Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • TNIV and REB

    I was interested in this post on This Lamp because of the reference in the last paragraph:

    As an aside… Last Christmas, I went back to my home church for a worship service. I came across the same individual mentioned above who had been one of my mentors in college. He had just come from teaching a Bible study and was carrying two Bibles. He told me that he likes them both and gave up trying to choose one over the other. He carries them both to any study he leads or participates in. What were they? He was holding a TNIV Study Bible and a Cambridge text edition of the REB.

    That wasn’t the main point of Rick’s post, but it caught my attention because I keep my Oxford Study Bible (REB) on the stand by my computer, and I carry the TNIV these days, along with my Greek and Hebrew. I really like to consult both these days whenever possible.

    On the larger question of the post, the meaning of “pisteuw/pisteuw” in John 3:16, I don’t think we quite have the word. I can accept “have faith” as the REB reads, but I would like something that includes “trust.” Yet a phrase like “believes in and trusts him” is clumsy at best. Perhaps there is no perfect answer here.

  • John Wesley Quote

    I was looking for something else, but I can’t resist posting this quote:

    I advise you never to use the words wisdom, reason, or knowledge, by way of reproach. On the contrary, pray that you yourself may abound in them more and more. If you mean worldly wisdom, useless knowledge, false reasoning, say so; and throw away the chaff but not the wheat.

    Source: Wesley, John. A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, London: Epworth Press, 1952, p. 89. This booklet is a collection by Wesley of a number of writings on the topic over the course of his life.

  • More on Junia the Apostle

    Suzanne McCarthy has now responded to the latest objections to her work on Junia (Romans 16:7), a distinguished apostle and a woman. He whole series has been excellent, and I recommend it highly. You can go there for links to the various stages of this debate, including postings by her various critics.

    The more I look at this issue the more I am convinced that were some people not determined that there simply must not be a female apostle, the linguistic aspects of the passage would not arouse significant debate. After reviewing what Suzanne has written, looking at the passage and my own reference sources, and then reading several of the articles on the other side, the strongest argument I see against Junia being an apostle is the fact that people don’t want her to be.

    I hate to say this, because even when I disagree with him, I regard Dan Wallace as one of the most careful scholars of the Greek New Testament around. I generally appreciate his summaries of his opponents’ views, which are normally accurate and fair. I have found that I can argue against him using his own citations of the facts in opposition to his own position. But in this case I think he has allowed theology to trump exegesis.

    Why is this one woman’s leadership in the church so hard to accept? We have the example of folks like Deborah, who clearly took a high position of leadership amongst God’s people. But in that case there isn’t any way to get around it. It’s clear as day, and not even the most determined person can create an argument that Deborah was either not a woman or not in leadership. But with Junia both of those approaches have been attempted. Either she isn’t really a woman, or she isn’t really an apostle. Both attempts have failed.

    Perhaps now we can get down to the more important point that God today calls women into ministry in a variety of ways, and this call is just a small fulfillment of that scriptural goal that “in Christ there is . . . neither male nor female” (Galatians 3:28). This true celebration of all of God’s gifts no matter where they are bestowed by the Holy Spirit is long overdue in the church. Let’s seek it with all our hearts!

    PS: Through a comment on Suzanne’s post, I discovered Jay Davis’s blog which is new, but looks promising. He’s a Salvation Army officer. I’d particularly commend his recent two posts on women in ministry, so creatively titled Women and Women Part Two. The latter post discusses women in the Salvation Army.

  • Hebrews: Going On Toward Perfection

    The first time I taught a class on Hebrews following publication of my study guide, we were studying lesson #7, Falling Away. The primary reading for the lesson is Hebrews 5:11-6:12, and thus includes the passage, “going on toward perfection” which is very famous in Methodist and Wesleyan circles. In discussing the passage we noted that some translations used the word “maturity” while others used “perfection.” I explained why one might use either term properly as a translation of the Greek “teleiotes” but added that I felt that “maturity” was a little bit weak for the message.

    On my way home after the class I got this nagging feeling, and so I went to the translation I had written for the study guide and checked my own translation. There large as life and twice as annoying was the word “maturity.” I had managed to contradict myself within days of publication. The next week I pointed it out to the class, which resulted in another discussion. Of course, the inevitable question was, “What do you really think?”

