The reading is chapter 2 of Herold Weiss’s book Meditations on According to John, Making Himself Equal with God and the scriptures in it. My recommendation is to read the entire gospel of John through each week during this study. The topics are so carefully tied together through the entire book.
Here’s the trailer:
And you can watch the event here (Jan. 22, 2015, 7:00 pm central, 8:00 pm eastern):
Above is the theme banner for my study of the gospel of John. The video below is a trailer for it. I am working on getting used to video. I’m more comfortable with text, I think.
With the new year I’m starting a new online study, working through the Gospel of John using Herold Weiss’s book Meditations on According to John.
A previous effort by my wife and I to conduct a group discussion failed both due to our schedules and due to low participation. In this case, I will be essentially video blogging live.
I will personally be studying the book through in Greek, and also studying Leon Morris’s commentary in the NICNT series. That provides a conservative counterpoint to Dr. Weiss. I’ll discuss where I stand in connection with all this in the introductory study.
I will always have the Q&A app enabled so that people can interact via text. In addition, I’ll be watching my Twitter feed for any comments or questions. If anyone wants to participate via video, let me know through the comments below or via e-mail (henry@energion.com). The only requirements I will have for participation are that you get a copy of the book (ebook is fine), read the material including the Bible passages, and if there is a sharp disagreement, be comfortable stating your position and then letting it go. I’ll state mine and let it go as well. I’m not expecting video participation but will be pleased if there is some. While I can’t imagine it will be a problem, there is a limit of 10 people (9 + me) on the video.
So get out your Bibles and your favorite reference sources and plan to join the discussion! I’m posting the YouTube below. At 7:00 pm Thursday night, January 6, it will be live. Once the event is complete, it will show the recording.
I just extracted a note from Dave Black’s blog to The Jesus Paradigm. (That site supports his book by the same name as well as a few others that don’t have their own domain name.) In it Dave talks about admonishing, encouraging, and upholding. You’ll have to go read the post to find out what these are about.
For my purposes here, they are all ways in which we help one another change for the better. In my view, there’s too little helpful activity of this nature in our churches today. We don’t want to get into each other’s business, and often we’re in congregations that are large enough that we don’t really know one another’s business enough to be helpful. In my own congregation I know that one of the considerations whenever we discuss greeting people is that there is a risk of approaching a life-long member as a new visitor. If I can’t be sure a person is a part of the congregation, how can I possibly respond to them in a helpful way about anything else?
But I think that even in groups small enough to do so, we would have a hard time doing it. We seem to move too easily from neglect to condemnation without taking the necessary steps in between. Dave points out the different ways of handling different people. In order to interact with someone in a helpful way, whether correction or encouragement or any other approach, you have to know them pretty well. One big difference between correction and condemnation is simply the relationship between giver and receiver.
I “correct” my wife’s use of the computer on a regular basis. I know more about computers than she does, she knows that, and so it generally works. Even so, it still won’t work if I am condescending or impatient. But if I both understand her starting point and work to help her get to where she wants to go, things work extremely well.
She, on the other hand, corrects my work in the kitchen. It turns out that in the same set of circumstances, I can actually produce a meal with her direction. The things I don’t know how to do she does. The things I might ignore, like precisely which position the oven shelves occupy, she encourages me to get right.
So here we are in the church. Let me just list some things we might need to work toward in our churches so we can truly help one another change.
We definitely need to get past the point where the only encouragement or exhortation in our churches comes from the pulpit, and is therefore easily ignored by those in the pews.
Let us pay attention to each other, so as to stir up of love and good works … (Hebrews 10:24).
12Therefore restore the weakened hands and the disabled knees, 13and prepare straight paths for your feet so that the lame might not stumble but rather might be healed (Hebrews 12:12-13).
