Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Theodicy: Taking a Stab at Natural Evil

    Theodicy is a big subject, but for many people it relates closely to acceptance by Christians of the theory of evolution. I recall conversing with one friend who commented that while he could understand my acceptance of evolution, he just had a terribly hard time accepting a loving God who could, at the same time, use a process that involved so much killing and destruction in the creation of life.

    Now personally, I have a much harder time dealing with the holocaust, the Russian revolution, or the death of Saudi Middle School girls because of the actions of religious police. Those actions represent clear evil to me, moral choices made in favor of evil resulting in pain and death. The fact that God allows such things requires a bit of explaining.

    Nonetheless, the sheer bloodiness of the evolutionary process is certainly troubling to many. Since I grew up believing in young earth creationism I can understand this. To go from the idea that God painlessly and bloodlessly created all the creatures essentially as they are, and that all pain and death are the result of evil, to a view that pain and death are simply a part of existence in the universe is quite a step. There are those who will say blithely that evolution really doesn’t make any theological difference. It’s just a matter of the technique God used to create. But that is to ignore serious implications.

    In this case, however, the implications also apply to old earth and/or intelligent design creationists just as much as they do to theistic evolutionists. The blood and guts exist, and they exist before any human being has made a choice to sin. Thus they seem to be a feature of the universe rather than the result of some wrong action. This is called “natural evil.” Wikipedia gives a fair definition, but when dealing with creation one needs to note in addition that the traditional Christian view that has accomplanied young earth creationism is that there was no natural evil in the world prior to the fall of man (Genesis 3), and that all natural evil resulted from that moral failure. Thus while you can distinguish natural evil from moral evil on an ongoing basis, even natural evil ultimately was caused by the actions of a moral agent.

    Dr. William Dembski has written an excellent article on this subject, Christian Theodicy in Light of
    Genesis and Modern Science    . Those who read this blog regularly will be aware that I generally don’t hold a positive view of Dembski’s work, so listen to me here. This article is the best single discussion of natural evil that I’ve read. It’s clear, well argued, and creative. I think those who write on theodicy will be responding to it and referencing it for some time to come. Having said that, I disagree with the major conclusion and would debate a number of individual elements. Dembski believes in an old earth, though he also supports intelligent design, which makes his overall view very close to that of most old earth creationists. I’m going to quote it here simply to demonstrate the widespread acknowledgement that this is a problem. In some later posts I plan to respond to individual elements of Dembski’s view.

    With regard to Hugh Ross, he says:

    Nonetheless, the actual arguments I’ve seen from old-earth creationists that attempt to preserve both theological and scientific orthodoxy have struck me as inadequate if by theological orthodoxy one means a traditional understanding of the Fall that traces all natural and personal evil in the world to human sin. Take Hugh Ross. Ross does not believe the Garden of Eden was free of death, decay, pain, and suffering. For him, there was never a perfect paradise. To justify this claim scripturally, Ross will cite Genesis 3:16, in which God informs Eve after she has sinned that he will greatly multiply her pain in childbirth. Since zero multiplied by anything remains zero, Ross infers that God did not here initiate Eve’s pain but rather increased her existing pain in childbirth. More generally, Ross will suggest that God uses randomness, waste, and inefficiencies (his terms) to bring about the “very good” world into which he placed Adam.

    I will simply note that I sympathize with the problem here. For people who are used to thinking of a God who uses no “randomness, waste, and inefficiencies” this seems a pretty serious problem. Dembski cites Ross as accepting that, and indeed he accepts that he himself has a need to discuss this particular problem.

    I was thinking about all of this when I ran across a post by Carl Zimmer on The Loom, Cancer: An Evolutionary Disease (follow links from there to an abundance of additional information). My son died of cancer, and suddenly the whole issue becomes personal. In my view of evolution, cancer is just as much a product of natural selection as is anything else. So “natural evil” touched me rather directly in this case. At the same time, I’m extremely interested in seeing evolutionary research aid our understanding of cancer and help find cures.

