Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Perfective of Confidence or Prophetic Perfect

    One of the lectionary passages for this week is Isaiah 9:1-4. Those who don’t know Hebrew may miss out on an interest fact about this passage. It is one of the best examples of what is called the “prophetic perfect” or the “perfectum propheticum” for those who really like Latin titles. I got used to them in the years I used Gesenius-Kautzsch as my primary reference grammar.

    Bruce Waltke (An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax, 30.5.1e/p. 490) does discuss this briefly and uses Isaiah 8-9 as an example. In fact, he points out the nice transition in Isaiah 8:23 in which both “humbled” and “honored” are in the perfect tense, and yet the first refers to the past and the second to the future. The passage continues with a series of perfect verbs talking about the future. I prefer to quote Gesenius, however:

    The prophet so transports himself in imagination into the future that he describes the future event as if it had been already seen or heard by him . . .

    The he cites our passage amongst others.

    What was interesting was that I noticed this passage the same day I was reading about hope in commentary on Hebrews. There St. John Chrysostom comments that “through hope we are already in heaven.”

    Does our Christian imagination, or our Christian hope suffice to make it seem that we are already in heaven? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get that sense of already being there in God’s promises?

  • Hope as an Anchor – Hebrews 6:19-20

    19We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, steadfast and firm and entering the inner side of the veil. 20Jesus entered there as a forerunner for us, becoming a high priest eternally according to the order of Melchizedek. — Hebrews 6:19-20

    When I joined the Air Force, my mother made me a quilt that had this text embroidered in it in Greek. That quilt stayed with me more than 20 years. Why “anchor” for someone in the Air Force? Well, two things. I had intended to joint he Navy, but then got a job closer to what I wanted with the Air Force, and then she thought my soul still needed an anchor–as indeed it did!

    Today, I was reading the Ancient Commentary on Christian Scripture (Hebrews), pages 93-94, [On the Epistle to the Hebrews 11.3] and I was very much struck by the comments of St. John Chrysostom. You can guess that I particularly appreciate his commentary on scripture by the number of posts I’ve made that consist mostly of a large quotation from him. In this case he talks about the importance of hope as an anchor.

    The foundation of this hope, the “meat” of it, is that God takes and oath and does not lie, and he says that we will be heirs. That’s the hope we’re talking about. Each of us needs some kind of hope. St. John Chrysostom notes that “we are already living amid God’s promises.” Then he adds: “. . . through hope we are already in heaven.” That’s intense hope.

    But some of us have a hard time holding onto hope. When things get discouraging hope gets weak! St. John points out that the apostle (he assumes Paul as the author) chooses his figure wisely. There are those who are founded on the rock as Jesus said (Matthew 7:24-27). Then there are the rest of us, who are not quite so steady. We need an anchor that holds us in place even though we are shaken. This is a message for the folks who don’t feel quite so anchored on a rock. Quoting again: “For the surge and the great storm toss the boat, but hope does not permit it to be carried back and forth, although winds innumerable agitate it, so that, unless we had this hope we should long ago have been sunk.”

    This passage fits especially well into the message of Hebrews, which is for people who have begun to follow Jesus but have been looking back because of hardships. The author repeatedly assures us that the goal is worth working for, but he also tells us that we must keep going. They weren’t people whose houses were fully founded on the rock. They were shaken, but they needed–and they had–an anchor so no matter how they were shaken, they would still end up in place.

    I think most of us are more like that. The house on the rock is a good ideal toward which we can strive, but I think we feel much more like an anchored ship weathering a storm. If that’s the case, Jesus still has the anchor to keep you safe. You’ll probably get wet, you’ll probably be shaken, but you’ll come out alright in the end.

  • New AmazonConnect Blog

    I’ve created an AmazonConnect blog. I won’t be creating new posts, but they now allow authors to syndicate posts from elsewhere which then show up on book detail pages on Amazon.com. I created the category “Author Related” for posts that I want to syndicate, and I’m using the category feed. Generally administrative announcements such as this one will not be included along with Asides. Other than the new category there will be no change here. I will syndicate selected posts from my Participatory Bible Study Blog and The Jevlir Caravansary there as well.

