Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • A Question of Ecumenism, Theology, or Exegesis

    Over the last few days Adrian Warnock has been posting excerpts from John Piper’s new book on justification, The Future of Justification. His latest seems to represent an escalation, with its title John Piper: Is N. T. Wright Preaching Another Gospel?. Adrian has maintained throughout that Piper is being gracious to Wright and is accurately representing Wright’s views.

    Other than to note the escalation, however, the grace (or lack thereof) of Piper’s book (which I have not read) is not my topic. I don’t have a dog in this hunt, so to speak, because I am not nearly as concerned that one gets justification precisely right. This topic is, in my view, very susceptible to “doctrinal correctness”–a tenseness about precise terms that makes it difficult to explore. Reformed theologians in particular seem to want to make one’s precise understanding of justification they anchor point of their theology. They equate it with the gospel. I couldn’t possibly disagree more. The gospel is not a precise understanding of esoteric points of theology.

    Which leads me to the actual purpose of this post. What is driving the discussion? Piper is criticizing Wright’s view on justification, and I’m not going to criticize him directly, but there is a clear tendency in Adrian’s quotes from Piper, and that is simply define what reformed theology has been up until now, demonstrate that Wright disagrees, and leave the obvious impression that Wright must be wrong.

    Elsewhere, there are some who claim that Wright’s theology is driven by ecumenical goals–bringing Catholic and protestant views together. I’m not sure how well that is going, if it is true. Certainly the hardliners in the reformed camp aren’t feeling the ecumenical spirit in all of this.

    But when I read Wright himself, I get a different impression entirely of his driving force. Now I need to place a caveat here. I am only a small part of the way through my own preliminary studies of this New Perspectives on Paul, and I probably won’t try to express my own opinion on some of the key issues for months. Right now I can simply say that the work of Wright answers some questions about Paul for me and raises others. I’m tempted to simply fall back to the notion that Paul was a complex character, and does not willingly fit into our theological boxes.

    When N. T. Wright goes about doing his own writing he appears to me to be driven not to find or produce a particular theological result, but rather by exegetical concerns. He seems to be more careful to follow the text where it leads than the majority of writers. I’ve read. For an example of his exegetical writing, see On Becoming the Righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). For a more theological view, with Wright expressing his own view of justification, see Justification: The Biblical Basis and its Relevance for Contemporary Evangelicalism.

    In response to this, we need more than theology. I have no doubt that there are reformed theologians making theological arguments, yet there are also many who are simply happy to point out that Wright fails to meet their standards of “orthodox evangelical theology” and thus can be dismissed out of hand.

    But wasn’t one of the features of the reformation going directly back to scripture? At this point it looks to me like the Bishop of Durham is behaving like a reformation theologian–digging through the texts and trying to come to the best understanding possible, while the purported defenders of the reformation are left to point out just how orthodox their teaching is–by their standards.

    If I’m given the choice between defending theological turf and wrestling with exegesis and trying to understand Paul in his world and mission I’ll choose the latter every time.

  • The Golden Compass – Two Views

    I haven’t read the books or seen the movie, and thus far I really haven’t been attracted to them enough to go out of my way and do so. So why am I commenting on this at all?

    Well, I’ve been asked, and I have to say that I can’t really comment on something I haven’t read or seen. But I’ve heard …

    I do have one comment, however. I hear too frequently amongst Christians about subtle things in movies, books, and popular culture and how they might influence one. I would suggest that there are certain things I wouldn’t want to spend too much time on, simply because they are not what I want to fill my mind with. But I don’t spend my time worrying about it.

    There are two great defenses. First, for you–think about what you read. Literature sometimes requires that you suspend disbelief, but it shouldn’t require that you suspend thinking. Subtle influences are disarmed when you notice them. Try this on ads sometime as well. If you actually think about the claims being made, you’ll find many, many ads are completely free of any content. They’re just filled with subtle hints to make you feel good about a product. Thinking about them defangs them.

    Second, for your children–read with them and talk. This is good for you and good for them. Then if there is anything that’s a problem you can discuss it. Come to think of it, you can discuss the good parts as well.

    Now, I’ve read many, many posts on this particular movie, and I’m going to just link to two, both from blogs I read regularly.

