraq do not result from a conviction that we shouldn’t respond, but rather than Iraq was the wrong place and time for it.

    But there are other responses that I think we need to look at. About a year after the 9/11 attacks I visited my brother. I flew into Buffalo and took a taxi. The driver was a Sikh, wearing the traditional headgear. I asked him how it was for him right after the attacks. I recognized he was a Sikh, but was he mistaken for a Muslim (or Arab, unfortunately the same thing in some people’s eyes) and was he in any danger. He told me that he had to abandon the traditional headgear and wear a much smaller and less obvious head covering after the attacks, because he was taunted and had been in danger.

    Now it’s unrealistic to expect that there won’t be a minority of people who will react in inappropriate ways, often because they are already filled with rage and hate for other reasons. The major event simply provides them with an excuse to be who they are anyhow.

    We still have a certain strong tradition of freedom. It has been weakened by attacks from various directions. I don’t give either major party a “pass” on this issue. Constitutional freedoms are up for grabs when people are afraid. The one thing a politician can’t survive is appearing soft on terrorism.

    I think that is behind Obama’s vote for the FISA bill, a tragedy in my view, and the Republican sneers about making sure terrorists are read their rights.

    Those are both the result of fear, and they do not do us any credit as a people. In particular I was struck by the phrasing of “reading terrorists their rights.” The fact is that we don’t read “criminals” their rights, we read “people” their rights. Those people may be criminals, but they have rights so that we can determine whether they truly are criminals. People have rights so that we can accurately determine whether they are also terrorists.

    This idea of restricting the government from arbitrarily determining who is good and who is bad and acting on it without accountability is deeply enshrined in our constitution, and derives many of its elements from common law that goes much further back. There is no crime that is so heinous that we should punish an innocent person for it. The very idea that we would determine arbitrarily prior to any process just what sort of person an individual is should strike terror to our hearts.

    It’s quite possible for us to respond to external threats in such a way that we become our own worst enemies. Will we live in fear, or will we make a stand that says that no matter what external terror puts us through we will remain who we are?

    There will be freedoms and conveniences we must give up. We must be prepared for more security at airports (I actually wish it was more vigorous than it is), and for more scrutiny when entering or leaving the country. There are justifiable shortcuts that are necessary. While I oppose FISA as passed, there is certainly a need for wiretapping as part of our security efforts.

    I also don’t think this is a Republican or Democratic issue. If we had had a Democratic president I suspect very similar things would have happened. It’s the result of being on the hot seat, which is not so easy, despite the fluency of some of us who criticize!

    But I think we need to reflect beyond remembering the loss and remembering the sorrow, and get a very clear vision of who we want to be. If we give up who we really are in exchange for security, just what are we securing?

  • Good Decisions on Education in California

    Christianity Today reports on two decisions regarding education in California. In one case, the courts upheld the University of California’s decision to reject certain courses when considering eligibility for admission. In the other, the right of parents without a teaching degree to homeschool.

    Some may see these decisions as contradictory, but that would only be true if you look at them as a question of the place of religion in education. Generally religious parents won in one case, though I should emphasize that not all homeschoolers are Christians, while in the other they lost.

    I think both are appropriate, and I think one makes the other even more important. I think homeschool parents generally do a good job with educating their children, as results on standardized tests tend to show. Yes, there is less exposure to the broader world, and yes, they often don’t learn everything I think they should learn, but they’re not my children.

    I believe evolution should be fully taught in science classes, and until such time as another consensus emerges, something I don’t expect, it should be exclusively taught. But that is for tax supported schools. I believe Christian schools should have the right to set their own curriculum, provided that students can pass the same standardized tests, if any, that are required of public school students.

    At the same time, a university, whether public or private, needs to control admissions and should be permitted to expect students to have studied certain things. Admission to a university is not the same thing as getting out of high school with the minimum effort. As I understand it, one way around these requirements is through passing standardized tests. If the students do know this material, then they can demonstrate it and gain admission.

    I think individual rights and educational responsibility are well-balanced in these rulings, and I hope they are both upheld on appeal.

  • Book Notes: Live to Tell

    Kallenberg, Brad J. Live to Tell: Evangelism for a Postmodern Age. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2002. ISBN 1-58743-050-9. 138 pages.

    One of our pastors handed this book to my wife because of her interest particularly in discipleship. You may ask why one should give a book on evangelism to someone primarily concerned with discipleship, but in this case the choice was good. This book combines discipleship with evangelism so that they are practically one topic.

    Kallenberg has a certain amount of courage just writing a book right now with the word “evangelism” in the subtitle, and perhaps it becomes even more of an act of courage when the word “postmodern” is also included. That combination can be a bit intimidating.

    My wife found the postmodern vocabulary and the style of the book in general just too much to plow through. She’s practical, writes and speaks briefly, and likes to get down to the point where the rubber meets the road. Kallenberg doesn’t write that way at all. Since she also wanted to honor her pastor’s request to read the book, that made things a bit difficult.

    But a solution was lurking right around the corner, in the person of her husband who will read practically anything–me! We try to get together at least once a week to do some kind of joint study, generally studying from a book one of us has chosen, which we then discuss. In this case I read the book, summarized the chapter and then read selections, after which we discussed the content.