    Now let me try to get to the point of this note. After thinking a bit about how I’ve answered this question before, I simply don’t believe in natural evil. What we call natural evil is simply the environment in which we live, and which rewards our good choices and “punishes” our bad choices. Further, the sort of environment proposed by young earth creationists–which I believe for the first 20 odd years of my life, is non-sensical. Dembski quotes Ross as referring to the “increase” in labor indicated in Genesis 3 as part of the curse as a reason to believe that there was hardship and death prior to the fall and it was merely increased.

    I would suggest that there’s a better reason: It simply couldn’t be any other way. And Genesis confirms this, I believe, when it says that God placed the man in the garden ” to till it and keep it” (Genesis 2:15 NRSV). Do you suppose that if Adam did not till the garden, the plants would grow equally well? If he chose one seed over another, would there be more of what he did plant than of what he didn’t? Even the much maligned author of the second creation story (Genesis 2:4b and following) doesn’t imagine a perfect world in the way that Christian theology imagined. There would still be choices and there would still be consequences, ultimately confirmed simply by the fact that the human couple were able to make the choice to sin, and noticed consequences even before God came a talked to them.

    There would simply be no meaning to moral evil, or no possibility of it in a world in which there were no consequences to one’s choices, and if there are consequences, then it must be possible for them to be negative as well as positive.

    I’ll be posting more details. This is just my opening shot on the topic. Watch for the category Theodicy in the coming weeks.

  • A Short Note on Theistic Evolution and Frontloading

    I know, none of you readers believe I am capable of being brief, but I’m going to try! This post was triggered by my reading of Richard B. Hoppe’s post Dissent Out of Bounds on Uncommon Dissent (Oops, make that “Descent”), which is largely about Uncommon Descent’s comment censorship (because of which I do not comment there and I ceased tracking back to them), but the comments in question bring up some excellent points.

    One key is a definition of design. There’s some good discussion of that in the comments. But the issue I want to address is the matter of design and theistic evolution. It seems that when certain intelligent design (ID) proponents wish to make their movement seem larger, they include theistic evolutionists, on the grounds that if we believe the universe is designed, we do, in fact, believe in intelligent design. One assumes, of course, that we don’t believe in unintelligent design! When we’re to be excluded because we don’t believe in the right type and time of design, then we’re asked to produce a place, time, and proof of design, which in general we don’t think possible.

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  • Translation and Inspiration

    In posting recently on translation I’ve noticed that many people connect one’s idea of inspiration with one’s approach to translation. The assumption seems to be that a person who believes in some form of verbal inspiration, especially verbal plenary inspiration, will necessarily favor a formal, word-by-word, or literal translaltion. Of these terms I prefer formal, in that the most literal translations do not manage a word-by-word equivalence, but rather account for the grammatical form and structure of the source language in the form and structure of the text in the receptor language as far as possible.

    My own involvement in these debates sometimes tends to foster that very viewpoint. I have a non-verbal view of inspiration, in that I believe God inspires messengers with messages through various experiences, which may include a verbally dictated component, rather than dictating words. In Ezekiel 1, for example, my understanding is that God presented Ezekiel with a vision and Ezekiel searched for the words with which to present what he had seen, accounting for the slightly confused nature of the text. Because of my view of inspiration, one might assume that I would support a theory of translation that is message based rather than individual word based.

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  • Building Your Knowledge of Greek Grammar

    When I took second year Greek, the grammar to use in getting beyond basic introductory material was Dana and Mantey’s Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament which is very hard to get. But as a replacement, and also a considerable improvement, we now have Daniel B. Wallace’s Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics.

    For those who are just trying to build their knowledge of Greek a bit, it is probably not best to try to read or study through a grammar. There can be a benefit in doing so, and I have read Wallace’s grammar through, but it can be a daunting task unless you already read Greek fairly well and also truly like studying grammar. But you don’t have to take such a boring approach! One of the best features of this and all other New Testament reference grammars is the scripture index.