While I haven’t written anything on it myself, I’ve published quite a number of books regarding how Christians should relate to authority. These include Christian Archy and The Jesus Paradigm (David Alan Black), Ultimate Allegiance and Faith in the Public Square (Bob Cornwall), Rendering unto Caesar (Chris Surber), and Preserving Democracy (Elgin L. Hushbeck, Jr.). The last one isn’t primarily about the Christian’s relationship to authority, but it does deal with what the author believes are the legitimate functions of government, and ways in which the authorities can definitely be illegitimate.
As I was reading from Luke 12 this morning, and realized that Jesus was speaking to people who were likely facing persecution, sometimes from those very authorities, I started to think a bit about why we tend always to start with the “rendering unto Caesar” passage, and much less from Romans 13:1-7, 1 Peter 2:13-17, or Acts 5:29. The first of those passages is quite frequently abused by those who believe that one must obey the government no matter what.
I’m not going to write an extremely long post on this today. I just wanted to bring the subject up. The one line I appreciated most in the commentary I read on these passages came from The New Interpreter’s Study Bible
Governing authorities derive legitimacy and serve God by punishing bad and approving good—that is, by implementing justice. The just purposes of government evoke submission by the ascent of conscience (v. 5) rather than by fear of punishment. An unjust tyrrany, by implication, would not qualify as an authority instituted by God.…
There are a couple of points in that passage that I believe are overstated, but I think the main point is correct. Paul here speaks of the government carrying out it’s legitimate functions, functions which the Roman government often did quite well. When, at other times, the authorities turned against the good, then one must obey God rather than human authority (Acts 5:29). A Christian would obey the legitimate authority even of an unjust government, where that is possible (often it is not), and would reject only the unjust actions. I think 1 Peter 2:13-17 implies this. Christians were to be model citizens wherever they could thus blunting accusations brought against them. When the state ordered them to do something they could not do in good conscience, then the authorities would be unable to say, “These people just ordinary lawbreakers.” Rather, they would only have the matter of conscience at hand.
Having government ordained by God cuts both ways. First, it gives authority and order a divine imprint, and becoming simply a rebel or an anarchist is precluded short of a complete loss of legitimacy. Second, however, it places human government under the divine authority. Note that I don’t mean by this anything at all like theocracy. I do not think theocracy is desirable, nor is it called for in this passage. Rather, what this means in practice is that one’s conscience controls. It should make me subordinate to all legitimate authority and limit when I can stand against that authority to cases when I would be required to perform an act that was evil or unethical.
The “government no matter what” spin that some have put on this passage tends to make Paul into somewhat of an idiot. Perhaps we need another rule of interpretation: If the way you interpret a passage makes the author look like an idiot, reconsider. Sometimes the God’s wisdom may look like foolishness to us, but so does actual foolishness.
I know I’ve left a huge number of holes in this discussion, but I’ll leave those for later discussion. It’s a blog post, and sometimes I have to write one that is less than 1000 words!
In a comment, Steve Kindle asks:
… in regards to your formative books, Hebrews, Ezekiel, and Leviticus, is it because you see Hebrews as teaching substitutionary atonement that springs from Leviticus? And Ezekiel foresees a renewed covenant that Hebrews embellishes? Just wondering.
The briefest answer would be “no.” But leaving it at that would be rude, or at least would appear rude to me.
My view of the atonement does not center on the substitutionary view, nor on the even more specific penal substitutionary view. This annoys one set of my friends, and perhaps an enemy or two. To annoy the rest, I must emphasize that I do not deny substitutionary atonement. I believe it is one way in which Scripture talks about atonement, though I don’t see the strong courtroom sense of the modern PSA in Scripture. What I actually believe is that there are many metaphors in in Scripture for God saving us from sin and death, and that each of these enlightens us in some way. Each of them, however, if made the sole metaphor, will also tend to lead us into various forms of imbalance.
While the substitutionary view of atonement does occur in Hebrews, substitution itself is not in focus. Similarly, I do not get such views of substitution as I do have from Leviticus. The most famous quote on this is Leviticus 17:11, quoted at Hebrews 9:22, but if this is made to carry the weight Christians often make it carry, it will actually produce a contradiction in Leviticus, and the ransom theory/metaphor, one which fits the text of Leviticus more closely, works quite well in Hebrews.
