Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Author Related

Posts that relate in some way to my books. Excludes administrative posts and most reviews of other people’s books.

  • Quote of the Day – On Leviticus

    … Byu inculcating worship patterns that emphasize mind over body, word over deed, and rational thought over “merely” reflexive sacramental systems, all legacies of the Protestant Reformation, religious communities learn to be at home in the cognitive, typically abstract world of theological ideas.  Ritual invites something different:  the active participation in “embodied” theological reflection.  Both the knowing and the learning of theology come from performing the ritual act itself. …  (Samuel E. Balentine, Leviticus (Interpretation, a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching), page 5)

    I have only read the introduction and the commentary on the first chapter thus far, but I am extremely impressed by this commentary.  While I would agree that protestants tend to downplay ritual and emphasize belief as mental assent, I would note that the other commentary on Leviticus that’s on my plate right now, David W. Baker in Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy (Cornerstone Biblical Commentary), also points out the value of learning through ritual.

    I think, however, that our tendency is to look for concrete doctrine in the rituals, and thus to miss the way in which God chose to communicate those particular doctrines.  We may also learn from Leviticus both that there is a spiritual value in ritual, and also something about how that works, and how we can gain from it in our worship today.

    Liturgy is, I think, sadly neglected, and for most of my time teaching and writing, I’ve contributed to that neglect.  I started to see things differently after reading Jacob Milgrom’s three volume commentary on Leviticus in the Anchor Bible series.  As I study Leviticus and the rest of the Pentateuch further, I am convinced even further that this should change.

  • Todd Wood – the Evolutionist?

    A few weeks ago I mentioned that I had started reading Dr. Todd Wood’s blog (using the title Another Honest Creationist). The reason I call Dr. Wood honest (as opposed to some other creationists) is that he acknowledges that young age creationism relies on the Bible and specifically on a particular understanding of the early chapters of Genesis.

    I find it difficult to believe that someone can be a young earth or young age creationist on any other basis. The scientific evidence is simply much too strongly against it. Dr. Wood, like Dr. Kurt Wise, admits that there is substantial evidence for evolution, yet they accept young age creationism because that is what they believe the Bible teaches. I disagree on their interpretation of Genesis, but I can respect their stand and their honest statement of their reasons for taking it.

    Of course some other young age/earth creationists don’t like this approach. They believe that there really is no evidence for evolution and that there is some sort of conspiracy amongst scientists to pretend that evolution is true even though, they say, it is not.

    One of these, Joseph Mastropaolo, offers a $10,000 prize for evidence of evolution, and sends e-mails out to people and then if they don’t respond, he puts them on a list on his web site.

    All of this is fairly standard stuff in the creation/evolution debates, althought Mastropaolo’s twist of requiring his opponents to put up $10,000 of their own money, thus making this all more of a bet than a prize is interesting. I think that the prize offering thing is generally the last resort of those whose pockets are empty, but it’s all pretty common.

    But what’s humorous is that Mastropaolo sent an e-mail to Dr. Wood asking him to put up some evidence and then added him to the list of non-responding evolutionists.

    He says:

    170. Dr. Todd C. Wood, of Bryan College, who wrote, “There is evidence for evolution, gobs and gobs of it.” Upon request and with the incentive of unlimited $10,000 grants for his Center for Origins Research, he did not send any evidence. Can it be that there is no scientific evidence to support evolution? Can it be that Todd C. Wood uses brass and bluff like the other 363,000 anti-science evolutionists worldwide? (12-30-09)

    So a young age creationist who is working on building evidence for creationism is now an example of an evolutionist. Who ever would have imagined it?!

  • Is Intelligent Design Religious?

