Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • More Efficient Bureaucracy?

    I’m shocked! It appears that the expense and displacement caused by the creation of the Department of Homeland Security has not resolved inter-agency turf wars. Well, not so much shocked, actually. According to The Aviation Nation, ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) has been avoiding working with the FBI on terrorism cases.

    This points to a need for voters to beware. Politicians like to choose play multiple choice when dealing with a problem: a) Create an agency or commission with the right name, b) Draft a bill with a title that promises to fix it, c) Allocate some money, irrespective of whether that money will solve the problem or e) deny the problem and hope it goes away.

    If any of us are feeling confident of our ability to respond to a major natural disaster, we should consider Hurricane Katrina, a predictable disaster, at least for a couple of days in advance, to which we were nonetheless not prepared to respond. Imagine a sudden terrorist attack coming now. Would our bureaucracy pull together and work and play well as one team?

    I suspect we’d have plenty of heroic action in the field, and plenty of bureaucrats who had essentially no impact on the situation trying to sort out blame and credit afterwards.

  • Christian Carnival #185

    . . . has been Parableman.

  • Notes on Mark 12:28-34

    Translation and Notes

    Overview

    There are parallel passages in Matthew 22:34-40 and Luke 10:25-28

    On the questioner, the Interpreter’s Bible comments:

    He is a model for the right approach both to Christ and to the scriptures. The psalmist speaks of “inquiring” in the temple (Ps. 27:4). We do so many other things there. We talk, we pray, we sing, we give. But so many never really inquire. That is the attitude which Jesus so eagerly welcomed. It is the reverent, humble search to learn the will of God for us and for our time; vastly different from the frequent attempt to bend the Almighty around until we can use him as a support for policies and points of view which we have already decided upon without reference to him. So often the common question “What would Jesus do?’ does not mark the beginning of a search at all. It marks the beginning of an argument. The conclusion usually runs something like this: “So, you see, Jesus would do just what I am doing.” — IB Exposition on Mark 12:28-34

    I agree with their assessment of the questioner. Many modern commentators try to make him out to be one of those questioners who was trying to trap Jesus, but there is nothing of that in the text here.

    I have adopted these two laws as a key to interpretation. You can see my essay on this at Hanging Biblical Interpretation.

    28And one of the scribes heard them debating, and when he saw that Jesus had answered them well, he came and asked him, “Which is the first commandment of all?”

    29Jesus answered, “First is, ‘Hear, Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord,

    Mar 12:29 – The Lord our God is one Lord – This is the foundation of the first commandment, yea, of all the commandments. The Lord our God, the Lord, the God of all men, is one God, essentially, though three persons. From this unity of God it follows, that we owe all our love to him alone. — John Wesley

    The quote is from Deuteronomy 6:4-5.

    30 and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heard and with all your soul and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ 31And the second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no greater commandment than these.”

    The second quote is from Leviticus 19:18. “First” in this sense is not chronological, but logical. Which commandment best sums up the law, or is most basic logically.

    32And the scribe said to him, “Excellent, teacher, you’re really right when you say that he is one, and there is none other than him, 33 and ‘loving him with all your heart and with all your understanding and with all your strength’ and ‘loving your neighbor as yourself’ is better than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices.”

    Darrell Bock notes:

    “. . . Properly relating to God translates into properly relating to others. This is more important than any ritual. The rule of God presses for people to live righteously with one another” (p. 331).

    Mar 12:33 – To love him with all the heart – To love and serve him, with all the united powers of the soul in their utmost vigour; and to love his neighbour as himself – To maintain the same equitable and charitable temper and behaviour toward all men, as we, in like circumstances, would wish for from them toward ourselves, is a more necessary and important duty, than the offering the most noble and costly sacrifices. — John Wesley

    In this rare case the scribe is totally in tune with what Jesus says. This wasn’t a trap, but a genuine question, genuinely answered.

    34And when Jesus saw that he answered thoughtfully, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And nobody dared to ask him questions any more.

    Referring to this questioner and the young man of Mark 10:17, Wuest quotes Swete:

    “. . . In both cases something was wanting to convert admiration in discipleship. If wealth was the bar in the one case, pride of intellect may have been fatal in the other. The mental acumen which detects and approves spiritual truth may, in the tragedy of human life, keep its possessor from entering the kingdom of God.”

    It seems to me that this is reading more into the white spaces than one is getting from the text itself. The questioner was near the kingdom. There is no necessity to assume that he didn’t finish the journey. There is no negative comment about him in Mark at all. Any assumption that he failed to completely apply his insight in his own life and eventually become a disciple is just that—assumption.

  • Are Atheists Autistic?