So having eliminated substitution as the formative view, what exactly did lead me to take these three books so seriously. I must admit that the key reason is simply that I chose to study them. I had no idea what I was getting into, but elements of the books fascinated me. But in fact some common themes became very much formative for me.
Once I got started on Ezekiel, however, the key issue because the presence of the glory of God. There are interesting movements of God’s glory throughout the book, and they produce some quite interesting ideas. My first question was why we have a vision of God’s glory in Babylon in the first chapter, then we see the glory leaving the temple in Jerusalem in the 8th and 9th chapters, and finally it returns to Jerusalem in the 43rd chapter. The illogic on the surface of the first chapter led one commentator, whose name I forget though Eichrodt comes to mind, to suggest that the first chapter was moved by a later editor. Obviously God’s glory couldn’t appear in Babylon before it left Jerusalem.
But on thinking a bit further I came to believe that was precisely the point. God’s glory was not restricted to the land of Israel. God was able to act anywhere. At the same time as God was able to act anywhere God has not rejected Israel either, so we see the glory return to the temple and life flow from the temple later in the book. In its very structure, Ezekiel looks forward to the blessing of the entire world in fulfilment of the promise to Abraham. Chapters 8 & 9 also make clear, however, that one cannot behave however one wishes and still expect God’s glory to remain and bless. So we see the withdrawal of God’s glory in those chapters along with the condemnation of all who do not sigh and cry for the abominations in the land (9:4).
External to the three books I would point out that this “presence/absence of God” idea stuck with me. You’ll see it in Torah in wilderness, and you see that the presence of God is not necessarily safe, but is much to be desired. But the whole ceremonial system, as I was taught to call it, didn’t seem to make sense. In fact, the problem was that I heard about it almost exclusively as substitutionary sacrifice for sin. What I, as a Christian, was supposed to know was that lambs (little, cute, wooly lambs in Sunday School terms) were killed because of how awful people’s sins were, and this had pointed to Jesus dying as the lamb of God. Now I in no way want to diminish the view of Jesus as the lamb of God, and especially the application of that we see with the lion/lamb metaphor in Revelation 4-5. But why is there this huge body of literature starting in the latter portion of Exodus and going through numbers, with a few points in Deuteronomy? So from there I started my study of Leviticus.
I began to see a much broader sense of the ceremonial law, how many of the things taught by the prophets were foreshadowed in liturgical form. These include a priestly teaching of the doctrine of repentance, a repeated turn away from ritual as powerful in itself, and a drive to learn to distinguish holy and unholy, not to simply avoid the unholy, but to become holy, to increase the bounds of the holy. God told the Israelites to be holy because he is holy. A simple yet extremely daunting command.
My wife said that during this study I would come away from my personal devotion time detached, as though I had been in an extraordinary time of spiritual experience. All I can say is that I would love to write a study guide for Leviticus with the intention of drawing more Christians into that story, but that I feel utterly inadequate to the task. In my study I would read the text in Hebrew, then in the LXX, and finally in an English translation before going to Milgrom’s commentary. It takes hard work to get even a good start on this material, but I consider it well worthwhile, in fact, the most worthwhile year of personal devotions I have engaged in.
And that turns me back to Hebrews, where I see Hebrews 6 as the center of the book’s message, but if you step back right before, one of the characteristics of mature Christianity is having one’s faculties trained by practice to discern good from evil, a close parallel to Leviticus. I think it is also closely aligned in goal, i.e., this training of the faculties is part of the endurance, staying on the track. And note that I don’t think this contradicts it being a gift from God. The Torah is also a gift from God, and it was instruction. It’s purpose was to train.