    David Opderbeck has an excellent post on the question of whether intelligent design (ID) is religious and how this relates to our view of natural theology. (HT: Through a Glass Darkly)

    In the post, he gets into an issue that I have raised before, which is the question of whether we really want to advocate teaching of a sort of “creation lite” (my term) in public school classrooms. I personally say this not form the perspective of keeping religion out of the public school classroom, but rather to keep the state out of the business of teaching religion. I believe that two things generally result from the state trying to teach religion: 1) They do it badly, and 2) They tend eventually to want to enforce whatever it is they have decided to teach.

    Opderbeck says:

    But even if a plausible argument could be made for the constitutionality of teaching some version of ID in a public school, I personally find this “wedge” strategy pragmatically and theologically suspect….[I’ll leave you to go discover the analogy he uses where I have the ellipsis!]

    The imagined Christian majority in this country often seems to believe that whatever is taught in the classroom will be acceptable to them. But a review of the differences in viewpoint among Christians on many issues should suggest that it is difficult to create a single course that is acceptable to all. I would not object to a course in the Bible as literature, for example, provided it was clear that this was not a class in the Bible as a source or object of faith.

    I think Christians ought to seriously consider whether or not strategies used to get some form of religion taught in the public school classroom might do more damage to faith than their potential benefit (or damage) to the state. Perhaps we should recapture the notion that it is the task of parents to pass on their faith to their children.

  • Is Inerrancy an Essential Christian Doctrine

    Obviously I don’t think so, but I must now add C. Michael Patton to the list of those who do accept the doctrine of inerrancy themselves, yet don’t believe it is an essential of the Christian faith, which he does in his humorous “AND OTHER STUPID STATEMENTS” series, If the Bible is not Inerrant, then Christianity is False.

    Dr. Patton lists many of the reasons I have listed as to why the doctrine of inerrancy tends to breed other problems, such as a Christianity that is bibliocentric but not Christocentric.  Now let me be clear that one can actually be both, provided one always is more Christo- then biblio-centric.  One can also lose sight of Christ because one puts too low a value on scripture that points to Him.

    Other than the fact that I am a Christian who no longer accepts the doctrine of inerrancy, even in its more nuanced forms, I agree with Dr. Patton’s article.  I find his story of Gregg very interesting as well, and it reflects many, many stories I’ve heard as well.

    In fact, the first reaction I usually get when I tell folks I left the church pretty much at the same time I received my MA in Religion, is that I must have discovered errors in the Bible and thus lost my faith.  But that is not the case.  My problem was with what I saw as the all-encompassing claims of Christ which in turn led me to question the validity of such a leap–not merely a leap of faith, but one also of deep trust.

    I think that both those who think they must hold to the doctrine of inerrancy or lose their faith entirely, and those who abandon the faith because they discover errors make a common mistake.  They make the Christian faith primarily about the knowledge of facts.  Now doubtless there are facts involved with Christianity.  Jesus either died for my sins or he did not.  He was either raised from the did or he was not.

    But my belief doesn’t alter those facts.  More importantly, my simple acknowledgment of the evidence for certain facts doesn’t constitute Christian faith.  After all, even the devils believe and trouble.  For one to be in Christ, however, one needs to believe and trust, and that trust goes beyond the facts.

    For me, the experience of life trusting in Jesus has made it one or another fact from scripture proven either right or wrong is going to change that basic trust.  “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” has become the unshakable center and I can examine other things openly with no fear.

  • Can Education Keep Up

    One of the things I think has not been discussed enough in the current job situation, though I think President Obama has done extremely well on this one point compared to his predecessors, is the simple fact that jobs for minimally educated people are disappearing, and thus many of the new jobs that are being created are for people with strong skills.

    I always felt that high school as currently constituted was somewhat of a joke, a place to manage teenagers until they were ready for the workplace or for college. I got two and a half high school credits, and then took my GED when I turned 18. Somehow after that dismal High School experience, accomplished via correspondence while I was overseas with my parents, I managed to complete both my BA and MA degrees. (Of course, speaking of unemployability, consider the options for an MA in Religions with a concentration in Biblical and Cognate Languages. Really. That’s the full title of my degree. That’s why I own a business–it’s hard to get employment otherwise!)