    That’s a fair one, and I’d like to answer it in an overview fashion here. I do feel that “maturity” is a little bit weak of a translation on this occasion, but “perfection” goes a bit astray of the author’s intent. Either English word overlaps the Greek word in the source. Which is best must be determined from the immediate context. To get a broad view of how I understand the structure of Hebrews, check my outline and translation. (I do not recommend my own translation as a clear, accurate, and natural one. Use a good modern version for reading. The reason I created a translation was so that I could have one in modern language without copyright restrictions to use to hang my notes on. All modern versions with copyrights do restrict one from including the entire text of a Biblical book in a published work.)

    So what is the broad view here? First, in the text leading up to Hebrews 5:11, our author has brought us to the brink of discussing the priesthood of Jesus. He has hinted at the topic and started to lay out the requirements for that role and the importance of it. He has established the importance of Jesus as one who reveals God to us.

    Now he pauses for a moment, in what I believe is the key to his central point. The readers are not mature enough to really get into the meat. They want milk. So first he talks about their immaturity. But then in a turn that has been noted by many commentators, he says he is going on anyhow. He presents the grave dangers of not going on (Hebrews 6:4-8). Why does he say they are not ready and then go on anyhow?

    I believe our author sees the addressees standing at precisely this point of danger. They are ready to be weaned and start on the meat of the word, but they are looking back and asking if this is worth it. Is it worth all the trouble? Is there really something to look forward to? Can we do it? So having told them where they are, he suits actions and words and charges forward with them. As I have noted previously, I believe that all Christians are in danger of the situation depicted in Hebrews 6:4-6. While it describes the extreme case, falling away under extreme hardship, it also points us to the danger that we are in every time we say no to something God has called us to do.

    So in 5:11-14, maturity is the thing that the addressees have failed to obtain. In 6:1-3 it is that which the author is calling them toward. In 6:4-8, he warns them against its opposite, and in 6:9ff he expresses his certainty that despite the dangers they will not fail. They will attain “it.” So what is “it”?

    I would suggest that it is that final, unshakable kingdom (Hebrews 12:26) in which everything that can be shaken has been and is gone. In the meantime, the call is always to move in that direction, and not to fall back or change course, no matter what comes up. We have Jesus, the high priest, who has gone this way before and proven that it can be done.

    In the Wesleyan tradition we use Hebrews 6:1 in connection with the doctrine of Christian perfection. In context, I don’t see that it has that exact intent. The perfection to which we are called is a maturity, or “rightness” at each point in our journey with the final, true perfection coming on that day when everything shakable has been shaken out.

    Note: I say some more about this “going on” in my podcast presentation on Seven Kingdom Principles of Choice (also part 2), which is based on the pamphlet by the same name.

  • Rejecting a Creationist Museum Challenge

    In A Tale of Two Museums the Evangelical Ecologist gives the following challenge to those of us who are Christians and accept the theory of evolution. (Yeah, that’s why we use “theistic evolutionist”–it takes less time to type!):

    But clearly it’s not a scientific method that’s being debated here, though I suppose that’s part of it. At the root of the difference between these two museums is an infinitely divergent world view. One museum unabashedly acknowledges God as Creator and the Bible as a competent standard to establish the context for man’s place in the history of the biosphere. The other, not.

    So to those of you espousing the evolutionary view, before you condemn in toto what the folks in Kentucky are doing, I offer this challenge: Gather like-minded souls together, raise $25 or so million dollars, and build a museum on a Biblically-based evolutionary model that expressly brings mankind closer to the Creator rather than driving people further away from Him.

    But I have several problems with that challenge. First, the museum in Kentucky is not about acknowledging God as creator. If it was, they could do just that. It’s about acknowledging one interpretation of Genesis as superior to all forms of science. It is the scientific method that is being debated here. Young earth creationism is profoundly anti-science of all varieties.

    Second, I don’t need the new Museum. I do not desire a science museum that acknowledges God. Where should it do so? Should there be an addition to each sign that says, “And God did it?” One of the great values in science is that anybody can do it, if they’re willing. Results must be replicable. A Muslim, a Jew, a Hindu, a Christian, an Atheist all should be able to come to the same scientific conclusion. If they can’t, it’s either a bad conclusion, or one of them is not doing science.