    You can get started building your grammar knowledge by looking up the verses that you read in the index. This will mean that some days you will have nothing to look up, while on other days you will have several verses. Once you look up the specific page on which the verse is referenced be sure to go back and read the entire section. Don’t be put off if you don’t follow the whole thing. Over time you’ll get to understand the material better.

  • Another Set of Posts on Principles of Interpretation

    Since I responsded to a post on principles of interpretation, and Bruce Alderman also weighed in on that topic, I’ve been keeping my eyes open for more interesting discussion.

    Today I found a couple of posts by way of a trackback to my threads blog, in which the author notes that he recommends my article to stimulate thinking, even though he clearly disagrees with it. I actually can’t think of a better reason to recommend reading a post, so let me recommend a couple of his on the same basis. Well, let me add that his first principle of “context, context, context” receives my complete agreement, though I disagree on some details. At some point I hope to respond to his second post on interpretation in accordance with the gospel, but I don’t have time right now to do it justice.

    As of now, I’ll have to be satisfied with strongly recommending that you read it and think about it.

    These two articles are actually part of a broader series. The first is Part Two – The Christian WorldView – Interpreting Scripture, which contains “context, context, context”–enough to recommend it as reading, though I would differ on details about context. The second is Part Three – Interpreting Scripture – Gospel Hermeneutic. I would find a bit more to disagree on in the second, but I believe it is not unrelated to my own view in Hanging Biblical Interpretation.

    Read and enjoy!

  • Being United Methodist: Identity and Purpose

    One of the problems with having a sign in front of your church, and particularly a denominational identity, is that it produces certain expectations in people who may considering entering your property and visiting your church for an event or a worship service. Now some of you may not think this is a problem–you want an identity. That’s good! But consider these question: Is the expectation created by your label realistic? Is it what people will find when they enter? Are you willing to stand by that purpose even if they choose another church?

    This discussion could apply to any denomination, I think, and also to many non-denominational congregations. But my experience is with entering a United Methodist local church. I’ve discussed parts of this experience several times before, but rather than link to a scattered set of sources, let me just highlight the relevant points of my own experience.

    I was raised Seventh-day Adventist, and completed my MA degree in Biblical Languages at the Andrews University Graduate School in conjunction with the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary. Then I left the SDA church and all churches for 12 years. I started my path back into the church at a United Methodist congregation. One of the first things I asked for was a definitive statement of United Methodist doctrine. I wanted to know what I was getting into. So the pastor of that church gave me a copy of the United Methodist discipline. Don’t groan! Considering the way I presented my question to him, he had no choice.

    I read the early pages of the discipline, the doctrinal standards and the explanations. I questioned elements of the social principles, but based on that reading I thought I could get along in a United Methodist congregation. I was naive enough to believe that Methodists actually had some idea of what was contained in their own doctrinal statement, but more on that in a moment.

    I attended two different United Methodist congregations off and on, and also went to small group Bible studies in both. When I had decided to rejoin the church, and specifically one of those two congregations I went to the pastors and discussed it. The first pastor told me that I would be welcome in his church no matter what. I explained that while I had been baptized, I had been out of the church for some years and wanted to acknowledge that. “We don’t care about that,” he said. “We just want you to enjoy our fellowship.” There was no discussion of my beliefs in any way. I’m not sure he had ever heard me affirm that I believed in God, though he knew I read Greek. I can testify that the two are not equivalent.

    The second pastor sat down and asked me what I believed about Jesus. What a difference! We had a serious conversation. I even contested points with him. But at the end he knew that I did, in fact, believe in Jesus and was ready to accept me into membership. I joined the second congregation.

    I suspect that the first pastor did not want to offend me by suggesting anything in particular I had to do. But by doing so he made me ask myself why I would join his congregation. What was the purpose? If it was merely to “enjoy fellowship” that wasn’t sufficient to me. By being open to all, I think he made the church seem to be unimportant and of little use.