    The content of the book is really quite good, though the presentation and also some of the examples remind me of much that I don’t like postmodernism, especially as popularly conceived. That’s another concept, but I would simply note that it seems very easy for postmodernists to get mired in a slough without map or compass, without any idea of where to go.

    That very miring seems to provide Kallenberg with his “hook” to reach a postmodern generation. He is by no means rejecting postmodernism–the whole miring thing is my comment. Rather, if I may use my own metaphor, he aims at leading people out of the mire they’re in by example, rather than teaching them all about how to get out of mires, where the edges are, where the dangers are, and so forth.

    If we find someone in the postmodern age who doesn’t know where to go, he suggests we avoid the “teach them what is right” approach and try a “show them how to live right” method. I know I am summarizing a great deal here, but that is the essence of the subject as I read it. And since Kallenberg (and I) believe that Christianity has a story that is truly efficacious, that approach is best. If people are looking for stories, bring them a good story. Even better, show them a good story.

    Of course, this story idea isn’t anything new to Christianity. When God needed to tell us about himself, he didn’t send a systematic theologian. He sent his Son, who showed us in person and in story form just what God was getting at. As I read it, Kallenberg is simply grabbing a page from God’s play book and applying it to the life of the church today.

    Kallenberg presents this in the vocabulary of postmodern philosophy. Even where I find that postmodernism correctly criticizes modern thought, I find that vocabulary annoying at best. But the book isn’t really aimed at making me like the vocabulary. If I’m to communicate with people steeped in that very vocabulary, I’ll need to learn to understand it. In fact, Kallenberg uses this very metaphor of language learning for the process of conversion and discipleship.

    At the same time, he manages to erase the gap between the concepts of conversion and discipleship. Most of the people he uses as examples do not become Christians at some instant in time. The modern conception of conversion is that people becomes convinced that Christianity is true, that they are sinners, that Jesus is the one way to salvation, and then at some instant they pray a prayer and surrender their lives to Jesus. At that moment, discipleship begins, or at least should begin.

    In Kallenberg’s examples, it is much more likely that one will go to church and even participate in the life of the church before any specific “conversion” experience. What brings the person to Christ is their becoming a participant in the life of the church. In one case what convinces someone that God is personal is not theological argument but observing the congregation worshiping a personal God.

    I could wish that the many good points that are made in this book were divorced from some of the philosophical vocabulary. Perhaps there should be a Reader’s Digest version for practical people, but I’m not sure how one would write such a thing. There are so many elements of what Kallenberg is teaching that are simply good, practical ideas on being a good neighbor.

    But we have what we have, and for anyone who can make it through the first chapter, and occasional detours along the way, this will be a book well worth reading.

  • Critical Methods and Modern Tests

    Over the last few days there have been a flurry of posts at Language Log that could be related to Biblical criticism, though that is not the intent of their authors. What they are actually discussing is authorship identification and then spin spotting, with an interesting twist at the end.

    Here are some key posts to check:

    Why does this remind me of Biblical criticism? It seems to me that it demonstrates how easily one can be misled on things like this, and how important it is to thoroughly check such claims. It’s quite easy for an expert to say that, based on his careful study of certain criteria, a certain document was written (or not written) by a particular author. But when you go and ask for the basis of that claim, you may find that the expert has very little material with which to work.

    Noting that an author uses phrases that he doesn’t use elsewhere is significant if you have a large body of that author’s work. If you have only a small amount, you really have little to work with. Statistics work that way. You need significant samples before the numbers mean anything.

    I recall an experiment I did while a college student. I wanted to test my ability to decode something in a simple substitution cypher. I explained the process to my sister, and she created her cypher and then encoded some text using it. It was just a short paragraph, but I after an hour or so I gave up and asked her what it was.

    My problem? She had chosen a passage from Encyclopedia Britannica discussing the history of one of the Chinese dynasties. I don’t remember which, but the names of the emperors made all the probabilities off kilter. Even though the paragraph was in English, there were so many transliterated Chinese names that my probability charts were all off. I think I should have figured it out anyhow, but the fact is that I didn’t. A larger sample would have made the work quite trivial.

    Similarly the effort to automatically spot “spin” relies on sampling. Not every instance of the passive voice is intended to obscure agency, even if one correctly identifies the passive, as this program did not. One would have to find better criteria than simply passive voice.

    The ease with which some people are deceived on this is also very interesting. If someone talks authoritatively enough, provides enough technical sounding detail, people will tend to believe them. I think we build this view of expertise in many mystery shows today. How many people get their idea of what expert examination can accomplish from fiction? There the “expert” confidently points out a few items that make the case air tight. In reality, of course, such testimony will be placed in context, and alternative explanations will be provided by the defense. (See! I have indicated agency quite clearly in a passive sentence.)

    I like Biblical criticism, and I like to apply critical methodology to various texts. I’m not arguing against that. What I am suggesting is that in Biblical studies we generally have very small samples, and thus we are often drawing substantial conclusions from insubstantial evidence. You work with what you have. At the same time, we need to be very careful to state our conclusions with the appropriate humility.

    There are very few “assured results” in textual studies.