Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Bible Commentary

  • It’s right for God to slaughter women and children anytime he pleases

    The Christian Post has a portion of an interview with John Piper in response to the question:

    Why was it right for God to slaughter women and children in the Old Testament? How can that ever be right?

    And the first sentence of his answer is the title of this post.

    I can hardly tell you how many ways this bothers me. I say that just in order to get on the nerves of the folks who like to quote Paul “Who are you, o man, to answer back to God?” (Romans 9:20). I’m just this human who, like many people in the Bible, including prophets, isn’t satisfied with leaving all the questions unanswered, even when I know I’ll hardly get started on finding the answers. It’s interesting how certain Christians quote Paul in Romans 9, while others are more likely to quote Habakkuk or one of the Psalms where people question God quite a lot.

    Unless you add that God will never “please” to do something wrong, Piper’s statement makes nonsense of any idea of right and wrong. It is not meaningful to say that God is good or God is loving, both statements found in the Bible, and then to suggest that no matter how unloving or ungood an action of God may appear, it’s really OK because God willed it, or “pleased” to do it. But if mass slaughter isn’t wrong, what is wrong?

    Thus the first half of Piper’s answer is, in effect, a non-answer. It states simply that whatever God does–and I’m fairly certain that for him, whatever is alleged in scripture that God does is something God actually does–that is acceptable. And for many people this seems to be adequate.

    In one way I don’t mind that. I too believe God does what is right (ignoring, for now, the question of whether it’s right because God does it or God does it because it’s right), and if he doesn’t do what’s right, there’s nothing I can do about it in any case.

    But in this case we’re bringing different arguments in scripture together.  The Bible says both that God has commanded the death of many, many people, or has killed them himself, and also that God is good and that God is love. Put up against what I might think about God, perhaps Piper’s answer has a point. Put alongside the Bible’s indications of how God cares about humanity, I think it fails completely.

    It’s beyond a simple blog post such as this to give my own response, but I will point to a book I publish, by my former teacher Dr. Alden Thompson, Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God?. Alden takes quite a conservative approach to scripture and yet takes both of these items, the stories of God’s destructive acts, and the assertions of God’s love, care, and goodness. Piper, on the other hand, empties any assertion of God’s love and goodness of any meaning.

    Piper regards the question of God’s commands to kill as more difficult than that of God killing directly, but I think with this he makes an even more dangerous error:

    With Joshua there was a political, ethnic dimension, God was immediate king, and he uses this people as his instrument to accomplish his judgment in the world at that time. And God, it says, let the sins of the Amorites accumulate for 400 years so that they would be full (Genesis 15:16), and then sends his own people in as instruments of judgment.

    From this I would conclude that being ruled closely by God would make atrocities committed right, and very likely more common. This is consistent with the first part of Piper’s answer. I must concede to Calvinists this: They are philosophically consistent. I just don’t believe that consistency is a very good indicator that a philosophy reflects actuality.

    On the contrary, I believe that we must either find some better reason why these stories occur in the Old Testament, or we must seriously back off of any pretension that “God is good” or “God is love” has any meaning at all.

    We regularly argue that it must be that all the Canaanites deserved to die. A Calvinist will certainly note that we all deserve to die. Yet what is the basis for this? Were they more wicked than others? Pointed out the 400 years, as Piper does, suggests that. But I don’t think the evidence would support such a claim. What effort was made to bring them to God? What reason might there be to suggest that Israel could not have brought the Canaanites to repentance through proclamation?

    This latter is not, in fact, what I would suggest as a solution. But I do think it points out the difficult with Piper’s solution.

    As I have time, I do intend to address this topic some more. Even the smallest portion of an answer requires many threads brought together.

  • On Joel Watts on Inspiration

    I put a note on the web site for my book When People Speak for God.

  • No Apologies for Believing the Bible

    Mark Kellner (Adventist Review, Dec. 8, 2011) says he makes no apologies for believing the Bible. That’s great. Neither do I. (Jan M. Long responded to this at some greater length than I am on the Spectrum Magazine blog, to whom a tip of my hat.)

    I don’t usually pick on my former denomination (I grew up and was educated in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church), but in this case, Kellner seems to make a very common mistake. He fails to distinguish the way he understands the Bible to mean from what the Bible says.

    In this case, he’s particularly concerned with the creation story. Now I understand that this is a very controversial issue on which we can quite easily, and even reasonably disagree. (I note that I consider it much easier to disagree reasonably on the meaning of the biblical text than on the scientific evidence.) But here’s how Kellner phrases it:

    One of the more popular fallacies being floated these days is that the Creation account found in Genesis is an allegory, a “celebration,” much in the way the ancient Hebrews took seven days to mark the inauguration of a temple.

    Nonsense. Either the Creation account is true, or we can all sleep in next Saturday morning.

    But believing the creation story is something other than a historical narrative doesn’t make it less true. If that were the case, we would make many of the Psalms less true than the books of Samuel and Kings, for example, and the parable of the trees (Judges 9:8-15) would be a gross deception. Most of us would regard those other passages as quite true, but true in a different sense than a historical narrative.

    I regard Genesis 1:1-2:4a as liturgy. Liturgy is not less valuable than narrative history. It is valuable in a different way. It conveys different truths in a different way.

    Of course the line about sleeping in next Saturday morning applies particularly to SDAs, who worship on Saturday, and would, based on a number of scriptures, see this as a celebration of creation. On the other hand, an SDA who believed that Genesis 1 was liturgy could celebrate creation next Saturday with every bit as much validity as any other act of worship. I doubt that Jesus was born on December 25th, yet I won’t mind commemorating it on that date. The liturgy may not represent historical detail, but it commemorates a core element of my faith.