    I don’t mean to run down high school teachers, though I think they are often given an impossible task, but I do think that a combination of factors from excessive central control to poor pay and lousy opportunities for professional advancement tend to make high school a much less productive experience than it could be.

    I have in my library a book titled The Saber-Tooth Curriculum, originally dating back to 1939 with the proper spelling – The Sabre Tooth Curriculum, but still available in a classic edition released in 2004.

    The basic idea is that we tend to educate for past needs even as things change, such as training your hunters to deal with saber toothed tigers when such were disappearing from the landscape. It’s a great book. If you’re involved in education, you ought to get a copy and read it.

    I recall the very negative reaction all around when I brought my programmable calculator to an elementary school classroom. I was an assistant teacher, also a college student, but in the tiny church-related school where I taught that meant taking actual classes. The gist of the complaints was that I was going to deprive the students of needed basic knowledge–their ability to add columns of figures–by providing with this device, useful largely to the lazy. As I saw it, I provided them with a very early opportunity to learn the basic concepts of computing and programming. I don’t know if my very small effort really helped any of them, but I’m certain that a broader effort would have.

    These days we’re graduating students whose computer skills are somewhere between limited and non-existent. No, I don’t mean they’re all that way, I mean that we let kids out of the whole program in that condition. They’re not going to be very effective in the modern world with certain skills.

    As an aside, let me note that one classic subject could do well with some reintroduction–basic logic. My wife and I watched with great amusement, and no little impatience a couple weeks ago as three or four customers ahead of us tried to work with the self-checkout lanes at the local Walmart. Now I’m aware that these things can be frustrating. Often they don’t work correctly. But these were working just fine.

    All the customers needed to do was scan the item and place it in the bagging area. Several customers couldn’t get the idea. They’d try putting it directly in the shopping cart, back on the belt before the scanner, rescanning it (hopefully the watchful lady at the other end helped them with double charges!) and so forth. My ever helpful wife tried to explain, but the person ahead looked at her like she was green and had just hopped from a spaceship with a handy ray-gun.

    The point I’m making here is simply that these several people didn’t have enough logic, or enough understanding of the straight line “machine thinking” that was going on to learn the process. I’m sure that unwillingness was honed by previous experiences with machines that were not working, but even there a simple skill in recognizing when a process is not happening the way it’s supposed to would be helpful.

    But a New York Times Op-Ed today by J. B. Schramm [registration may be required] brings up another point I’ve been making to any young person whose attention I could hold long enough–High School is no longer enough. So I’m glad to see that some education money is being tied to the idea of preparing kids for college and that somebody is trying to measure that success. I think Schramm is quite right.

    I do hope that the bureaucrats involved will find a way to measure this without making educators spend most of their time measuring, but that is another matter. Results must be measured. Then, of course, there is the question of whether we can abandon failing programs and advance successful ones based on the results.

  • Christian Carnival Posted

    … at The Point Blog.

  • Rebuking in Community

    I get into more trouble with the word “rebuke” than with just about any other.  Perhaps I could find a bit less loaded of an English word to translate this concept, but it’s an important one.  I mentioned teaching about “the skills of rebuking and being rebuked.” This tends to disturb people.

    Why?  I think it is because we associate rebuking in the church with the high and might leaders getting up in their seats of judgment and telling all the lesser mortals in the pews how wrong they are.  But that concept of rebuking is neither the Biblical pattern for a church congregation, nor is it the sort of thing I’m trying to teach.  It’s expressed well in Proverbs 27:5 – “Open rebuke is better than secret love.”