    I’m going to stick with the my own knowledge that my heavenly father made all this and let the science museums stick with describing it.

  • Honoring the Troops

    Ten years in the U.S. Air Force have made me look differently at the news and feel differently on Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Memorial Day, of course, is to remember those who have fallen, but rarely do I attend a Memorial Day service any more at which there is not something done to honor both serving troops and veterans. As the armed forces medley was played at the service Sunday night in our nation’s capital, there was still a thrill, even sitting in my living room, when I heard “Off we go, into the wild blue yonder . . .”

    When a civilian hears about a troubled spot in the world, he or she will often think about the grave hardship for those who are in that situation. If it’s one that might involve U. S. forces, there is perhaps a moment of wondering whose son or daughter is headed off to help deal with the situation. But for ten years when I heard about certain trouble spots, such as Grenada, Panama, and then Iraq in the first gulf war, I knew to pack my bags and wait for the telephone call that would surely follow. There’s a big difference in the way you think about it when you are going to pack your bags.

    Now don’t get me wrong. My service was not some incredible series of hardships. As I was telling my wife, I was very anxious to go. It was what I had trained for and I wanted to do it! In fact, I had it rather light, compared to what our young people are going through in Iraq and Afghanistan right now. But what I did doesn’t even compare. I tell my family that I had the right perspective on war, assuming one has to be in it–looking down from about 32,000 or so feet. As an aircrew member (not pilot or flight crew, but working on an aircraft), I didn’t have to slog through sand hoping I didn’t encounter an IED, nor was I under hostile fire. But my experience gave me some extra sympathy.

    I remember a call from my best friend’s wife after the first gulf war. I had been so lucky as to be rotated out of Saudi Arabia before Desert Storm. I got back in the war in another area, and I will say simply that it was the lap of luxury by comparison. My best friend, on the other hand, stayed in Saudi Arabia and was extended for some time. New housing for which they had been waiting for months had become available and she had to move before he would return. Those of us at our unit who were back home managed to move her, and I got the task of assembling the kids’ swing set. The best I can say of that was that it stayed together!

    That word “extension” meant something different to her than it does to most people who watch television. It meant her husband wasn’t there to help with the move. It meant a son who was crying because he saw other people’s daddies coming home and wondered when his daddy was coming home. We hear things like, “Tours of duty will be extended 3 months,” (or 6 months, or whatever), and often we don’t think of the impact of that word on people’s lives. It’s not at all like having your boss tell you that you need to stay on a project you don’t like for a few extra months. To a serviceman, that’s three more months of danger for you, three more months of fear for your family, three more months for your finances to fall into disaster, three more months for your home to deteriorate, three more months of loneliness, and three more months of weariness. Yet you’ll do it, because you signed up for it, and it’s what you do.

    Back home people will appreciate the things you do mostly with words and mostly on holidays. I don’t mean to belittle words and special holidays. The moments in these various services and commemorations are important, but they are only words unless they become motivators to drive us to do better.

    I wrote a devotional for my wife’s list in which I asked whether we really thought that love, as defined in 1 Corinthians 13, was the sort of thing we talked about and wanted to listen to. To be honest, I don’t think it is. In that post I talked about a question my pastor asked on Sunday, about our view of celebrities and heroes. When we’re asked, we talk about how much we honor our heroes, but our actions show that we really care more about celebrities. The way you can tell is by checking what we listen to, what we watch, what we talk about, and where our money goes.

    It’s important that we think about this, because whatever happens in Iraq at this point, we are going to need our armed forces for some time to come. Terrorism isn’t over. We haven’t run out of rogue governments that will sponsor terrorist activity. The tendency for the civilian population is to forget about the troops quickly after wars. Right now, even with fighting going on, we are behaving in this country as though the war is over. There is the sense among many that if we can just get the troops home from Iraq, that will be it.

    But the state of the world is analogous to a ticking time bomb. It is not a matter of if we will again be the target of a terrorist attack, but of when. And when that happens we need to be ready to respond defensively, and ready to take action when appropriate targets present themselves. It is very easy for those who have opposed the war in Iraq (as I do) to slip into the assumption that this is it, that everything else can be solved through purely diplomatic means. But there are no purely diplomatic means. Diplomats only succeed because there are some unsung heroes holding the weapons of war. Even when diplomacy prevents a war, you can thank the folks who were willing to fight it. Nobody is stopped diplomatically where there is no force to back up the talks.