    Even in the church I did join, however, there was disappointment. I read about the doctrine of Christian perfection, one of those Wesleyan doctrines with which I have a certain amount of trouble. I read Wesley’s A Plain Account of Christian Perfection amongst other things in order to clarify what Wesley taught on the matter. When I discussed that with the pastor he asked me to teach a class for the entire church on the topic. Now I had grown up in the SDA church and heard about John Wesley all my life. Imagine my amazement when I found that not one single member in that class was even aware that there was a doctrine of Christian perfection and that it was listed in the doctrinal standards of their denomination.

    I can’t really speak of what goes on in the broader denomination. I’m a small picture man. But I do see this in congregations. If you try to be all things to all people, you can easily wind up being nothing at all. Those who know me and read any of what I write will know that I’m not calling for tense, lengthy, doctrinal standards. But I am calling for knowing our identity and purpose at the congregational level. United Methodists should go out to that cross and flame symbol and ask themselves whether it is false labeling. Are people going to experience the the incaranational love and revelation of Jesus Christ and the fire of the Holy Spirit in your church? Is it an expectation of all or most of the members? Don’t suspect me of forcing a particular definition of each of these elements. I’m not. What I’m wondering is whether you could answer that question, whether you’re church member or pastor, in an intelligible way. If I was joining your church, would you say that you just wanted me to enjoy your fellowship, or would there be expectations of service, an identity to assume, and a purpose to support?

    My pastor (Gonzalez UMC) when he arrived at the beginning of a building program for a “family life center,” made certain that the name was changed to “community life center.” The name makes a difference, he told me. We need to be a church that reaches out to our community and makes a difference. There’s one piece of the identity. If you don’t want to reach the community, you’re going to have many moments of discomfort at our church. It gets more detailed than that, but I’m not writing to tell you what your purpose should be in detail.

    What I’m trying to say here is that when we get so open that we lose identity, we also give up any reason for anyone to enthusiastically support us. People don’t support an organization with any enthusiasm because of what it’s not. They support it for what it is. If you don’t know the purpose of your church, whether you’re church leader, member, or pastor, you will find it difficult to grow.

    As a final note, I think this is an area in which Christian liberals and moderates have failed in particular. We too often either define ourselves, or fail to define ourselves by what we are not, and then try to keep from offending anyone on any side.

    On the one hand I can define myself as a person who does not believe in the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy, who does not accept a literal seven day creation week, who rejects penal substitutionary atonement as the true meaning of the atonement, and who rejects male only church leadership. But what a dull litany that is!

    I’d prefer to be known as a person who believes that God has gifted us through his Spirit with the testimony of persons and communities of faith who have experienced him in real and special ways, who believes that God works mightily through the reliable fundamental laws of the universe he created to produce near-infinite variety, who sees the atonement as so broad and deep that it requires many metaphors just to scratch the surface, and who believes that God gifts all of his children in wonderful ways for a variety of roles in the church.

    And frankly, I’m happy with that latter identity. If you want to openly discuss those issues, welcome to fun and fellowship. But if you want to put down those who don’t believe the Bible is inerrant, or demand that all recognize just one metaphor of atonement, or make the women of the church feel as if they are not merely different than, but less than–well, go find another fellowship! I will, if I find myself in a congregation that wants to behave in that way.

    It’s not a matter of writing people out of the kingdom of heaven, or refusing to discuss with them or deal with them. It’s a matter of bringing together a congregation that can produce a coherent witness to the love of God in their lives.

    (I wrote some on a related topic on the Pacesetters Bible School news blog.)

  • Biblical Languages: Balancing Fast Reading and Slow Study

    Continuing my suggestions for maintaining Biblical languages skills, I want to discuss briefly the balance between fast reading and the more serious, detailed, grammatical study.

    Most students who make an effort to maintain their Biblical languages skill–and unfortunately small percentage in my experience–set out on each passage of scripture to study the text as though preparing to face the professor’s interrogation. Some of you may have had relaxed Greek or Hebrew teachers. I had one in undergraduate Greek and one who covered both Hebrew and Aramaic when I was in graduate school who had high expectations of what you should know about the text. I remember quite clearly the day in Aramaic reading when I had correctly parsed a verb form, and then the professor asked me what it would be in a completely different stem, person, and number.