  • Prosperity Gospel is not Good News

    In the various RSS feeds I track there were two related posts this morning, both of which touch on the issue of the prosperity gospel. Those who know the language will recognize the bit of irony in saying that a “gospel” is not “good news,” since gospel (at the least the Greek word which it translates) means good news. Unfortunately, the prosperity gospel tends to be very bad news for many people, and it is distinctly bad theology as well.

    Dave Warnock, on his blog 42, wrote about bad theology, and included the prosperity gospel as an example of such–rightfully so. I’m aware that, as one of his commenters noted, this is debated. But just because there is debate doesn’t mean that such debate is justifiable. I don’t mind those who believe God will bless. Where I think there is an unequivocal problem is where preachers and teachers assure people that if they just give, even if they can’t afford it, God will bless them multiply. That is not God’s plan for supporting ministry.

    From a somewhat different perspective, Ed Brayton wrote on prosperity theology, and provided excellent examples of just why this is wrong. He brings up the issue of just where we can begin to call this fraud from a legal point of view. Since many religious claims are viewed as fraud by other religious people, the religious liberty issue is difficult. But as an individual, I have no such problems. The extreme claims of prosperity theology prey on vulnerable people.

    I also believe that they are contrary to the way in which God has asked the church to work. The tithing system is exceptionally fair, in that it is based on increase, which I think matches today’s profit quite closely. I wrote something about this here. God calls for giving that is willing and proportional; not for bleeding those who cannot give for more and more.

  • Dr. Richard Colling Comments on Random Designer Review

    I wanted to call attention to a few of these, as Dr. Colling’s response to elements of my posts on his book is very important. He also makes some substantial points in his comments.

    I’m going to quote and link to two of these so that they are not missed.

    Chapter 14 almost did not make the cut for the book. One of my closest friends had read the manuscript just before it went to press. He had terminal cancer. When I suggested that I might take that chapter out, he was adamant that it needed to be included. He could see that his life was soon to end, but he was supremely confident that his life would never end. Only the physical was terminal in his mind. The spiritual had no end. One of his favorite sayings to me during those last months of his life was, ” All healing is temporary”.

    If I think about this, it is so obvious, but also deep. We sometimes place God before the litmus tests of our experimental designs, saying that if we experience some apparently inexplicable healing or recovery from physical disease, it is God. Well, my friend knew that God does not thrive or even appreciate that kind of notariety. All of us are physical beings, and mortality is common to us all. It is hard for me to believe that God cares a great deal about whether I live to be 60 or 80, but it is easy for me to understand that he cares how I relate to him and to others. In the Bible, Jesus repeatedly cautioned his followers about emphasizing physical health over spiritual.

    Are miracles real? My answer is a resounding “Yes”.
    But in the sense that every biochemical process that has been ordained within us, including the innate healing processes are miracles. Can these be tapped by spiritual means? I have not seen it conclusively demonstrated, but I know others who are very convinced, and I accept that reality as a possibility.
    That is faith, I guess.

    Glad you are finding value in the book.

    Thanks.
    Rick

    Source: Comment 99252.

    Hello Henry, and all.

    The answers to the questions posed in your discussions are, in my opinion, not to be easily had from science. They become matters of faith. I understand very well your thinking Henry, that the creation of intelligent human life may not have been so directly directed as we typically understand the word “directed”. It may be as you describe. The multiverse theory suggests something similar — that there are even multiple universes, and that within some of these, life can develop and evolve to reach similar point perhaps as we. But alas, the stretches of time and space preclude us from ever knowing such things for sure. So here we are, trapped in a sense, in our teeny tiny corner of one of hundreds of billions of solar systems existing within hundreds of billions of galaxies and knowing that we can never learn the answer for certain. All we can do it seems is consider what we do know from science (the physical world) and make the best resonance with our faith.
    I recognize that some of the extrapolations tread on what some consider to be “sacred ground’. but my thinking is that perhaps we have some things wrong in our classic Christian/religious foundations.