    Let me illustrate this first gently based on my experience with marriage and business partnership.  My wife is also my business partner.  When we first got married, she was slow to criticize my writing.  She felt that being too negative when I gave her something to read would annoy me.  But when I give an unpublished paper to anyone to read, I like to get it back all marked up.  I may not agree with all the suggestions, but I like to have a chance to consider them and make the final product better.  It is very hard to convince me that a first draft is really good.  (Blog posts only get a couple of passes, and I usually find annoying errors in them if I read them again later.)

    So the first step was for Jody to realize that I didn’t mind having the page marked up.  The next step was for me to express properly my desire to discuss some of those points without criticizing her for making the corrections, but still discussing them in detail.  I remember one story I wrote in which she suggested a change in the name of one of the characters.  I didn’t get it at all.  Then she explained that I had painted an excellent picture via my use of names of a multi-ethnic group, and that this one name change rounded out the picture.  I changed the name, re-read the scene, and she was absolutely right.

    Now she is quite merciless on my writing, and totally unconcerned with what I accept or reject of her suggestions.  That combination is tremendously helpful.  It means she’ll make even marginal suggestions, things she isn’t sure are better, but are options I should consider.  This kind of iron sharpening iron is extremely valuable to both of us.

    Now when she’s writing and I’m checking, I have to reverse that.  I have to be willing to make suggestions while she makes the final decision on what she’s going to include in her own final work.  There’s no one sitting in the high judgment seat issuing edicts as to the right and wrong final result.  We check one another.

    We have a similar situation in science and scholarship when they are working well.  Scholars write papers and expect criticism.  They don’t expect never to have to revise a viewpoint.  Very few scholars I know will accept the word of one expert as the final answer on any particular topic.  If they disagree, they’re willing to do so.  Often this debate does get acrimonious, but at it’s best, it’s vigorous and direct, yet done without anger.  (Annoyance is natural, I think, when one finds one has been caught out on some point!)

    In my view, however, church rebuke has been formalized to the point of uselessness.  If we could go back to 1 Corinthians 14 on the conduct of the worship service, or the gathering of believers, we would see that the intention of that activity was not for the general body to gather and be instructed by the one knowledgeable person.  Rather, it was a time of exchange.  Multiple people would speak.

    Amongst the prophets, concerning whom I wrote yesterday, Paul said, “Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others judge” (1 Cor. 14:29).  If you or your congregation can’t do that I would first suggest that you have no business having prophecy in the congregation, because you will not be able to hear and discern the word of the Lord from amongst the noise.

    But even if your congregation does not allow prophecy as such, I don’t think a congregation can function effectively without this capability.  Even the pastor needs to be able to hear rebuke in this sense.

    Often it’s the fear of being wrong that makes rebuke so difficult.  At other times it’s the “high and mighty rebuke,” either formally or informally.  Don’t assume that just because your church doesn’t formally divide the leadership that such a thing is going on.  I have observed many, many supposedly free worship services, in which the activities were supposed to follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit rather than a prescribed order of service, and in almost all cases I can very quickly identify the human leaders of the group.  The Holy Spirit may be leading, but He had better talk only to the right people, or the instruction won’t get through.

    Rebuking in community involves both learning how to give rebuke and how to receive it.  Giving it requires an attitude that allows the person receiving to make their own choice.  Receiving rebuke requires not putting down the one giving it if you believe you should not make the change suggested.  It’s a matter of community, working together to build one another up.  “Edify” or “build up” is another key word from 1 Corinthians 14.

  • Christians and Tithe

    In a comment to a previous post, Kris asks whether Christians are required to tithe.  That was one of two questions and I divided them into two posts to allow for separate discussions of the question.

    I don’t find tithing in the New Testament.  Now I’m not a purely “New Testament” believer.  I believe that principles God puts forth in the Old Testament can remain applicable, provided that they fit within the great change of the covenants.  It’s very easy, however, to misapply such commands when one doesn’t truly look through the Christological filter.