    If you’ve had that type of learning experience with any of the Biblical languages, you may have gotten into the habit of lingering over each and every word until you hope you know every detail. There is a place for that, and when I’m teaching, I will sometimes ask questions like that especially of students who tend to neglect details. But let me point out that you didn’t learn English that way, assuming it’s your native tongue. Instead, you were exposed to a great deal of the language and absorbed quite a bit of vocabulary and structure before you studied it more formally.

    Most people will face discouragement in their study of the Biblical languages if they proceed at the slow pace required to study out every form in detail. That is why I recommend dividing your time between some serious study, and a program of faster reading. Faster reading will require good tools, such as Bible software of various types, reader’s lexicons (Greek or Hebrew), analytical lexicons (Greek and Hebrew). These are not tools that most Biblical languages teachers will encourage you to use for class, but they will help you cover more ground and expose yourself to more of the language. Accompany these with good English versions, and your reading speed will improve.

    Each person will have a different balance between these two parts of study, depending on your own personality and your goals. If you eventually want to be able to debate serious grammatical issues, you need to lean more and more to serious, detailed study. If you’d like to read devotionally, spend more time building your own speed.

  • Rick Mansfield on the ESV

    Rick Mansfield has made an excellent post on the controversy with the ESV. He makes a number of excellent points, but I’d like to quote one paragraph from near the end:

    My contention is not with the ESV. But I do have great problems with the inaccurate rhetoric that I often hear from proponents and endorsers of this translation. I have favorite translations, and I have written about a number of them on this blog. While I talk of their qualities that I like and appropriate uses for them, I go out of my way to try to do so without needlessly putting down other versions of the Bible. I’ve probably been harder on the ESV on this blog than on any translation, but usually it’s been in a context of addressing the audacious and often fallacious claims made for it by ESV supporters. This idea that literalness equals greater accuracy or literalness equals greater faithfulness to the original text is pure nonsense if the rendering is so literal that the author’s intent and meaning is unintelligible to readers and hearers. Antiquated vocabulary and sentence structure do not give a translation greater authority–it merely limits readership in an contemporary setting.

    I actually have very little against the ESV. It does have some awkward readings, but none of them are things that make it hard for me to use. I’ve recommended it to pastors who are uncomfortable with some of the gender-accurate (which they will call gender-inclusive) language in the NRSV. It provides an option to avoid the archaic language used in the RSV for prayer, and still keep to that general tradition.

    But it is currently being pushed forward by some people almost as a new “one true version” and this is more than questionable, it’s potentially dangerous. I too have my favorite versions, but no single version becomes the standard. The particular reasons used in support of the ESV are often inaccurate as well.

  • Rounding Up the Moderate Christian Blogroll

    Well, here I go again. These are a bit irregular, but I do like to call attention to particular post. As usual the blogs are listed in the order they appears on the aggregator when I displayed it, except that my own blogs are listed at the end. Most blogs have only one post listed, but I may list more than one where they are of particular interest. This post will be cross-posted on the Pacesetters Bible School Newsletter and Threads from Henry’s Web. This one’s going to be a bit briefer than normal, so if I get the point wrong, be sure to comment. I know you will anyhow!

    Peter Kirk and I have already linked to one another quite a bit on the ESV and Pastor Mark Driscoll’s explanation of the theological basis for its use at Mars Hill Church. Peter has also written something more favorable to Driscoll regarding God’s “maleness” as metaphor.

    Donny Prater is talking about his son’s reaction to the power rangers.

    Allan Casilao is Celebrating Marriage.

    Jay Voorhees reports on a gathering of Methobloggers at The Internet is our Parish.

    Jedidiah at Everyday Liturgy is still meditating on the wonder of the incarnation.

    Donny Pauling explains to us how his house has become a God Den.

    Bill Vernick thinks a number of regulations that government claims are to protect us are perhaps less beneficial than one might wish in Is the Cart Before the Horse?.

    Kievas Fargo reflects on the first week of the New Year, and rejoices that his church is recognizing that prayer should be at the center of everything they do.