    To honor the troops we need to pay them better, equip them better, train them better, provide them better medical care, and honor them not just for a few moments at a time, or for a few weeks after they come home, but for the long term. You don’t have to pack your bags and flee from your home, because there are thousands of young men and women who will pack their bags and voluntarily head toward where the trouble is.

    A few moments of singing and talking doesn’t thank them enough for all that. If you don’t believe me, you go tiptoe through the minefields in a desert half way around the world. As I said, I’ve never done that. I had to go, but my life was comparatively comfortable. But I’m terribly thankful to this folks who have done it, or are doing it, or will be soon.

  • Cubs as the Suffering Servant?

    OK, as the parent of a Chicago Cubs player (John Webb, currently with the AAA Iowa Cubs), I have to link to this great post about baseball, God’s game. (HT to Moderate Christian Blogroll member Come to the waters.)

    Of course, pay particular attention to this:

    8. It has its Suffering Servant, viz. the Chicago Cubs, the “Cubbies,” a team annually “like a sheep led to the slaughter” (and crucial to the game is the play called the “sacrifice”). But “Cub fans love the Cubs, warts and all, no questions asked. This quality is called faith” (Peter Glenbock).

    Of course my totally objective opinion is that the Cubs will win the world series again when they call John up. (I remind people that as a stepfather I am not subject to the normal failings of parents who have exaggerated opinions of their children’s abilities.) He has some big league time, but that was with the Devil Rays, not the Cubs.

  • Distortion Not Good for Faith

    I blogged previously about the Answers in Genesis creation museum that’s going up in Kentucky in How to Waste $25 Million. Now the museum is about to be opened, and they held special events for the true believers yesterday.

    This museum is a monument to the desire to avoid scientific evidence and to present an interpretation of the Bible that has clearly failed. Young earth creationism serves to place the Bible squarely in opposition to science, and by “science” in this case I do not merely mean “the data of science as currently understood.” Young earth creationism goes contrary to the data that we have. But the approach of young earth creationism is also contrary to the very methods of science. It takes one interpretation of a religious text, determines a very large body of “things that must be facts” from that meager information, and then sets out to impose those results on whatever observations are made. This is not a search for truth.

    This indictment doesn’t apply as I’ve stated it to all creationism. Old earth creationists, for example, take a substantially different approach. It’s easy to forget that there are many conservative Christians who don’t have a problem with the age of the earth as determined and confirmed by multiple branches of science using many different approaches. While they disagree with varying portions of the theory of evolution, the collision is much smaller.

    It is worthwhile noting that ID (intelligent design) creationism differs again by only asserting the need for divine intervention at various points in the development of life. I think it is still right to call ID creationism precisely because of that demand for a special type of intervention. Many young earth creationists are now spending their time arguing for ID. Why? It’s a simple public relations strategy. If you challenge people with the idea that the earth is only 6,000 years old, that dinosaurs lived with humans, you are running against such an overwhelming body of evidence from fields ranging from archeology to geology to biology, that many will reject you out of hand. So what you do is try to attack the scientific method in small ways, and do so in ways that some theists who believe in common descent can agree with you.

    But at the bottom line there are still the same group of organizations out there who are pushing a 6,000 year old earth, because, in their view, the Bible says so. But numerous Biblical interpreters don’t believe that the Bible says that at all. So what this amounts to is equating “faith” with their specific interpretation of a small portion of the Bible. And that, in itself, is a distortion. This is not faith versus science. It’s not the Bible versus science. It is a contest between a bad interpretation of scripture and the overwhelming body of scientific evidence. (I have some comments on the various interpretations here.)

    There’s an excellent article on the creation museum on the Panda’s Thumb. I like in particular the contrast between the spending done on creationism and that on scientific projects and education. Distorting the evidence and the record is not good for faith. It is building on the sand, a flawed building on a useless foundation at the cost of $27 million.