    Joe Carter has a post at the evangelical outpost [Note: Evangelical Outpost is showing a warning about browser exploit from McAfee Site Advisor. As I was admonished in the comments, I need to give warning. I’ve used the site for years, but that doesn’t mean I’m safe in doing so. Use the link at your own risk.] in which he proposes, with some caveats, that atheists may tend to be less socially aware, particularly aware of other minds, and may tend more toward Aspberger’s Syndrome. He invited readers of his blog to take a test here, which I did, scoring a 30. Since I’m a theist, that puts me close to a counter-example for his thesis.

    I commented there that I thought this approach is more polarizing than helpful, though I would admit is is no more polarizing than the suggestion some atheists have made to me that I hallucinate any experience of God. I don’t mind them doing that.

    In a reply to my own comment there, Joe states [see warning above]:

    About 95% of the atheists I have met seem to be “quarrelsome, socially challenged men.”

    His experience is different from mine. I’ve found Christian apologists to be much like this. I have also found atheist apologists to be like this. In fact, apologists in general tend to be in your face and somewhat quarrelsome. I think that goes with the territory, though I do know some counter-examples in each and every group. Personally, while Dawkins gets on my nerves, I don’t think it’s because he’s socially challenged. I’ve only read his work, and seen him on TV, but he seems reasonably personable for an advocate of a controversial position.

    If there is a correlation, and the problem is a type of “mind-blindness” then it should not be surprising to find that reason-based arguments are ineffective when trying to change their opinion of God. We Christians tend to treat atheism as if it was some form of Enlightenment-era rationalism and provide arguments that appeal to their reason.

    I’m afraid I have seen atheists as much more interested in discussing the arguments for the existence of God than most Christians. I would suggest that, rather than the intellectual arguments being ineffective because of a psychological failing on the part of atheists, they are ineffective because, as proofs of God’s existence, they are, in fact, flawed.

    In my experience, practically all of the arguments for God’s existence make more sense from the position of faith, i.e., I believe I can learn something about God through them, but they are not water-tight. Belief in God involves faith, which does not mean it is totally immune from intellectual examination, but I believe it does mean it’s not totally subject to it.

    I’ve always thought atheism was mostly psychological rather than epistemological. This potential correlation only strengthens that opinion, which is why I think it is worth exploring.

    Again, I would have to disagree. On a purely intellectual level, atheists do quite well. There’s no need to seek psychological reasons. They simply don’t find the arguments convincing. I wonder why that’s so hard to accept?

    For me, while there are pieces of the puzzle provided by arguments for God’s existence, at the core there is a serious leap of faith. That leap was not easy to take, and so I’m not at all surprised that some don’t take it, and some others don’t even believe there is a leap to take, and that I imagined both chasm and leap. Those are all things on which different people can have different views.

  • Boot Camp Accountability

    I saw this story about a 15 year old girl dragged behind a van at a Christian boot camp several places, but I don’t remember where first, so no hat tips.

    It should go without saying–but I’ll say it anyhow–that this type of brutal punishment, assuming that the story proves to be correct, fails the “what would Jesus do” test. Of course there are always those who somehow discover that Jesus would always do whatever they want to do.

    What I wanted to call attention to is the simple matter of accountability. I think people who do this sort of thing don’t expect to be called to account by others. They take a radical approach and they find people to manage their ministries who will tend to say “yes” rather than challenge them. There is a need for disciplined environments for some young people, though I personally doubt that the “boot camp” approach actually has any lasting value. But such environments should have more accountability and more observation than other environments simply because the leaders and teachers of such programs are in a position of tempting power over others. If they have a tendency of any kind to tyranny, anger, or sadism, they will be provided with opportunities, and since they are working with kids who have been labeled “bad” such people will believe they can get by with things they would not otherwise. History shows that they can.

    There is a dangerous tendency amongst Christians today to look toward fast, brutal methods of restoring discipline. I would suggest that a much more Christ-like approach would be much longer term, consistent, non-violent, and loving. I’m not saying delinquent young people do not require punishment at any time, but the boot camp craze, which thankfully seems to be dying down, was the penal equivalent of fast food.

  • Sneaking God into Public Schools

    I have previously written about my opposition to including specific Bible classes in public schools, and to the NCBCPS curriculum in particular, if one chose to have such a class in any case. Now in a column on WorldNetDaily Chuck Norris talks about using this curriculum as “Your first step to get God back into your public school.” It’s nice to know that this was your goal all along, Chuck. I must admit that I was certain of that from the moment I read about this curriculum.