If I could summarize, I get from this that my faith is to be an active faith, an active seeking of the presence of God, a life of practice. We are changed and transformed by looking, by finding, by discerning (2 Corinthians 3:18). That is the key element of theology that I get from Ezekiel, Hebrews, and Leviticus, and I think it shapes all else.
Since I’m revising my Hebrews study guide, and have been for more than a year, I can bring up complaints against the old one. One of the most common complaints was that people had a hard time connecting the background reading to the current passage. I included three reading lists: 1) Minimum reading, 2) Extra reading, and 3) Advanced reading. My normal response to that complaint was to suggest just using the minimum reading, and people generally found that worked. The problem is that sticking with the minimum reading results in diminishing the value of the study. Hebrews is a connected book.
I could say that about any book of the Bible, in that one can see the canon as a form of story, the story of the people of faith who become the church. I say that not to diminish the Hebrew scriptures, but rather to emphasize that, combined into the Christian Bible and Christian canon, the story extends into the story of the church. Being able to see Bible passages in the context of the broader story is very important. Hebrews, however, is very much about the connections, and thus understanding it is very much about knowing the background. One can, of course, jump in at the end of the story. This is like looking at the last chapter of a mystery to find out who really did the deed without looking at the process by which the characters found out about it.
Hebrews asks, and I believe answers, the question of how we, as Christians get from being centered on Torah to being centered on the person of Jesus. How do we go from the scriptures of the people of Israel to the message and mission of the church? In these questions lie the avenues to many errors. One of the most critical errors, I think, is to see Hebrews as proposing a massive disjunction between the Old Testament and the New, a view that the Old Testament was superceded because it was bad. This error results from the forward momentum of the book being read as a denial or denigration of the old. In reality, Hebrews does not put aside the Old Testament any more than the reader of a book dismisses a previous chapter because he begins to read a new one. The old chapter wasn’t bad. That’s not why you turned the page. If the previous chapter was bad, you’re more likely putting down the book entirely. (Note: I follow in this post my usual practice of using the term “Hebrew Scriptures” when referring to the books we Christians call the Old Testament as an historical document and “Old Testament” when I’m referencing those same books as part of the Christian Bible. I see these as different views.)
So when Hebrews starts out talking about how God spoke to our forefathers, this isn’t to say, “Wow, what a lousy mode of communication God used, but now, finally, at the end, God has gotten it right!” Rather, it is to say, “Look at the new thing God is now doing right on time! The foundation is good, so we’ll build on it. But it’s not the whole house.” (I must note that this foundation/house distinction has its own problems. I believe the author of Hebrews sees God’s intention in all of the Old Testament passages he quotes. He’s not saying that God created something new out of whole cloth. The new covenant of Jeremiah 31 is not nearly as new as it looks at first glance. Rather, in this passage God expresses his intention to carry out his plans in spite of human failings. We may fail, but God’s plan continues.
So in order to understand the book of Hebrews one needs to understand this background. If you read it without knowing the material referenced, you may get the idea that this is intentionally new and surprising, when instead it is designed carefully to be (and look like) a natural next chapter. “See,” the author suggests, “this is what God has been building up to for generations.”
I’ve said before that the most formative books for my theology have been Hebrews, Ezekiel, and Leviticus in that order. I didn’t actually study them in that order, though I have always been fascinated by Hebrews, but a college independent study working on the first chapter of Ezekiel led to many other things and finally a study through Leviticus using Jacob Milgrom’s wonderful three volume commentary in the Anchor Bible series. So while I could hardly call myself an expert in Torah, I’ve read somewhat more in this area than the average Christian. Working through Leviticus gave me a different view of both Leviticus and Hebrews. The sanctuary system of worship was not really an end in itself, as we so often read it. Rather, it was a means to an end. The details here are well beyond a blog post that is already getting longer than it should!
