Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Bible Books

  • Another Note on Hebrews Outlines

    Dave Black commented on my outline, linked in my previous post, thus:

    1:28 PM Henry Neufeld, who has published a work on the epistle to the Hebrews, enters the discussion about the book’s outline/discourse structure. You can check out his soon-to-be-revised outline here. I love it! The only comment I might make concerns the title given to Heb. 6:1: “Press on to maturity.” Here’s why.

    I think he is absolutely right and this change will find its way into my revised outline.

    One might justifiably ask me in what way I’m dissatisfied with the outline. My problem with my current outline is that I don’t think it provides adequate links between the various sections of Hebrews, nor does it adequately focus on the key passage at the core. In fact,  I believe the passage in question provides the focus for the book, however much we may try to avoid the verses that follow, particularly 4-6 or consider the verses immediately after that overly obscure.

    Hebrews does not follow a straight line in its structure. It’s more like a cord woven of threads of different colors, with different themes coming to the fore at different times. I’m hoping that by wording my outline properly, these connections will become more clear. With the outline display I use, one can choose how many levels to view, so one should be able to view the structure almost as though one was zooming in and out.

    Will I be successful? I have no idea. Hebrews is a special piece of scripture to me, and I find that no matter how many times I read it, or how many different ways I look at it, it keeps speaking. Maybe it’s inspired or something! 🙂

  • Reading the Bible Chronologically

    A number of bloggers have responded to Marcus Borg’s article at the Huffington Post on reading the New Testament chronologically. Responses include Gaudete Theology, Bill Heroman, and Philip J. Long. I’d suggest reading those responses before reading my few comments.

    Here are some points that struck me:

    1. Borg contends that there is a trajectory of conformity to the culture. The earliest materials are radical while the later items have accommodated. I’m wondering how much this would differ from simply the fact that early Christians found themselves having to continue living in the empire, and that there would be more questions to answer about culture. In other words, if Jesus or Paul were to answer enough questions from people living from day to day, they might appear less radical than the distilled essence we get from them now.
    2. The New Testament, as a “book,” is the creation and possession of the church. I happen to believe that it is God’s creation through the medium of the church, but nonetheless without the church there is no New Testament. At a minimum, we need to recognize that reading it in a way so substantially different from the way the church created it will result in seeing a different picture.
    3. The historian may want to see the individual documents and read a history. I have great sympathy with than enterprise, but as I noted in point #2 the reading becomes different.
    4. If one postulates a different chronology, the book changes again. For example, folks like William R. Farmer and David Alan Black don’t accept Markan priority. While I am not fully convinced of this position myself, I do believe they have each, in very different ways, poked some serious holes in the consensus view.
    5. Viewing the gospels as products of the church rather than formative of it seems to privilege the written word above the oral at a time when that probably was not the case. In other words, the stories of Jesus told in the gospels were likely formative, and because of that became part of the written record. The gospel writers didn’t choose which stories to record in a vacuum. They were aware of which stories were more influential.
    6. I think #5 holds whether the gospels were written by eyewitnesses or not. Eyewitnesses will have been telling the stories for decades before writing them down. What was formative for the church would be in the gospels because of that, if nothing else.

    Obviously, I’m not recording well-researched and supported theories. I’m just noting some questions and observations.

     

  • Ken Schenck Reviews Wayne Grudem

    I’ve been following Ken Schenck’s review of Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology, and starting with the second post (Word of God), he is discussing material that I find fascinating. I am not trained as a theologian. Despite having an MA in Religion, I must note that my concentration was Biblical and Cognate Languages, and practically all my courses involved language study and not theology. But one can’t really discuss the Bible as a Christian and not deal with the theology involved.

    I should further note that I am obviously much more likely to agree with Ken Schenck than with Wayne Grudem. I’m somewhere around the Arminian territory in theology, not Calvinist if nothing else.

    After describing Grudem’s discussion of the Word of God as “anemic” and “implicitly circular” (and I agree), he continues to discussing the Old Testament Canon and then the New Testament. I’m skipping discussion of the nature of the Word of God, even though it is extremely interesting. Ken Schenck provides some excellent pointers to questions that need to be answered if one is to cure the anemia and escape the circularity. (I outline my views on this in my pamphlet What Is the Word of God?)

    There is a basic issue here that has troubled me for some time, and that is the starting point. I grew up with a form of evangelism that started by trying to convince people of the truth of the Bible, at least whenever we weren’t just assuming that people accepted the Bible as true already and just needed either to get busy following it, or needed to have their understanding corrected. There was a certain arrogance in the latter part of this approach; we always had to approach people as though they couldn’t really read and needed us to find the texts for them. (I refer to my early experience as a Seventh-day Adventist.)