    First, Ben Witherington warns against the movie and these books. I’m concerned with his dependence on the Catholic League, which is not a group whose judgment I trust generally.

    Second, in response to that, from someone who has read the books, Metacatholic comments. He has good guidelines for reading as well.

    As you can probably tell, I’m much more comfortable with Doug’s logic on Metacatholic, which reflects my prejudices. So for those who have asked, this provides the opportunity to check it out.

  • My Highlights from Christian Carnival CXCVII

    I like to highlight three or four posts from the Christian Carnival when I have the time. I usually do so in the post linking to it (if I remember to do so at all), but I forgot today, so here comes another “link” post.

    My first highlight is host Diane R’s Yes, We Can, in which she is saying yes to the possibility of putting the social gospel together with proclaiming the atoning work of Jesus. It’s a good challenge.

    Second, I noticed this post on discipleship, in which I read: “A true relationship with the Living and Holy God is not a one-time event or prayer, it’s a lifetime commitment.” Yep, that’s it!

    Finally, Kevin at Everyday Liturgy talks about what it is like to experiencing the world after a reutrn from a monastery. I have a friend who is pastor at a local church who visited a Benedictine monastery, and he couldn’t stop talking about it. Some of what he said is much like this post. I wonder what the needs of our lifestyles do to our spiritual growth?

    Well, there are others, but those caught my eye.

  • Christian Carnival #CXCVII

    . . . has been posted at Crossroads.

  • Christian Carnival #CXCVII

    . . . has been posted at Crossroads. My contribution this time was from my Threads blog. Check out the many excellent posts in this carnival.

  • Legislating Morality

    Have you ever heard a conversation like this?

    “You can’t legislate morality,” says one person.

    “Oh yes you can! We do it all the time. Murder is immoral and we legislate against it.”

    Interesting, no? For me, this gets combined with separation of church and state. I’m an advocate of separation. People will frequently ask me why I don’t want politicians to take their faith into their actions in government, and how I would be able to separate those actions if I was a politician.

    Well, I can’t separate them, and I have no plans of doing so. Who I am is driven by the fact that I’m a Christian, trying to live out a life here as a follower of Jesus. If I stood for election to some office, I would remain a Christian, and Christianity would be a part of my political choices. I would hope that I would also be able to express those choices in a way that would be comprehensible to people of other faiths and of no faith at all. I would certainly regard it as my duty to try, and if I found that I was advocating legislation that was good only for Christians, to stop doing so.

    Separation of church and state is sometimes read as separation of church and statesman. But the constitution says nothing about the faith of an officeholder, except to specify that there can’t be a religious test, which suggests that “separation of church and statesman” was not the intent. (I realize that “separation of church and state” as a phrase, does not occur in the constitution, but I regard this as irrelevant. As with many other legal principles, it is a name for a principle contained there, which is convenient shorthand for the words that actually are there.)

    I advocate separation because of two things. First, I believe that getting the power of government is inevitably corrupting to the church. When we try to accomplish the goals of the gospel through legislation, we often forget the power of God and the value of grace. Secondly, I believe that the government is too easily led to serve only the majority, and that aligning with a particular faith or religious tradition exacerbates that problem.

    None of this, however, prevents or should prevent people from taking their moral principles, however derived, into the public forum, arguing for them, and producing laws that they believe are suitable to good moral principles. And thus I get back to legislating morality.

    “You can’t legislate morality” is used in two ways in my experience. First, it is used to suggest that you can’t make laws requiring people to be moral. This is most commonly used against laws regarding sexual morality. In this first sense, the statement is clearly false, as we can legislate moral actions in many spheres. Laws about sexual morality may be hard to enforce, but they certain can be legislated.

    It is possible that some rejection of “legislating morality” results from the fact that it is difficult to legislate moral behavior. Apart from social context, it is no more difficult to enforce a law against adultery than against murder. There will be evidence left in both cases, witnesses in both cases, and a good investigator can probably discover these. There is obviously no great difficulty in implementing a penalty. The real problem with enforcing a law against adultery in modern society would simply be that the behavior is prevalent and widely accepted. It would be hard to enforce because of that. For example, if a police officer comes to my door looking for evidence of murder, I’m likely to be as cooperative as I can because I share a society-wide revulsion of murder and wish the murderer caught. Adultery? Well, not so much.