    So the Bible may be true or not, but the decision as to whether the Bible is true doesn’t guarantee the same result for my interpretation of it—or anyone else’s.

  • The Trials of Mike Licona

    I actually didn’t know who Mike Licona was until a few weeks ago, but I’ve discovered that he is a Christian writer who is a strong supporter of the historicity of the resurrection and generally defends the historicity of the Bible.

    Unfortunately for him, he recently suggested the possibility—just the possibility, mind you—that Matthew 27:51-53 (the raising of the dead saints) is apocalyptic language rather than intending to portray a historical event. I’m very pleased to see that Michael Patton has been defending Licona and calling for a great deal more generosity concerning this disagreement.

    And this brings up an issue that I have with many arguments regarding biblical interpretation. Too many people are very quick to argue that their opponents are denying scripture, when they are simply interpreting it differently. There are interpretations that are so lacking in legitimacy that one may suspect that even the person who concocted them doesn’t believe them. But many arguments are between people who both have a great deal of respect for scripture, but who disagree on what scripture actually intends to communicate.

    This passage is an excellent example. I can certainly how one can legitimately disagree about what Matthew is trying to convey here, starting with the veil in the temple being torn in two. Is that literal or figurative language? (I’m speaking here of Matthew’s intent in writing it, not whether one believes he is historically accurate.) Did Matthew mean that this literally happened, or was it something that happened in the spiritual realm?

    It is doubtless an incredibly important spiritual point that is being made, whether the language is intended historically or not. It’s a point that can be made in either case.

    I don’t think that the argument that either party (or parties) in this dispute doesn’t care about scripture. All involved are committed to the inerrancy of scripture, and understand it in a similar way, as requiring historical accuracy. There is apocalyptic language in the Bible. It’s not impossible that this language is. Indeed there are some indications that it is.

    Similarly, debates about creation hinge on just how one reads the texts. If one reads the text as historical narrative, one has one set of options (accepting it as accurate, or assuming it’s pretty much useless). On the other hand, there are many elements of the creation stories (pretty much all of them) that would suggest something other than historical narrative. Yet many will accuse anyone who doesn’t take these texts as historical narrative of not believing what the Bible has to say.

    My point here is simply this: You can’t tell whether someone is ignoring the meaning of scripture until you have determined its meaning. Differing regarding interpretation, as long as the interpretation is an honest attempt to understand the text, does not constitute rejection of scripture.

  • The Biblioblogs Strike Back

    James McGrath has posted episode two of the Biblical Studies Carnival, The Biblioblogs Strike Back. Fun!

  • 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.

     

  • Christian Colleges Top Ten Biblical Learning Blogs

    I just noticed a post from The Congenial Christians, Top Ten Biblical Learning Blogs, which lists this blog as #1. Though I don’t know what the criteria are, I want to thank them, and provide this link back to their blog.

  • Yet Again on the Meaning of Inerrancy

    John Hobbins is again correcting the rest of us regarding the meaning of the word inerrancy. The interesting thing here is that I can affirm everything he says about inspiration in his post.

    He writes in opposition to the approach taken by by Michael Heiser and C. Michael Patton, each of whom have written posts regarding how to deal with errors in the Bible.

    Now I’m going to be brief (don’t laugh!). Michael Heiser and C. Michael Patton aren’t idiots. I don’t mean here to imply that John Hobbins says they are. But a point I have made previously about inerrancy in response to John is that the common usage of the word “inerrancy” does not agree with the way John uses it.

    That doesn’t make Heiser and Patton more right about the inerrancy of scripture, but my observation is that their view accords with the more common understanding of what inerrancy means. Maybe people ought to mean something different, but they don’t. But I’m of the school of thought that suggests the meaning of words is to be determined by their usage, and by that standard, calling Hobbins’ view “inerrancy” is misleading. Most readers, at least non-academic readers, will understanding him to believe something different than he does.

    People in the pews tend to believe someone who claims to accept biblical inerrancy would be concerned with discussing whether Jacob bought or conquered Shechem (as Heiser does), or the details of gospel stories (as Patton does).

    But Hobbins says:

    Now, if you believe that it is part of the Holy Spirit’s teaching office to reveal to us that Jesus (say) healed two blind men at Jericho, not one; that Jacob (say) bought Shechem and then conquered it at a later time, you are claiming that the Holy Spirit speaks, not through Scripture, but through harmonizing exegetes. I oppose such outlandish claims.

    But if I ignore the vocabulary, I find I can affirm, indeed that I really like many of the phrases that Hobbins uses in regard to scripture and inspiration. I like to say that when we discover the message God has for us in scripture (always through the power of the Spirit), it is always true. Recently I have had to add the affirmation that we can discover that message. We have no need to walk in darkness.

    So why not use another term, such as simply stating that one has a high view of scripture?

  • The Risen Christ is Know Initially by His Wounds

    From the forthcoming study guide to Philippians (from my company, Energion Publications), in commenting on Philippians 1:27-30:

    Even now in our time, we can take confidence in Paul’s assertion that God is with us and that, in life and death, and celebration and persecution, Christ sustains us. We are resurrection people. But, our lives are also cruciform or cross-shaped. The Risen Jesus is known initially by his wounds, and we too may experience suffering and loss as a result of our relationship with Christ. Still, at the end of the day, integrity, fidelity, and the promise of resurrection life  far outweigh any trials of this lifetime.

    Update: The author of the book is Bruce Epperly.

    (Excerpts from this forthcoming study guide are used by permission of the author as I edit the book. If you’re interested in reviewing this book, slated for a July 31 release, e-mail pubs@energion.com.)

  • 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.