    Molly has joined the discussion of literal translation and also some of the gender language involved, and considering she says some nice things about my own posts I really had to link to it!

    Eddie Arthur was glad to hear an old song, but while he has “no objection to people having the liberty to proclaim any sort of lifestyle or religion they want” he is concerned that Christians also be able to freely express their views.

    The Pen of the Wayfarer tells us about the Martyrdom of Polycarp.

    gavin richardson reports on the internet is our parish conference in this a several more posts.

    Bruce Alderman has started bringing us his principles of interpretation.

    My own time has been occupied bringing reports of the new by-laws adopted at the November annual board meeting for Pacesetters Bible School, and calling for nominations from Pacesetters members for the Bible Pacesetter Award, now to be given annually. On Threads from Henry’s Web, I jumped into the discussion of theology and the ESV, pretty much with both feet, and I added something to that debate on my Participatory Bible Study Blog. Finally, on the Jevlir Caravansary, I provided a brief note on the Lord Meren Mysteries by Lynda S. Robinson, and which are set in ancient Egypt.

  • Maintaining and Improving Biblical Languages Skills

    This post is for a rather limited subset of what (I hope) my audience is here–those who have some knowledge of Biblical Greek, Hebrew, or both. Tragically, many seminary students learn a little bit of Greek or Hebrew but not enough to really put to use, and then they spend the rest of the career (or at least the next couple of weeks) forgetting what they learned. There are two common results–either a pastor/teacher who presents inaccurate information about Biblical languages in teaching, or one who simply leaves out Biblical languages in study altogether. In the former case we have the tragedy of misinformation confidently presented by an authority figure. In the latter, we have the waste of seminary and seminarian time and money.

    I’m going to post a few short entries here about maintaing and improving your Biblical languages skills. Most of these suggestions are equally applicable to both Hebrew and Greek, or even to Aramaic if you have it. Specific tools, of course, will generally apply to one or the other.

    My first general suggestion is simply that you continue to read material in the Biblical language that you studied. There are several things that tend to prevent students from doing this. You may be overwhelmed and disgusted, and never want to see the material again. You may feel that you can’t really read, so what’s the use in trying. You may decide to try, but set excessively ambitious goals.

    So at the first level, let me suggest just making the opportunity to see some Greek several times a week. (I’m going to use “Greek” here for convenience, but this applies equally well to Hebrew.) There are a number of tools to help you do this. Bible software these days, from e-Sword to the source language texts from the NeXt Bible or Logos Bible Software include tools to take you quickly to the lexical entry on various Greek words. Your teacher probably told you not to do this while you were initially learning, but you’re out of class now, and the problem is maintaining and building. These tools allow you to see more Greek text.

    Then there’s the ultimate crib sheet–a good Bible version. I normally recommend dynamic equivalence translations, but for this purpose you will want a literal translation like the ESV, NRSV, or NASB. These are again available in the various software packages I’ve mentioned.

    If you don’t have the Bible software, take your Greek New Testament and get the Reader’s Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament. Again, this is a tool you wouldn’t be encouraged to use during first year Greek, but you’re away from the seminary now and trying to maintain your Greek.

    There are some other tools that can help, including grammars, but I’m going to discuss them in a later post. The idea here is that no matter how badly your Greek has faded, you can work your way through a passage. (You will, of course, need to refresh the alphabet.) Don’t be afraid even to just accept the translation in whatever English version you’re using if you don’t understand the material from the text. In later posts I’ll give you suggestions for getting beyond this, but for now you just want to dip your toes in the water.

    At this point don’t get too ambitious. If you can only manage one verse per day, do that. You may have heard of folks who read a chapter each of Greek and Hebrew every day. I read three or four of each besides whatever I read for current research projects. But I’ve been doing this for quite a few years, and I left seminary with five years of Greek and four of Hebrew to which I’ve now added nearly 25 years of reading on my own. Don’t get tangled up with grand goals. Be content to read a verse at a time, and do so several times per week.

    In later posts I’ll discuss solving grammatical issues, reference grammars, building vocabulary, and getting the immediate blessing for your devotional life and your teaching.