    One of you suggest that physical death/suffering does not enter the world before a human being’s sin. But adopting such a rigid explanation of the Bibilical text creates all kinds of problems. Not for science, but the the credibility of the Biblical text. For thousands of years, theologians did something similar when they suggested that the world was flat and that the earth was the center of all existence. But when science demonstrated that that was simply untrue, religion changed their interpretation of scripture. (But not without some weeping and gnashing of teeth.) Perhaps we are at a similar point now. The conflicts between religion and physical sciences has been fairly well resolved post galileo, but the showdown battle between religion and biological sciences appears to be only now coming to a head, at least here in the US. It is not a significant problem in most other areas of the world.
    So back to the fall (first sin.) If we look at the data, mankind has been around roughly between 60,000 years to 150,000 years. But the earths record is quite clear that death, suffering, and massive destructive forces have been ongoing hundreds of millions of years prior to that time.
    How is this information reconciled with the classic interpretation of the fall as being the source of death and suffering. Clearly, these things do not arise for the first time when Adam and Eve ate an apple.

    Also, if the classic interpretation is accepted that physical death and suffering enter at this time, and that Christ’s death reverses this physical phenomenon, then why did death and suffering not immediately cease when his sacrifice was completed?

    It seems to me that we must be consistent, and careful in our interpretation of scripture. I think it was Charles Hodge who said that to continue to interpret scripture in ways clearly inconsistent with nature is a sure killer for the credibility of the faith.
    Especially if there is a different (and in this case, I believe a better) interpretation. Just as Jesus taught, mankind has a tendency to experience and describe our existence in terms of physical, but he suggests over and over to focus on the spiritual. So, when the first man sins, this is spiritual death. When Christ dies, that sacrifice models God’s way, exposing physical death in a puny perspective when stood next to spiritual death. In other words, Christ’s death was not about the physical dying at all as much as it was perhaps about the willingness to give up oneself for another, or in his case for all! Wasn’t it his words? “No greater love has a man than that he give up his life for a another.”?

    So this humble scientist wonders if we are missing the bigger message of Christianity when we build the foundations of the Christian faith around physical interpretations that cannot possible be true.

    On another note, Henry. Yes, I am an unapologetic Christian, but these days, that descriptor often seems to connote something that I do not like, so I am more recently calling myself a Christ follower. A follower is not wed to preexisting interpretations or creeds, but is a traveler attempting as best as he/she can to listen, learn, love and explore the best and the deepest that life has to offer. When Jesus was asked what one must do to inherit eternal life, he responded, ” Love the lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength,… (and then that troubling little addendum) and your neighbor as yourself.” He said, do this and you will be saved.

    So I am trying to do the best I can to model and follow the example he has given, and try to offer hope to others that literal or classic interpretations are not necessarily directly from the hand of God. they are but teachings and sometimes poorly understood understandings of man.

    Thanks for your interest. I tried hard in Random Designer to make it clear that I am a believer, but also that non-believers need not check their intellect at the door of the church to consider the possibilities for faith and belief.
    As always,
    Rick

    Source: Comment 99253.

    Please go to the original posts for context.

  • Evolution of a Moral Sense

    One of the interesting things I’ve noticed over the years is that scientists who are also believers often tend to resolve theological issues in ways that make the theologians uncomfortable. I can’t call myself a professional theologian, because contrary to what most church members seem to think, theology and Biblical studies are different fields, and indeed are each subdivided into a number of fields themselves.

    On the Panda’s Thumb today we have a post on the evolution of altruistic behavior in robots. This is a remarkably interesting post, referencing recent research, and adds to the mounting evidence that many things we might regard as purely spiritual do, in fact, have material causes. In this case we’re dealing with altruism, but the issue goes deeper into the question of right and wrong as opposed to simply beneficial or not for one’s personal survival. That Humanist provided some additional valuable references and pointers.

    In the comments, there’s a brief exchange over Dr. Francis Collins’ view that morality is something provided by God, which does not result from evolution. Now I’m not going to engage Dr. Collins’ viewpoint in detail. In fact, his book The Language of God is sitting on my “read real soon” shelf, and I plan to blog my way through that reading, so I will respond then. (Out of the references provided in those various blog entires, I recommend this one from TalkReason.

    But the notion that human morality strictly separates us from the animals and that the common elements of human morality point to a God who proclaims morals is one I have encountered before. When I returned to faith after some years away from the church, one of the arguments for the existence of God that impressed me and stuck with me was this argument from universal morals as presented by C. S. Lewis in Mere Christianity. Don’t get me wrong here. I did not think this proved that God exists, but rather that it pointed in that direction on balance.