    But my observation is that many Christians have precisely the same approach, and often have very little success. They can revive the belief of someone who grew up with it, but are very rarely successful at talking to someone who is truly not Christian in either background or belief about the authority of the Bible.

    But when the early church starts talking to people, I don’t hear anything about the authority of the Bible. Rather, I see testimony to their encounter with the risen Christ. In the modern church we try to convince people of the reliability of the Bible, and get them to believe in the resurrection based on that. The disciples testified to the resurrection and all else followed from that.

    I’m sure someone will object that we cannot possibly testify to the resurrection personally. But we can testify to our own experience of the risen Christ and to our own incorporation into the Body of Christ.

    So what does this have to do with the canon? I sponsored a panel discussion a few years back that related to the reliability of the Bible. Two members of the panel discussed the topic based on dealing with the reliability of the texts and their transmission. The third started with the church’s creeds. At first that was hard for me to follow.

    But it seems to me that it’s difficult to have a robust theology of canonization without having a robust ecclesiology, and in turn this requires a robust pneumatology. I admit to really disliking systematic theology, but it is obviously critical if you’re going to discuss the Bible as a Christian, because the Christian Bible is defined by the Christian church.

    Now I don’t mean that the church gets to choose what is in Scripture. That’s where the work of the Holy Spirit comes in. The church recognizes the things which are to be of authority in the church. Without that connection, there is no canon of Scripture, because the canon defines what has authority.

    So I would suggest the order of discussion being one’s personal experience of the risen Christ, then the way in which that personal experience brings one into the community, and from the community to the role of the Bible as the community’s authority.

    (I discuss this further in my book When People Speak for God and I recommend the discussion of the same topic in From Inspiration to Understanding, [Edward W. H. Vick] especially chapter 2.)

  • Would This Be Bibliolatry?

    Red Letter Christians has a post titled “Is This Any Way to Treat a Bible?” which tells how a high school teacher, on seeing a student’s heavily marked Bible, held it up to the class and asked that question. The article that follows is excellent.

    I would think a more relevant question would be “Is that any way to treat a student?”

    But that aside, I would certainly attract the wrath (and sarcasm) of this teacher. My Greek New Testament is heavily marked, and it’s the replacement for one that I used until it fell apart. I collect Bible editions and many of them have such markings, though none so many as the Greek and Hebrew Bibles I carry with me.

    More importantly, I think this displays an inappropriate emphasis on the form. The book is holy as an object, not because of its contents. The marking shows a deep interest in the contents, but the teacher misses that point, and sees only the “desecration” of the object.

    Idolatry? Probably too strong a word, but it unfortunately points in that direction.

     

  • Bruce Epperly Series on Philippians

    … at Bob Cornwall’s blog. Bruce Epperly is the author of Philippians: A Participatory Study Guide.

  • Hallelujah: The Soundtrack of Life

    This is an introductory sermon to the current “Summer in the Psalms” series at my home church, First United Methodist Church of Pensacola. It was presented by Rev. Geoffrey Lentz last week, but I missed it. So many members of the congregation commented on it, I had to go back and listen to what I had missed.

    Geoffrey is editing the book I mentioned in my previous post.

     

  • Philippians: Two Groups That Threaten Community

    I haven’t blogged much, recently and I may go back and look at some earlier, lessons, but I wanted to quote something we’ll be looking at in class this morning. This comes from the forthcoming study guide to Philippians by Bruce Epperly. He has just described two groups, the first those identified in 1 Corinthians who believe their spirituality means they are freed of all constraints, can “eat and drink whatever they choose,” “sleep with whomever they choose,” and that they are “freed from all moral and social norms.” The second group believe that they must observe “strict rituals and diet.”

    Here’s the payoff quote:

    Paul believes that both groups share a common characteristic. Their focus on the body as the primary reality puts both Christian freedom and the well-being and unity of the community in jeopardy. While Paul is not a legalist, who demands strict obedience to rules, or an ascetic, who scorns the flesh, he subordinates our desires, values, and lifestyle to the well-being of less mature Christians and the harmony of the church.

     

  • There are Things Worth Contending For

    And some that aren’t …

    After much of what I heard about Paul in school, which was really rather a lot, I think one of the most important things to remember when reading Paul’s letters is that they are letters, and that Paul writes pastorally. He is not writing systematic theology. On the other hand, he is writing theology. He’s just doing it in a pastoral way to address particular situations in churches or with persons.

    I’m correctly working through advance copies of the forthcoming study guide to Philippians by Bruce Epperly, which will be part of the Participatory Study Series, with my Sunday School class. Now I love the book of Philippians. In fact, right now it’s one of the books I have recorded for myself in Greek on CD to listen to in my car, and it’s something I really enjoy hearing. There are so many powerful passages for daily Christian living.