    I don’t mean to minimize adultery as a sin. Frankly, I think churches do that way too much, to the point that there is very little moral stigma to the occasional adultery in many churches. Pastors can commit adultery and simply get some counseling and get moved in many mainline churches. But the societal view of adultery in general would not allow for an effective civil penalty. So as a practical matter, we could not legislate that particular point of morality, or better moral behvavior. But that’s not because of any inherent difficulty in legislating something moral. Rather, it’s because so many people either don’t see adultery as immoral at all, or regard it as only a minor offense.

    There is a second sense, however, in which “you can’t legislate morality” is quite true–if we mean that it is not possible to pass legislation that will actually make people moral. We can legislate against adultery, or abortion, or any one of a number of other things all we want, and we can enforce that law against a varying percentage of the population, but that law will not make people at heart less adulterous, less inclined to seek an abortion, or less inclined generally to moral behavior.

    That’s the thing about law–it mandates behavior; it can’t mandate character. God’s law runs into the same difficulty. Paul runs through that conflict through Galatians and Romans. I get up in the morning, look at the law, and it tells me, “Henry, you are a person with a considerable number of moral failings.” OK, that’s true, but what do I do about it? The law is pretty unhelpful. I’m already determined to overcome moral failings as much as I can. As I do so, the law is always there to remind me of where the problems lie.

    That’s where the gospel comes in. The gospel is the means of changing hearts and creating moral people. Which brings me full circle to the church/state issue. I think often we, as Christians, act as though we don’t believe the gospel. We don’t believe there is grace (both prevenient and sanctifying for my fellow Wesleyans) that can change people at the core, and keep them moving toward being moral people.

    It seems to me that if we Christians truly believed in the gospel, we would be so caught up in it that we would spend much less time creating laws, and much more time trying to spread Christ’s grace. Of course, when I ask that implacable law in the morning how I’m doing on this one, I can’t say that I’m always the best example. But it’s another good thing to work toward.

    We can’t legislate moral people, just moral behavior. But as Christians, that should not be discouraging, but rather energizing. After all, we have the gospel!

    (Note: Maverick Philosopher has a post on some definitions related to this topic, from a more philosophical point of view; it’s worth reading, HT: evangelical outpost.)

  • Morning Reading – 11/6/2007

    I read a large number of blog entries each day, and I never have time to comment on everything I’d like to. Considering how many posts I do write, this may be a good thing. One way to comment without having to write is by linking to extremely good posts, and this morning provided me with some excellent material.

    Responding to Torture

    First, I have been trying to get a handle on writing a post on torture, with the Mukasey hearings, but I haven’t gotten beyond “torture is evil.” After that it feels odd to be explaining that torture is bad. It’s so much a part of me, that I have a hard time taking it seriously as a debate, but there it is, being debated by presumably serious people.

    But Joe Carter has saved me on this point, by writing a 100% on target, excellent post, Our Tortured Silence: The Shameful Response of Christians to Waterboarding.

    All I would add is that our fear sometimes makes us waffle on our moral convictions. We must fight terrorism, but we must be sure to maintain our integrity while we do it, or the terrorists win even if we physically defeat them. Let’s be sure we like who we are when we’re done.

    Dividing the Denominations

    Through an unrelated comment, I found a post on the division of the church, Happy Reformation Day/Hallowe’en. This relates to my own previous post, Setting Doctrinal Priorities. I’m not concerned about their being denominations, or at least accountability organizations that bring congregations together, but we very often do not see the unifying factors, and thus splinter further and further.

    What is the Gospel?

    Again, relating to two earlier posts, Adrian Warnock has posted on justification again, and after quoting a description of forensic justification, and details of imputed righteousness, he says:

    That, my dear reader, is the Gospel. What better explanation of it have you ever read?

    Now I don’t have a problem with Adrian seeing the gospel there, but that is simply one way of expressing it; it is not the only one. When we divide along such detailed lines, I see many problems ahead for Christian unity.

  • Setting Doctrinal Priorities

    A recent jury verdict against a group of hatemongers has brought up lots of questions. One that I heard was simply this: “The Bible says homosexuality is an abomination. How can you, as a Christian, claim that this group that protests at military funerals is not a good representation of Christianity?”