    (more…)

  • Lectionary Texts for Transfiguration – Cycle A

    I want to make just a few remarks on the texts selected for Transfiguration Sunday, February 3. I like to find common themes in the lectionary texts even when they don’t seem all that coherent. In this case, the texts are quite carefully chosen.

    First is the story of the transfiguration from Matthew 17:1-9. There are a couple of things to note about the differences in the transfiguration stories in the various gospels. Working from Darrell Bock’s Jesus According to Scripture (p. 235), note that Luke is the only one who mentions that the disciples slept. Mark and Luke both tell us that Peter didn’t know what to say, while Matthew does not. Luke notes the fear when the cloud appears. Matthew has the disciples fall down in fear at the voice.

    Our Old Testament and Epistles readings bracket this event. Moses goes up to Mt. Sinai and into the cloud in Exodus 24:12-18. Quoting Bock, p. 235: “A new era and reality appear with Jesus and the glory that his presence represents.” This is an important point, and one could build a sermon around this shift of emphasis. One of the things I notice repeatedly in discussions of scripture between Jews and Christians is that while we generally argue verse by verse, especially asking whether this or that is a Messianic prediction, we rarely discuss the overall difference in view.

    For Jewish interpretation, the Torah (Pentateuch) is the heart of God’s revelation, and everything is interpreted in relation to that. In Christianity, the Torah appears practically to get dismissed, and Jesus is the central element of Christian interpretation. We interpret everything in the light of the cross, no matter how we view the cross itself. How we view it is important, but it remains central. In terms of scripture, that places the four gospels at the heart of Christianity as the Torah is at the heart of Judaism.

    If you look at our lectionary readings, and compare them to synagogue readings, you’ll see the same thing. We center around a gospel passage; they around a Torah passage. This particular scripture is partial justification for that Christian approach. Jesus is presented as a second lawgiver, and the command is given to listen to him.

    The epistle, 2 Peter 1:16-21, introduces a later testimony and also the explicit connection of transfiguration with a confirmation that Jesus fulfills (in the sense of “makes complete”) the scriptures of the Old Testament. That, of course, is a subject in itself. One sermon might be the topic of type-antitype-testimony, and the importance of the testimony to each event. Peter, James, and John saw Jesus on the mount of transfiguration. Only Joshua went into the cloud with Moses. The written testimony is important in carrying all this through.

    Those with a more critical mindset (and congregations to go with it) might discuss the different views of a passage such as this. The obvious construction tying themes from Hebrew scriptures into the life of Jesus suggests that the story is written precisely to make that particular connection. There are two extremes. On the one hand one can imagine that the story was created precisely for the purpose of presenting Jesus as the new lawgiver, and didn’t actually happen at all. It’s edifying Christian fiction. On the other hand, one can assume that the reason this happened is that Jesus is, in fact, the new lawgiver, thus God did for him something similar to what he did for Moses.

    Finally, Psalm 99 is simply a celebration of God’s presence, with a number of allusions, including the temple (“on/above the cherubim”, verse 1), the pillar of cloud (v. 7), and the holy mountain (v 9). It would make an excellent call to worship.

  • A Just Claim?

    9We are confident concerning you, loved ones, that you have the greater salvation. That’s why we speak in this way. 10For God is not so unjust that he would forget your works and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints and continuing to do so. 11But we want each one of you to show the same zeal toward the fulfillment of your hope to the end 12so that you might not become lazy, but rather imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. — Hebrews 6:9-12 (my translation)

    St. John Chrysostom interprets verse 10 as requiring our aid to those who are in need, without inquiring as to the reason:

    Having then heard these things, let us not care only for “those that are of the household of faith” ( Gal. vi. 10 ), and neglect others. So then also thou, if thou see any one in affliction, be not curious to enquire further. His being in affliction involves a just claim on thy aid.