  • CIA Prewar Assessments and Fallout

    I found the following article interesting but in no way surprising:

    Months before the invasion of Iraq, U.S. intelligence agencies predicted that it would be likely to spark violent sectarian divides and provide al-Qaeda with new opportunities in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a report released Friday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Analysts warned that war in Iraq also could provoke Iran to assert its regional influence and “probably would result in a surge of political Islam and increased funding for terrorist groups” in the Muslim world.

    The intelligence assessments, made in January 2003 and widely circulated within the Bush administration before the war, said that establishing democracy in Iraq would be “a long, difficult and probably turbulent challenge.” The assessments noted that Iraqi political culture was “largely bereft of the social underpinnings” to support democratic development. (Source: Washington Post via MSNBC

    They obviously got all that right. I had been wondering how the experts could have missed the obvious problems with the rosy view of democratization resulting in a stable and peaceful new Iraq. It seems that they didn’t do quite that badly. They were excessively optimistic, however, on how long it would take to clean up and on the oil revenues that would result.

    The fact is that the war, as it stands, is a defeat. I would argue, however, that it is not a military defeat, but a political one. The objectives were not attainable. Every reasonable military objective has been obtained. The idea of going into Iraq and removing weapons of mass destruction or of toppling the nasty regime of Saddam Hussein were both obtainable goals. There were no weapons of mass destruction, so nobody could do that. Saddam Hussein has been toppled.

    At this point, our problem is that we’re expecting our military to create a democratic society, something they are in no way equipped to do. I cannot imagine how our government thought this would work. In an off-hand conversation the other day, I commented that it might be possible given a decade and perhaps 1.5 million troops. But even then I would suggest that the only option would be to create a strong and hopefully benevolent dictatorship or oligarchy favorable to our goals.

    As it is, we are trying to support a government that has next to no chance at all in its present form. Further, no likely governing group is Iraq is likely to fulfill all our goals, i.e. being a free government and suppressing international terrorism.

    In the 21st century style of war, the war on terror, we need greater strategic flexibility. Right now we need credible force to use in negotiating with countries such as Iran and North Korea. Because we are tied up trying to do the impossible in Iraq, we don’t really have the necessary force available.

    None of this–none whatsoever–is the fault of the troops who have done an extraordinary job in the face of the muddled and ill-considered objectives they were given. They should come back to victory parades, not because we as a nation have won, but because they have done even better than that. They have fought hard and effectively even without and end in sight.

    During the first gulf war, I knew approximately when I was coming home. Oh, there was the standard military shuffling of the paperwork, but then soon I was on a plane. We came home to wonderful welcome. Stores were offering discounts and everyone was celebrating. We had been in what the U.S. population likes–a short, victorious war with very light casualties. I was and am proud to have served.

    Our troops right now deserve no less. In fact, they deserve much more. They have labored through the heat of the day. Not only that, we need them for the future, and we need more volunteers like them. What is missing in the current debate over getting out of Iraq is any sense of further strategy for the war on terror. When we leave Iraq, no matter what the circumstances, radical Islam will still exist, terrorism will still exist, and there will still be states supporting terrorism. What are we going to do about them.

    Having muddled and impossible goals is bad. But having no goals at all is even worse. A strategy of reacting to individual acts of terrorism is not going to win the battle. Money will have to be spent on technology and personnel to improve security. We’re going to need the troops many more times. We need to be thinking about that.

  • Update on the Kentucky Gubernatorial Primary

    Well, Fletcher did it. With 50% of the vote to his main opponent’s 37% (Source: CQPolitics.com) he became the Republican nominee. I find it interesting that Bush’s approval rating is lower than Fletcher’s (38%), and Fletcher was indicted while in office. Yes, I know there’s the unpopular war in Iraq, but then one also has to explain why people who once supported the war suddenly became so incredibly hostile to the leader they once gave unprecedented popularity ratings. What on earth did they think was going to happen?

    It just makes me wonder just how people decide what candidate to vote for, and what policies to support. It strikes me as involving momentary whims. It seems to me that George Bush is the same person who was elected back in 2000. He’s behaved as one might expect him to behave based on his history, his associates, and his campaign. Of course many thought the war would go much better, though it still astounds me that they would imagine such a thing.

    What was it Churchill said? Something like “democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”

    OK, enough whining for today!