Some argue that the author of Hebrews must have been a priest due to his knowledge of, and interest in, the temple service. I would suggest that isn’t the case. The knowledge that is needed to write a book like Hebrews is a strong knowledge of the Old Testament passages in the context of their story. Too frequently we see “reading in context” as a matter of making sure we read the verse (or even chapter!) before and the verse after. That’s important, as single phrases can be taken out of their immediate context.
But there is also a broad cultural and historical context. When was the passage written? Who wrote it? To whom was it addressed? All of these are questions that help us understand a passage. I would suggest that the author of Hebrews knows his scriptures well and knows the story. When he seems to deviate, as he does in many stories in Hebrews 11 (compare the story of Moses in Exodus to Hebrews 11), he is doing so for a particular purpose. (Hint: I believe it has to do with the “why” of perseverance.)
In terms of revising the book, I do intend to keep my reading lists, though I’m adding some notes to help draw the lines between the passages. I think it’s important. One of our problems in reading about the Bible is that we are not well enough acquainted with the Bible itself. Thus someone can suggest something that correctly quotes a number of Bible texts, but still misses important points.
Let me give an example. One of the blogs I read (HT: Arthur Sido) pointed me to an article by Greg Boyd talking about the “eye for an eye” command of the Old Testament being superceded. And there is much of interest to interpretation, I believe, in those “you have heard … but I say” statements in the Sermon on the Mount. In applying particular commands to particular times and circumstances, one must be aware of those circumstances. Now I’ve provided the link so you can decide if I’m being unfair to Boyd, but it seems to me that he applies an out of context judgment to Elijah, and as a result manages to quite vigorously dismiss a great deal of the Old Testament.
Some questions that need to be answered:
1) Does “an eye for an eye” or, in fact, any of the “but I say unto you” statements of Jesus apply to Elijah and the prophets of Baal? To me, this looks like applying a command to a situation and a time without any consideration. Reading Matthew 7:1 we might well resist judging our contemporaries for such an act, but we have little hesitation in condemning Elijah with no regard for circumstances or context at all. If you haven’t already, please read at least the second to last paragraph of Boyd’s article. How parallel is the situation of Elijah and that of the disciples who are inconvenienced by having to turn to another village (Luke 9:51-55)? I fail to see here a suggestion of how Jesus viewed Elijah.
2) Do the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount turn the corner on God’s judgment, i.e. bring us to a point where judgment no longer occurs? Consider, for example, Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11), written by the same hand that recorded Luke 9:54-55. Peaceable scene, isn’t it?
3) While I believe strongly that we have trajectories in scripture, i.e. we are going somewhere with each statement, so we may see modifications, we need to be sure that the place we’re going is not entirely of our own making. One of the things that happens in Hebrews is that the author sees his destination rolled into the texts he cites. He’s building on something he has read thoroughly.
4) What about the eschatological sayings of Jesus? Are these also to be dismissed?
My own response to Greg Boyd’s article is not some sort of revulsion that he suggested an action by Elijah was demonic. Rather, it’s that he pulled so much out of so little with relatively little basis. I’m afraid that it strikes me as inept handling of scripture. I’ve heard so much better, scripturally faithful arguments for non-violence. This is writing your own story in the white spaces without bothering to truly understand the story as you have it.
Is there a need to respond to violent passages in the Old Testament? Indeed there is! And while we’re at it, let’s respond to a few violent passages in the New Testament as well. But let’s do so by understanding rather than dismissing. I think that’s the pattern Hebrews has set, and it’s a good one.
I commented earlier on the difficult choices involved in translating an Old Testament reference that does not match the Old Testament passage in your own translation.
Here’s an example from the NIV1984. First, Psalm 8:4-6 –
what is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.You made him ruler over the works of your hands,
you put everything under his feet.
Now look at this as translated in Hebrews 2:6-8 –
“What is man that you are mindful of him,
the son of man that you care for him?You made him a little lower than the angels;
you crowned him with glory and honor
and put everything under his feet.”