    Tithing is such a command.  I believe that with the new covenant, God’s claim is upon all that we own, and that we are to be guided by the Holy Spirit in how much of what we retain for our use.  I prefer to express it that way over how much we give, though it is very scriptural to express it as God’s guidance to give (see 2 Corinthians 8 & 9).  Paul’s second letter to the Corinthian believers is a terribly neglected book.

    There is a second point about tithing that I would like to address briefly:  Where do you give?  I don’t think we have a direct command on this, though the New Testament pattern of the church would suggest that we do all of our service, whether in labor or in finances, through our local “church of Christ” or our congregation.  I personally make it a spiritual discipline to give a certain amount through my local congregation, trusting that body to use it wisely to build the kingdom, even when I may have doubts.

    In preparing to answer this question I found an essay by David Alan Black, author of two books from my company, who makes some similar points and provides more scripture.  Though I was already convinced of essentially what Dr. Black says on the topic, I was glad to find it laid out in a compact, scripturally supported fashion.

  • Say No to Prophecy Before You Say Yes

    Advent Week 3 in The Mosaic Bible includes 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24, which is a wonderful passage to use with regard to to prophecy.  For those who may be following my use of The Mosaic Bible with the Revised Common Lectionary let me note that two passages, Zephaniah 3:14-20 and Luke 3:7-20 either are the same as those in the RCL for Advent 3C or overlap.

    I’ve just written a post on my Threads blog that explains, amongst other things, why I use the label “charismatic.”  It’s because I believe all the gifts of the Holy Spirit are available today.  This must, of course, include the gift of prophecy.  I have always had a problem in that while I believe the gift of prophecy continues in theory, or perhaps I should say I have no theological reason why it should not, I have been loathe to point to someone and say, “That person is a prophet.”

    Of course, there is little reason I should set myself up as some sort of judge of prophets, a rather arrogant thing to do, but it is certainly a question I get asked.  If I believe in prophecy, I should believe in prophets, right?  So where are they?

    I suggest that while there is no theological problem with the continuation of prophecy, there is a practical problem, and that practical problem is illuminated by 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22:

    19 Do not stifle the Holy Spirit.
    20 Do not scoff at prophecies,
    21 but test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good.
    22 Stay away from every kind of evil.  (NLT)

    I recall two experiences that I think help illustrate my point.  The first was when I was jointly teaching a seminar on the gift of prophecy, and the person teaching with me, who was well acquainted with the charismatic movement (as I was not at the time), told the audience that if they had been involved in the charismatic community over the previous few years, they had been awash in false prophecy.  It was interesting that the statement did not elicit any outrage from the many charismatics and Pentecostals in the room.  They were not unaware that false prophecy had been going on.

    The second was after another class I taught, in which I had discussed the skills of rebuking and being rebuked, when I was informed that informed that in their church they only allowed encouraging prophecies to be spoken.  They didn’t do rebuke.  Apart from the odd idea that one can decide just which “words from the Lord” one will receive, most of the prophetic writings of scripture involve rebuke of one sort or another.

    In 1 Thessalonians 5, Paul makes several points.  I’ve heard the first part preached quite frequently.  Don’t quench the Spirit, don’t despise prophecies.  Often the point made from these texts is that people should not forbid or deny the modern gift of prophecy.  But one should read on.

    “Test everything.”  If you test, there will be success and failure conditions.  Paul doesn’t miss those.  He says to hold fast what is good.  You know, I’ve heard sermons from this passage that cut off right after that point.  But Paul goes on to tell us to keep away from every form of evil.

    There are two results from the test–good, and evil.  If we are unwilling to identify what is wrong, we will not be in a position to identify what is right.

    I would suggest, in fact, that one can just as effectively “quench the Spirit” and “despise prophecies” by accepting everything as a valid prophecy or shying away from correcting problems or abuses as one can do so by denying all forms of prophecy.

    Discernment involves the test itself along with a willingness to accept or reject what is said.  Without the ability to say “no” to prophecy in the church, we cannot say “yes” with any safety.