    There are a huge number of reasons why I would say that these people do not represent Christianity, starting with the fact that it is always inappropriate to read a single text and then say, “This is what the Bible teaches.” Why? Because the Bible teaches many things, and often these will be in direct conflict with one another when one reads them in that fashion. Let’s take as an example this command:

    No one whose testicles are crushed or whose penis is cut off shall be admitted to the assembly of the Lord.” — Deuteronomy 23:1, (NRSV).

    Now compare it to this:

    ?4? For thus says the Lord:
    To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths,
    who choose the things that please me
    and hold fast my covenant,
    ?5? I will give, in my house and within my walls,
    a monument and a name
    better than sons and daughters;
    I will give them an everlasting name
    that shall not be cut off. — Isaiah 56:4-5 (NRSV)

    Now my point here is not to make these two commands conflict, but rather to point out that we cannot build a complete doctrine of what God thinks of eunuchs based on just the text in Deuteronomy 23:1. There are other factors to consider if we continue to read.

    One of the characteristics of fundamentalist groups is an inability to prioritize their doctrines. All truth is truth, and one cannot lay aside any aspect of truth. I discuss this kind of an approach to doctrinal unity and diversity in a post Unity, Diversity, and Confusion, where I recommend having a defined core that gives a group community, but allowing a broad range on which disagreement is permitted.

    I think the common characterization of fundamentalists can be unfair at times, however, as there are many who adhere to a traditional understanding of doctrinal fundamentals and are quite able to see differing priorities within those. I recall that my dad who adhered to every doctrine in the dictionary definition of Christian fundamentalism (per Webster’s 3rd International) being confronted with a situation in which a patient would die unless he could get a particular medication. Now unlike some missionaries I know, my father refused to violate the laws of the host country, even when he could have gotten by with it. In this case, however, when the government refused an import permit, he arranged to have the medication smuggled in and saved the patient’s life. Lying and breaking the civil law became less of a concern than saving a life.

    So in this case I’m speaking of those fundamentalists who fit the stereotype and have a hard time prioritizing. One could borrow Tillich’s definition of idolatry, which I quote from distant memory (so be merciful!), making your ultimate concern something that isn’t ultimate. The doctrinal version of this is centering your faith on something that isn’t central.

    Fred Phelps and his small gang do, in fact, prioritize doctrines, but they do a very bad job of it. Only a very small portion of the scriptures directly address homosexuality, yet for them being against homosexuality is the central doctrine of their faith, as shown by their actions. It trumps all versions of redemption, God’s love, atonement, grace, and an incredible number of sins that are spoken of more frequently in scripture.

    This inappropriate center then leads to behavior that is so far off that we can call it a “wacko fringe.” In a post from Saturday I quoted another blogger who had tied the term “wacko fringe” heavily to the charismatic movement. Well, here’s a truly wacko fringe group. So what’s their key problem? I think it’s an inability to prioritize doctrines and beliefs.

    Most Christians will react with horror at their behavior, and justifiably so. Some will also be puzzled when opponents of Christianity respond by pointing out the Biblical texts against homosexual acts that are in scripture. But why should one be puzzled? We know that Christian groups have been taking small selections of texts for some time and creating groups that qualify for the “wacko fringe.” It is one of the hazards of not having the inquisition around. People can come up with their own doctrines.

    Of course, depending on your perspective, it could be that the inquisition is the wacko fringe, though they were ostensibly in the service of orthodoxy and of the mainstream of their time. The point is that freedom to study for oneself and create doctrine also leaves open the door to bizarre doctrinal ideas and fringe groups.

    Now I’m going to discuss a number of positions and views and suggest some potential for getting off center. I don’t intend to suggest that any of these positions are anywhere near equivalent to the Phelps group. In fact I’m going to include a couple of positions that I personally have held and had to modify as examples. I want to point out the potential danger, and suggest some antidotes.

    Let me start with myself and a very simple example. I got married for the first time in my early 40s and acquired a complete family in one step, a wife, three step-children, and one other young person living with us at the time. Now I really like to think I’m non-judgmental, but with a military background and a rather punctual personality, I had a strong tendency to look down on people showing up late for church. If they had children they should just get up earlier and prepare more efficiently, and get those children to church on time!