    If you study just Galatians, you might get the idea that Paul was contentious with very little tolerance for any sorts of differences of opinion. You’d be wrong if you did–well, he’s a bit contentious, true–but you could do so by ignoring the situation and the nature of the issues he’s addressing in that letter.

    In Philippians we see another style, in which Paul can even celebrate (with some reservations) those who preach the gospel from bad motives. Let me quote Epperly on this point:

    Once again, Paul trusts God to be providentially working through a variety of Christian messages. While Paul would surely fault his opponents for their lack of ecumenical hospitality, he still recognizes that their message may advance the gospel message by bringing people to an experience of the Risen Christ. Now, I must admit this is a tall order. While most of us recognize that unity does not mean uniformity, there are times when we find it difficult to affirm God’s presence in those groups whose beliefs, worship style, ethics, or experiences differ from our own. Could it be that Paul is advocating a “big tent Christianity,” large enough to embrace progressives, moderates, evangelicals, Pentecostals, and conservatives? Could it be that Paul, for whom theology is very important, nevertheless, places experiencing Christ above doctrinal differences?

    Now while I might see Paul faulting these opponents for more than a lack of hospitality, I do see much of Paul in Philippians in that paragraph. The situation and the issue tends to drive the letter. Differences in Paul’s theology are generally driven by differences in the churches he’s addressing. His interest is in reaching and guiding people, rather than in expressing a systematic theology.

    “Guiding people” and “expressing theology” are not opposed. Paul expresses theology in order to guide people. The pastoral view guides what theology is expressed, where and how.

    There’s some controversy about contentious material in chapter three and how it relates to the generally positive and joyful tone of the letter. I see no more conflict here than I do with the belief that Paul could write both Galatians and Philippians, a view which is pretty much unchallenged. At least I know of no serious argument that Paul didn’t write both. The difference is the issues for which Paul is contending.

    In other words, there are things worth contending for, and others that are not.

  • New Biblical Studies Carnival

    Jim West has brought back the Biblical Studies Carnival.  (HT:  TCOJC)

  • Review: Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: Hebrews

    My primary training in biblical studies placed an overwhelming emphasis on historical study.  The idea was to get at the original meaning of the text as it would have been understood by those who first heard or read it.  I should note that amongst my professors there was some desire to look at reception, and there was also some desire to look heavily at denominational application (these were Seventh-day Adventist schools), but I rejected both elements quite strongly and stuck to historical study.

    Now I still have no problem with that approach, as long as that is seen as an approach rather than the approach to Bible study.  The Bible is indeed a document written in history.  I would no longer say, as I said at the time, that I approach the Bible like any other piece of ancient near eastern literature.  (At some other time I’ll discuss the problem I see with interpreters who remain in the sacred tradition and seem unable to see the historical meaning at all.)

    But what does a person whose approach has been entirely on the historical side do if he is convinced that there is also an approach to studying scripture that is not purely historical, but sees the Bible not as just another piece (or collection) of ancient near eastern literature, but rather as God’s revelation to the church?  Such a view means that the reception of the text through the history of the church is also critical.

    Where I actually started was with whole books by church fathers and by Christians through the centuries.  There is a benefit to this form of study in that you get a better picture of a particular writer by reading a substantial portion of his or her writing.  But I am still primarily a student of language and history and definitely not a professional theologian.

    Enter the Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture series.  (I wrote this on completing my read of New Testament Volume X, but I think my comments apply to the whole series.) Here we have a selection of patristic commentary on various passages.  It simple to read and follow and contains the full text of the scripture in question.  The variety and the selection is great, and most of the commentary is brief.

    You shouldn’t expect to use this as a full commentary.  It’s not intended to be.  Neither should you expect it to give you a full introduction to each church father.  It’s providing snippets that relate to particular scriptures.  But you can find the context of the various fathers and their contribution by looking at the brief bios and the summary timeline in the back.

    I’ve found myself providing many quotes from this book as I’ve read.  It has been a far back-burner type project, and in many cases I’ve gone on to find the context of the quotes online, for which the Christian Classics Ethereal Library has proven very useful.  I’ll be bold enough to note also that I find some statements by the fathers to seem somewhat wide of the mark.  I think they were subject, as I am, to a desire to make the scriptures support their own pre-established views.  I would note that they are closer to the time and language of the texts, and thus they provide some help in discovering the historical meaning as well.

    This is really turning out to be more notes on using the church fathers and writers from other periods in Bible study and less a review of this particular commentary.  Let me summarize.  I think the selection is excellent, the volume well-organized, and provided one makes use of the resources provided, one can gain substantial value using any of these volumes in study.