    (Note:  I wrote on this issue a few months ago under the title The Advantages of Stoning False Prophets.)

  • Liberal, Charismatic, Moderate, and Passionate

    My blog subtitle reads: Thoughts on Religion in the World from a passionate, moderate, liberal charismatic Christian. One common response to this line is to tell me that it’s impossible to combine those four things into one, so I’d like to provide a few notes on why I use these four labels when self-identifying.

    First, let me note that I did not take any of these from the subtitle of Brian McLaren’s book A Generous Orthodoxy: Why I Am a Missional, Evangelical, Post/Protestant, Liberal/Conservative, Mystical/Poetic, Biblical, Charismatic/Contemplative, Fundamentalist/Calvinist, Anabaptist/Anglican, Methodist, Catholic, Green, Incarnational, Depressed-yet-Hopeful, Emergent, Unfinished CHRISTIAN. Much as I appreciate Brian McLaren’s writing, I use these labels to identify specific elements of my theology, not to indicate breadth. That characterization may be mildly unfair to McLaren, but I’ll have to live with that.

    I must also note that these terms came to me in two parts, and I usual use them that way. Liberal charismatic was an epithet used of me by an opponent in an online debate, which was accurate enough that it has stuck. When I was considering using it in the subtitle of my book Not Ashamed of the Gospel: Confessions of a Liberal Charismatic, even my wife said, “That’s you, honey!”

    Passionate moderate is a label I created for myself. I discuss this combination in my post On Being a Passionate Moderate. Those two previous posts go into more detail than I plan to do right now. I’d just like to define how I connect these four labels with myself.

    1. Liberal. This is the one label many of my Christian friends would like to avoid. Because they are kind people, they also want to resist applying it to me. “I don’t see you as a liberal,” said one. “You’re really just a very open evangelical.” My main concern is just the opposite. There are things a liberal is expected not to believe by many. I can’t count the times someone has assumed that I deny miracles and the bodily resurrection of Jesus. Instead I affirm both. In politics it’s often assumed that I will favor government intervention in various economic activities. Actually, I lean rather strongly toward laissez faire capitalism.

    In what way am I liberal? In terms of my Christian faith I am doctrinally open. I do have those doctrines that I believe, but I do not assume that if you disagree on any of these that you are not right with God. In fact, I don’t assume that I can know the spiritual state of any other person. I lean more toward concern about practice than about belief, though I would maintain that real belief generally results in action consistent with that belief. In studying the Bible, I use the historical-critical method, and I don’t always come up with conservative results. On the other hand, sometimes I do.

    2. Charismatic. I call myself a charismatic for one reason: I believe that any and all gifts of the Holy Spirit are still available to the church. I do not believe they ended after the apostolic age or at any other time. I differ from many charismatics and Pentecostals in that I do not believe that speaking in tongues is a necessary sign of the baptism of the Holy Spirit. In fact, I believe that every Christian “receives” (I really dislike the word, thus the scare quotes) the Holy Spirit, and that every Christian is gifted.

    3. Moderate. The term on this list that I like least is “moderate” yet I have not found a good alternative. It is too often used for a centrist or for someone who does not feel strongly about anything and thus lives by compromise. I use it to indicate two things. First, I don’t believe that doctrinal choices are binary in nature; there is a range of options. Second, I believe in examining the entire spectrum and recognizing the actual extremes. I have found that I also end up not being at the extremes, but sometimes I do. For example, I am a strictly orthodox trinitarian. I am careful to keep my view of the trinity in accord with the church councils that formed the doctrine.

    4. Passionate. When all is said and done I pursue that which I believe passionately. My moderation does not involve not caring or simply taking a compromise position in order to avoid having to defend a more extreme one. One could almost say that I hold my moderate positions in an extreme way.

    I hope that helps explain my subtitle. Again, for a more detailed explanation, see my previous posts on liberal charismatic and passionate moderate.