    τὸ δικαίωμα τῆς βοηθείας For if when thou seest an ass choking thou raisest him up, and dost not curiously enquire whose he is, much more about a man one ought not to be over-curious in enquiring whose he is. He is God’s, be he heathen or be he Jew; since even if he is an unbeliever, still he needs help. For if indeed it had been committed to thee to enquire and to judge, thou wouldst have well said thus, but, as it is, his misfortune does not suffer thee to search out these things. For if even about men in good health it is not right to be over-curious, nor to be a busybody in other men’s matters, much less about those that are in affliction. — On the Epistle to the Hebrews, X (CCEL)

    I think that is an interesting stretch, though there is some merit in the idea, it seems to me. I have also seen much need for good stewardship and wisdom in dealing with limited resources used to help the poor.

  • Dimly in a Mirror

    Every Bible student should go see this. Really!

  • A Liberating Theology

    Liberation theology gets improperly defined and beaten up on a regular basis. Some complain that it ignores the spiritual element, ignores Jesus as savior, and tries to ignore sin. It’s fairly easy to make this case out of the Bible. There is, after all, Romans 13, in which Paul tells Christians to submit to the authorities, or the experience of Peter as he is told to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s (Matthew 22:21). Generally interpreters miss the irony in that one.

    They also miss the pure politics of Romans 13. In this case Christians are hoping for the protection of Rome. The Roman authorities are the ones who are more favorable to Christians. We tend to think of them strictly as persecutors, but at the time the letter to the Romans was written, Rome was the best hope of Christians for protection.

    On the other side, it would be easy to point out the many cases in the Bible in which people refuse to obey the authorities. Slavery, for example, was clearly Egyptian law when the Israelites left under Moses. The Israelites than entered Canaan as illegal immigrants and began a crime spree, or so I imagine the Canaanite perspective might be. But the higher powers all over were very annoyed by what God’s people did.

    While David respected the person of Saul as God’s anointed, he wasn’t at all opposed to violated all kinds of laws and customs, and was even prepared to fight for his Philistine masters. Prophet after prophet stood up to power and some of them died for it. The apostles, when told not to preach, were not subject to the higher powers. Instead, they told the authorities that they should obey God rather than man.

    Law and custom has repeatedly been used in opposition to liberation. One could point out in the early 19th century that slavery was according to the law, but liberators chose not to obey the law–they obeyed God rather than human beings. During the civil rights movements there were many laws and customs that were discriminatory and just plain wrong. The folks who brought liberty were not the ones who said, “It’s the law.” They were the ones who said, “The law is wrong.” They proceeded to break those immoral laws.

    When Jesus spoke in Nazareth and quoted Isaiah 61:1-2 “liberty to the captives” (Luke 4:16-21). Generally, established governments don’t like it much when you liberate their captives. They think their captives are captive for a reason. Those who preach liberty and mean it are often not popular with the powers that be, because they are preaching liberty to people that government thinks should be captive.

    Liberation theology was sometimes abused. It is easy to become a liberator with no theology, to free men’s bodies and forget about their souls. If the church becomes that kind of liberator, then we’re merely another social organization, except that we carry a lot more baggage. We can also become stupid in the way in which we liberate. Many would-be liberators either become oppressors themselves or enable actual oppressors through their lack of good sense. A number of left-wing liberators have fallen into that trap.

    But Christianity has a much greater tendency, I believe, to fall into the trap of becoming an arm of the government. We like the status quo, and we produce theology that helps keep it established. And unless the laws we support are so absolutely just that they deserve the backing of a divine mandate, tragedy often results. In the same way when a truly moral crusade receives the backing of state force, it will often go astray.

    In America I think we have tied both the gospel and its liberating power far too much to a particular political process. We should comment on politics, we should be a prophetic conscience for our politicians, but we should not allow ourselves, as a church body (in the broadest sense) to become identified with particular parties and institutions. Our consciences cannot be in the pay of established power.

    A liberating theology, in my view, provides a divine mandate to hold everyone’s feet to the fire and demand that they live a life worthy of the gospel. When torture happens, we should be like the ten plagues on Egypt, until people are let go, are treated with dignity and respect. When we see oppression, we should be there to proclaim liberty. Our theology should continually challenge our society to be better than it is.

    I think that is what Martin Luther King did to us in the 50s and 60s, and it is what the church needs to do today. No person, no society is so right and so good that it does not need the annoyance of a sensitive conscience, speaking to it prophetically.