    It took the weekend after we returned from our honeymoon to make me repent of my judgmental attitude and realize just how unsympathetic I was. You know, even when they are older, having multiple people in the household makes it much harder to get everything done on time. That first Sunday we straggled into church over a 20 minute period, all of us late, including me. Now we got better at it later, but I learned a lesson with the first Sunday–it’s much easier said (and judged) than done!

    It’s good to get to church on time, but it’s also good to exercise Christian charity to those who have more difficult circumstances. My single male viewpoint and uptight personality on the issue of punctuality made me put being on time to church way too close to the center of good spirituality. There’s a good scriptural point here to help correct this too. Punctuality may be a value, but not being a judge is also a value. Which one is expressed more precisely and repeatedly in scripture? Well, Jesus at least expressed it pretty clearly in Matthew 7:1, and as far as I can see he clean forgot to say, “Be on time for church!” So where should my priorities be?

    Let’s stick with my own weaknesses for another paragraph or two. I used to be a very positive preacher and teacher, and I don’t mean by this that I was always upbeat. What I mean is that I preached a message for the successful and victorious. I was balanced enough to remind them that there would be hardships, but I tended to brush past these to the wonderful new heights each Christian would attain every day as he or she walked with Jesus. Now is there a place for teaching about overcoming and to talk about hope and victory? Of course there is! There is plenty of that in scripture.

    But then I lived through a five year battle with cancer for our youngest son, which ended with his death. There was no quick solution, no sunlight just around the corner, no moving from victory to victory on a daily or weekly basis. There were lots of times when we had to struggle through and keep plowing forward even when it was hard to see the hope.

    Before, I would push very quickly with folks I talked to and try to get them to feel hope right now, and push forward for the victory quickly. Then I learned something new about struggling and hardship. It wasn’t that I knew nothing of that before or that I never taught it. It was simply that I put my emphasis on living the mountaintop to mountaintop life. Now I think I have gained new balance.

    A last story on myself comes from just last weekend. I was talking about dealing with very rigid views of scripture with my teacher, Dr. Alden Thompson. He knew me when I as an undergraduate Biblical languages student, approaching the edges of Biblical scholarship very carefully, lest I get burned. I made a snippy remark about someone, and he said, “Remember what you were like when you first came into my Hebrew class.” And he’s absolutely right. I have a tendency to be impatient with people who are slow to come to the same conclusions I do (incredibly obvious and wise ones, of course!).

    In this case the lack of balance is that I sometimes do what I accuse theological conservatives of doing: I put doctrines above people. In John 9, we see Jesus and his disciples encountering a man born blind. The disciples are interested in a theological question–whose sin made him blind? Jesus was interested in healing the blind man. I need to watch my priorities and put people ahead of doctrines. (Of course, that dictum is itself a doctrine, but I think it’s a fairly valid one–validated by the actions of Jesus.)

    I see a similar issue with the question of who can be saved. Do they have to understand a particular set of doctrines, a particular view of substitutionary atonement, or do they just put their trust in Jesus, according to their best understanding. Hanging on the cross, Jesus used a different priority than we often do today, offering hope on the simple request to remember the thief when he came to his kingdom (Luke 23:42-43).

    A very little bit of imbalance can move us toward the fringe, and when one issue becomes our defining issue, unless it’s Jesus himself, it becomes very easy to head out for the “wacko fringe.”

    Another illustration may help. Respecting the Bible is good. In this area there are many King James Version Only advocates. They respect the Bible, but only in one form, and so they disrespect it in all other forms. A book now has priority over all other doctrines and over people. One student of mine, a new Christian, was informed by one of these folks that he was not saved. Why? Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God, and the word of God comes only in the King James Version. The fault with his salvation? He had heard the gospel preached from the New King James Version. Skewed priorities led to the distant fringes.

    So how do we avoid it? Well, I think Jesus provided us with a guideline when he said that all the law and the prophets hang on the two laws–love for God and love for our fellow human beings (Matthew 22:40). Now it’s not impossible to get off track even with that. For one thing, our definition of love can be skewed. But let me suggest looking up and down the line. As we get more detailed in our doctrinal pronouncements, ask ourselves if them fit the two laws. Can we hang them there? When we’re looking at love, does our definition fit the life of Jesus? Can we see our definition of love in the way God has acted in history? It’s a two-way test. (For my application to Bible study see Hanging Biblical Interpretation in which I express my hanging rule.)