    I know many people who would like to get God back into public schools, and who admit it openly. I can respect their stated position, though I disagree very strongly. But to try to sell a curriculum to school boards as constitutionally safe, while at the same time proclaiming it to be a means of getting God back into the classroom–that’s deceptive, and I don’t think it’s an appropriate approach for Christians to take. While I did not actually see this, Ed Brayton reports that that the NCBCPS web site initially posted Chuck Norris’s column, and then removed it. The obvious reason would be that they would not like that column quoted in court when their curriculum is challenged.

    Personally, I would simply say again that there are quite a number of things I don’t trust the state to do properly, and teaching religion is high on that list. Let’s provide appropriate religious education in our homes and churches. I don’t ever recall my parents having problems over prayer or Bible study in school–Oh, that’s right, I was homeschooled! Problem solved.

  • The Story in Scripture

    One of the ways I believe we frequently misunderstand scripture is by trying to take elements of it outside of the story in which they are set. My view of interpretation places the story above, or perhaps better around the propositional statements. I do not intend this approach to settle disputes about propositional statements in scripture and whether they are true and reliable, as I am not denying that there are numerous propositional statements. God must have wanted them there.

    The problem is that it’s terribly easy to miss the story, and to take particular propositions from scripture apart from the means by which God communicated those propositions and the way it which that was done. The most typical, and probably most extreme example of this problem comes in the interpretation of Job. Often the speeches of Job’s three friends are cited as support for theological propositions, even though God later declares these to be “words without knowledge” (Job 38:1). God’s declaration can certainly be applied to the speeches of the friends, who are later instructed to ask for Job’s intercession (Job 42:7-8). It can probably also be applied to Job’s, even though we are told that Job didn’t sin with his lips (Job 2:10). Nonetheless Job’s words in the depths of despair should receive careful consideration before they are used in support of a theological proposition.

    Job provides a good example of the different ways in which a proposition can be set in various stories. First we can ask when Job was written and what the general purpose was for writing it. That is, in itself, a story. There was a need to answer questions about the way God deals with people. Do just people always get rewarded? Is suffering always the result of sins? Second, each proposition falls into a place in the story of the book. This latter one is easy to discover, as the speeches are identified. By reading the whole story, you can guess that the speeches written by the guys who are told to offer sacrifices (Job 42:7-8) are less likely to be true than the ones uttered by God out of the whirlwind!

    Currently I’m continuing my study of Isaiah. Now I’ve been through this book a number of times, but during the past year I’ve been working through it multiple times. I’m continue to study through 2nd Isaiah (chapters 40-55) in connection with Brevard Childs’ commentary. One of Childs’ major contributions in Biblical studies was in canonical criticism, looking at Biblical passages in their canonical context. This goes well beyond what I’ve just described about Job in several ways.

    Let me quote Childs:

    In my commentary, in contrast to those who would fragment the chapter [referring to chapter 30-HN] I have argued that the different layers of the present text are to be seen as reflecting the accumulated experience of a faithful community with God through the lenses provided by Israel’s sacred scriptures. In the later levels of compositional growth the message of divine judgment and salvation are organically linked in a way that was at first, on the primary level of the tradition, unclear. However, increasingly the prophetic message gained in clarity as the anticipated eschatological salvation was painted with colors enriched by later apocalyptic imagery to form an organic whole. Hermeneutically speaking, it is crucial to understand how the major force in the shaping of the prophetic corpus derived from the experience by Israel of an ongoing encounter with God mediated through scripture rather than through the direct influence of allegedly independent events of world affairs. It is precisely this filtering process of scriptural reflection on the ways of God that gave a coherent meaning to the changing life of Israel in the world of human affairs. — Childs, Isaiah, pp. 228-229

    Now I quote that full paragraph to tie in the history of composition into the story of scripture. Just as I noted in my recent book that the Bible was written by people who “heard voices,” so also the Bible was written by people who perceived God as active in history, and who interpreted both their experiences and their existing texts in the light of that understanding. God did not simply speak by speaking; God spoke (and speaks) by acting.

    I believe I tend to be slightly more optimistic about the value of such methods as form and redaction criticism than Childs is. Nonetheless I am very grateful to him for his influence on Biblical studies in general, because he was able to bend the use of those methodologies toward a use in understanding the text that we have and setting it in a context of revelation, and away from fragmentation. He was also able to wean many away from looking for the earliest form of the tradition in order to discover the “true meaning.”

    The scriptures came into existence as God acted in and communicated with a community, and their understanding grew and clarified as they went along. They learned new things about God’s actions in history. They took literary forms and altered them to teach new lessons. This is yet another story in which we need to set scriptural propositions–the story of how those propositions got where they are now. I believe this is the continuing value of much critical methodology. It can suggest to us, and on a few occasions establish for us, the history of a piece of text so that we can see how that would grow in the community for which it was intended.