The key phrase here is “a little lower than the angels.” The usage of this line in Hebrews will reflect an alternate translation of the Greek (LXX), “for a little while lower.” The translation is, I believe, accommodated to the phraseology in the Old Testament. The NASB is pretty open about simply translated the text in front of the committee, and leaving it to commentators to deal with the difference in the text and translation.
I find this interesting, though not a major issue. It is valuable, however, to understand the approach taken by your translation. I am much more concerned with the attempt by the NIV to “fix” problems through questionable translations, such as the sudden introduction of an unjustified pluperfect at Genesis 2:19, a rendering that survived from the 1984 to the 2011 NIV.
A couple of days ago I discussed gender-neutral language in a post dealing with both inerrancy and Bible translation issues. Today, as I was doing some reading about Hebrews, I encountered a vigorous comment against such language in a passage in Hebrews. The passage in question is Hebrews 2:6-8, and it quotes from Psalm 8:4-6. The NIV translates the first anthrwpos as “mankind” and then huios anthrwpou as “a son of man.” They then continue with a series of plural pronouns in the explanation.
In his The New American Commentary: Hebrews
Of these he says:
Third, to change the word or phrase to a more “gender neutral” expression, especially in light of the other two problems above, is simply an exercise in linguistic political correctness. (p. 240, Nook edition)
The issues here are somewhat more complex than any case I was referencing in my earlier post. When you have someone address a congregation that includes both men and women using adelphoi, the issue is more one of referent. In this case, we need to ask a couple of questions:
1) In what way was the author reading the passage? In other words, how would he have understood it in then making his argument? It seems courteous, in a sense, to render a quotation in the same way as the person quoting it intended. This is by no means uncontroversial. If an author quotes the LXX, as is done here, but the Bible translation in question translates its Old Testament from the Hebrew, what should be done? There are cases in which a translation will accommodate their own rendering of the OT verse to the translation as they have it in their OT, whether or not that fits the author. On the other hand, to have the author of Hebrews quote Psalm 8:4-6, and then have the rendering there differ from what a reader will find when he or she turns to the Old Testament in that very same Bible edition can (and will) raise questions. So it is a case of decisions, decisions, and no matter what you do, there will be disagreement.
2) What will your readers miss when they read your rendering? In this case we have two choices. We might leave out some understanding of the unity of humanity and the connection between a singular son of man and Jesus. On the other hand, for some readers, we might be leaving out the sense that this is humanity and not just some particular man. I know of nothing that would cover all options except for an explanatory note, and most of us are likely aware of how many people read explanatory notes.
I don’t consider this a clear case of a change of language requiring a change of translation. The word anthrwpos, as used here, is covering a different semantic range, and the translator needs to take that into account. The danger into which the NIV2011 and the TNIV have both slipped here is that they undercut the author’s presentation by using a different translation of the passage he’s building on. He chose the LXX of his time. Perhaps we should honor the idea of his choosing a translation by translating that translation in a way that matches his use.
What do you think?
I chose to do some reading from Hebrews this morning, but instead of using my NA27 or my UBSIV text, I went to Bible Gateway and read from the SBL text. There I encountered (again) the reading chwris rather than chariti. (I checked out NA28 online and I see it still reads chariti.
I tend to lean just a bit toward internal evidence over external in textual issues. The reason for this is that I suspect that most variations in the text likely occurred early in the transmission history, where we by nature will have the least evidence for them. In this case, however, I would have to say that one can argue the internal evidence either way. Which text is more difficult? It depends on how you read it. Using chariti seems almost superfluous to the conversation. Some of the explanations for chwris as a marginal gloss seem pretty reasonable. Either reading could cause someone to go for the other. Either can be explained as fitting the text.
At this point, I think the Nestle-Aland text has it right. The overwhelming external evidence would need to be countered by much stronger internal arguments to convince me that chwris was original.
I took a quick glance through a few translations that are here within arm’s reach, and found none that accept chwris as their primary text. The NRSV and the REB both mention chwris as an alternative in a footnote.
What do you think?