    In all of this we do need to express our beliefs. If those who seek balance do not speak, Christianity will be defined by whoever does speak. We are to be witnesses. We think of knocking on doors and bringing in conversions. But what about simply representing in our own small sphere who Jesus can be in our own lives? One of the blogs I read regularly is Allan Bevere. He wrote a post on preaching, starting a series, and his first principle of preaching was to preach to the audience that is there.

    That relates closely to a principle I teach in Bible study–look first in the Bible for the things that apply to you, rather than to other people. Let God’s word correct you first in all cases. That should happen before you preach, teach, or share. Let it hit you and convict you! Then go talk to other people.

    As a church, we could apply that very appropriately as well. Look for the things that correct your own action. How about heterosexuals spending more time looking at the sins they themselves are tempted to? Would that not provide a bit of balance, no matter what one’s conclusions were about homosexuality?

    I’m simply suggesting that we try to put first things first, and that we each look for the first things that we ourselves need to hear. Other people’s sins will quite often take care of themselves much more effectively when we’re spending most of our time on the most important things!

  • Faith and Creation – Some Links

    I encountered a few posts related to these to words, to which I’d like to call your attention. First, via Higgaion I navigated to this post about taking things on faith.

    The author, Dr. James F. McGrath, makes some excellent points on just what faith means from a Biblical perspective. One thing I would emphasize is that while we may believe certain things on limited evidence, we rarely believe based on no evidence at all, or contrary to the positive evidence. Usually we at least believe that there is some evidence with us.

    Let me quote one key comment that ties this in with creation:

    There is no reason to think that the author of Genesis expected his readers to believe his creation story ‘on faith’. He does not dispute the basic facts of the natural world as understood in his time: that the world is mostly land with a large gathering of connected basins filled with water called seas; that there is a dome over the earth; that above the dome are waters; that there are lamps placed in the dome (the moon, like the sun, being viewed as a source of light). He says all of this because it is what people thought in his time. None of it is anticipated to require faith to believe it. What the author offered was an alternative story of creation, not alternative facts about that which was created.

    This is an extremely important paragraph. Those who have never tried it, have no idea how difficult it would be to express both a new view of God and a complete new cosmology simultaneously, and have it connect with hearers. Those who look for a modern cosmology in the Bible are really asking the wrong questions of the text. We tend to ask how accurate the text appears to us, when a better question would be what the text communicated to those who first spoke/wrote or heard/read it. I don’t mean here to say that the historical meaning is the only meaning of a religious or spiritual text, nor that we can be 100% certain we know. But we will do much better starting with that historical text, then by immediately trying to read it from a perspective unknown and unimaginable to the first audience.

    The second related post is the beginning of a series by Dr. Westmoreland-White on Levellers. He has written an initial post that consists largely of suggested reading, and has now continued with an initial post looking at the texts, starting from Genesis 2:4b-25.

    Dr. Westmoreland-White notes regarding this passage:

    All this is clearly to say that those who told this story and those who wrote it down and included it in our Bibles were NOT asking scientific questions. They were asking about God and humanity and our relation to each other and the world (as they knew it). By the time of the early monarchy when this was written, Israel was in conflict with surrounding nations who all had their own gods and goddesses. The constant question was “Who is this YHWH of yours anyway!” since Yahwism was relatively new to Canaan. . . .

    There is a similarity in the way in which the two bloggers are viewing the text, and I agree with them both on this. This series is likely to be good.

    With reference to the sources of the early chapters of Genesis, I have thus far presented a working translation of the first 10 chapters of Genesis, and I plan to post the 11th either later today or sometime tomorrow. The purpose of using my own translation is not that I think mine is better. In fact, due to a number of factors I would consider it worse. But I wanted a copyright free, modern language translation which I could slice up according to the sources. You’ll find these posts with the sources color coded in category “Genesis” on my Participatory Bible Study blog.

    I think that will do for now.

  • MBWR #136 Posted

    At Allan R. Bevere. Thanks again to Allan for this contribution to the Methodist blogosphere.