    Ultimately I believe that we would understand the use of the Old Testament in the New much better if we saw this interaction of action and revelation in continuous play. The early Christians have a number of motifs with which they are familiar from Hebrew scriptures. At the same time they have the experience of Jesus. Rather than sitting back and studying the Hebrew scriptures to determine whether they predict Jesus and the events of his life as they are read in historical context, they read them with the view that Jesus must be the ultimate divine revelation (Hebrews 1:1-3), and they also know that the scriptures they have are the result of divine action.

    Thus they start reading those scriptures through a new lens, and incorporating those motifs into their theologies, their lives, and and their communities in a new light. While some of the results may be startling, they are not so radical in method. They simply continue the process of God’s revelation and the way in which those on and through whom God acts work to understand that action.

    I add to the challenge of finding the immediate story in a Biblical book the challenge of asking how the elements of the book came together into a whole, if that was the process, and of asking what role it played in the broader story of salvation narrated and illustrated in scripture.

  • How to Change Your Mind – Again

    Joe Carter has reposted his entry from last November, titled How to Change Your Mind. I liked it then and I still like it now, so I’m going to link to it again.

    I use some similar methods from time to time. My mother taught me reading 12 times, which was often part of memorization. I’ve found it hard to get people to do put this into practice. But if you do, you will be blessed.

  • Christian Carnival – Sorting Hat Edition

    . . . has been posted a the Bible Archive. Rather creative, though as a non-reader of Harry Potter, I perhaps do not comprehend most of it!

  • Notes on Mark 12:18-27

    Translation and Notes

    Note: These notes accompany my podcast on this passage, Angels and Marriage.

    18Some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him, 19“Teacher, Moses wrote for us: ‘If a man’s brother dies, and leaves a wife, but no child, then his brother must take the wife, and raise up descendants for his brother.’

    The command here comes from Deuteronomy 25:5-10, though it is not quoted precisely. The situation, however exaggerated, was a realistic one under the Mosaic law. Having everyone alive at once who ever has lived would produce some significant practical complications, and this was just one of those possibilities.

    20There were seven brothers, and the first one took a wife and died without leaving a descendant. 21The second took her, and died, not leaving a descendant, and the third did the same thing. 22And all seven did so, but left no descendant. Finally the woman also died. 23In the resurrection, when they rise, to which of them does that woman belong? For they all had her!”

    It’s easy for us to laugh at the Sadducees, but they are not alone in trying to understand the spiritual and the supernatural based on common logic. Try answering the question yourself. How do you think such a situation could be handled?

    At the same time God is not nearly so limited in his ability to solve problems as we are. The bottom line here would be that we simply do not know how things will be done in the kingdom, or how relationships will operate.

    24Jesus said to them, “Here’s why you’re wrong: You don’t know the scriptures nor the power of God.

    Notice that Jesus does not merely tell them that they don’t know the scriptures. It is not a direct scriptural quote that will solve this problem for them, but rather an understanding of the power of God. The resolution is well beyond the level of discussion at which they are operating.

    25For when the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but they will be like the angels in heaven.”

    Now frequently people take this text as giving a definitive answer to how we’ll live in heaven. But I would suggest that this also results from not knowing the scriptures nor God’s power. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, but they also did not believe in angels. So Jesus points them to their own logic. Those raised from the dead live like the angels—whom the Sadducees also denied—making the whole discussion rather silly.

    But God who could make a resurrection happen can also provide a life for those so raised. This doesn’t mean, by the way, that there will be marriage in the kingdom of heaven. It means that the same God who can raise the dead (as the Sadducees denied) can also provide a new life for those who have been raised. “But just as it has been written, Eye has not seen, neither ears heard, nor have entered the heart of any person, the things which God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).

    Without due consideration for the power of God, the scriptures will not make sense.

    26But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read in the book of Moses at the bush, how God spoke to him and said, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? 27God is not the God of the dead, but of the living! You are very deceived!” — Mark 12:18-27

    It’s quite possible that this latter portion was not part of the same confrontation with the Sadducees, simply because the story ends so effectively with verse 25. Verses 26 and 27 may well have come from another answer to a question about the resurrection of the dead. In any case, they provide a very different response, in this case owing to the interpretation of the Torah. Since the Sadducees accepted only the Torah, or Pentateuch, as authoritative, it was important that the argument Jesus made for the resurrection come from that source (Exodus 3:6).

    It’s an interesting piece of interpretation, because we modern folks usually assume that when God identified himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he meant that he was they God they worshiped, not that he was continuing to be their God in present time. That is, however, the sense in which Jesus takes the passage.

    “God is the God of the living” suggests that we are not as ephemeral as it may appear.