James McGrath makes a connection here that I had never thought of, comparing a mythicist hypothesis that this refers to suffering outside the gate of heaven (for which we have have what evidence?) as opposed to a common belief at the time that Jesus suffered outside the gate of Jerusalem, for which we do have literary evidence. William of Ockham rules!
The Pentateuch is one key source for Christian debates about the treatment of aliens (especially illegal aliens) here in the United States. There are a number of commands that might apply, and they are interpreted differently, or perhaps seen as applicable or inapplicable, by the different sides in fairly predictable ways.
For example, Leviticus 19:34 – “Like a citizen shall the Ger who is living (cognate of Ger) among you be to you, and you shall love/befriend him as yourself, for you were Gerim (pl) in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God” (My literal translation). On the one hand it seems rather clear. The Israelites were instructed not to mistreat the non-citizens living among them. They were to treat them well. Milgrom notes that “…‘ãhab is related to its semantic cognates in the diplomatic vocabulary of ancient Near Eastern treaties which denote fidelity and loyalty pledged by a vassal to his suzerain as well as the reciprocal obligations of support owed by the suzerain to the vassal.” Thus the treatment of the foreigner was in a sense guaranteed as part of the covenant, as Israel’s obligation to God. This didn’t refer to an emotional response, but to lawful and principled treatment. (I commend to you all of Milgrom’s comments on the word “ger” in his Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 17-22, The Anchor Bible. New York: Doubleday, 2000, 1416-1420.)
So the first approach might be to simply transfer the command to the present. The Israelites were commanded to do this. God must think it’s a good idea. We should do the same thing. We would, of course, have to deal with details such as what today would constitute a ger, or resident alien, and the differences in borders and how they were handled then as opposed to now.
Of course, we are not Israel, we were not guided out of Egypt where we were once slaves, though we use those experiences as metaphors for elements in our spiritual lives. So this is also very clearly a command given to Israel. It may be applicable to us in principle, but it is not directed at us as gentiles. Thus one approach to application would be to say that it doesn’t apply to us at all.
Another approach is to deal with the niggling detail of defining what a ger would be in our society. Perhaps such a person is only a legal alien who has established residency. In that case, the text would have nothing to do with any illegal aliens at all.
I like to test people by asking them to apply Leviticus 18:22 and Leviticus 19:33-34. Very few people apply both equally. Generally they apply one but explain around the other. It’s an interesting test of your hermeneutics (the way you interpret scripture). Look at these two texts and ask if either or both of them apply to people in the church today. Why or why not?
The text that I was reading this morning, however, was Numbers 15:16 – “There will be one torah and one mishpat for you and for the ger who is living among you” (again my literal translation). Milgrom (op. cit.) identifies torah here as religious law and mishpat as civil law. The principle is again very clear, in my view. This puts in to practice the “love” that is commanded in Leviticus 19:34. By applying the principles and particular commands of the covenant to the foreigners living among them, the Israelites were obeying that command.
In practice, it turned out that foreigners weren’t subject to precisely the same religious laws. It was quite possible to adjust provide specific exceptions that derived from the fact that they were not Israelites and therefore lacked some of the obligations of Israelites. Note that the gerim were given relief from some laws. No extra requirements were imposed on them.
Again, quite clearly this command is not giving to us as modern Christians living in America. I would, however, suggest that it expresses a principle and gives us an idea of God’s intention. It’s an application itself of the principles contained in the golden rule: Do to others as you would have them do to you.
There are a number of things this leaves unanswered, but I think that this same question would apply in our Christian answer to each of these questions. Who should be able to come through our borders and settle and work here? Does it mandate open borders? I don’t think it answers that question and the nature of borders in the time of Israel was much different from what it is now. What about children born in our country of people living here illegally? Again, it isn’t explicit, because it doesn’t speak to a time when such a thing could occur. The person who was in Israel living and working was a ger, and the law would apply to him. For a certain number of generations, his children would be gerim, and the law would apply to them. We now have a legal situation in which someone can be a legal resident alien or, on the other hand, be an alien and residing but not legal.
I can see a number of ways to apply the law there, but at a minimum, I think it would mandate that we treat not just fairly but generously those whose situation is not of their own making, as in the children of illegal aliens.
What I do not think is that this passage mandates an immigration policy. Israel’s law provides us with principles and those principles are reiterated in other contexts by Jesus. (Jesus didn’t experience an immigration situation. The resident aliens of his day were generally in charge!) These principles are primarily applicable to each of us in the way we personally treat others, but I think they would also be applicable in the way we act in society as well.
Yesterday I was recommending the chapters in Numbers, starting around 11, as “thinking fodder” regarding the way God works with people. But there’s some really good stuff there about how people deal with people as well.
Even though many won’t remember that it comes from Numbers 13, the most famous line from the chapter is some version of “we even saw giants there” (v. 28, NLT). It’s good to think of how we overcome the giants in our lives. I note that the Israelites were just fine until nearly the end. Some commentators object to the sending of the spies, citing Deuteronomy 1:20-23, but according to this passage, that was at God’s command. They looked, they evaluated, then they returned to the people in command.
Those who have worked in military intelligence will know that the guys who collect the information don’t make the decisions about what is to be done. Your job is to find things out. You report to competent authorities who then make the decisions as to what action to take.
The Israelite spies were asked to discover precisely the sort of things they reported. What they weren’t asked to do was determine whether an invasion was possible. They got ahead of the game. Now I know these guys weren’t professional spies. They were, themselves, leaders. But they didn’t separate themselves from the emotions of the moment and think the situation through.
But the interesting thing here is to read the actual report of the spies in verses 27-29 and then compare it to the rumor that is spread in verses 32-33. Have you ever observed something similar? A small financial problem mentioned in the finance committee, if leaked, can become an imminent closure of the church by Sunday. The results of that can be much like those in Numbers 14.
I’m skipping over the idea of divine aid in this case. The Israelites were defeated by their rumor before they’d even considered a strategy.
Finally, I’d just note that this is one of the things I find most interesting in Torah (or the Pentateuch). It reflects human ideas and attitudes in a very raw form. Often we allow the miracles, the environment, and the very different cultural background to overtake the simple human drama that is taking place.
For those who are not familiar with it, impartation, at least in charismatic circles refers to passing on a gift, or even on occasion a calling or anointing when one person or persons lays hands on another. I’m not going to try to summarize the various views on this. First, I’m not fully acquainted with them. Second, that’s not my purpose.
Bottom line is that the whole concept of things passed on via laying on of hands with prayer or blessing is something that I have not liked very much from the first time I heard of it. It sounded too much like people treating the Holy Spirit and spiritual gifts as a personal possession, sort of like that pair of socks one received for Christmas and then passed on, hopefully before it got holes in it. On a more serious note the conflict is really between an idea of complete divine sovereignty over the gifts and the idea of human involvement.
What I have believed and taught up until now has tended to focus on divine sovereignty. God decides who to give the gifts to, and if anything human action is required at all it is simply a recognition of what God has already done. Similarly I would maintain that God does healing with or without any particular action on our part, and thus would not recognize a continuing gift of healing as such. We take action; God heals; the two don’t relate a great deal.
Two things have combined to change my view. The first was our Sunday School study using Bruce Epperly’s book Healing Marks. I cannot point to just one place, but with support from the healing stories of Jesus, Bruce emphasizes the way in which God works with and through people. It may seem to “protect” God to emphasize how little control we have, but it doesn’t reflect the way in which scripture speaks of God’s activity in the world.
I’m not going to go through all of the arguments here. They involve multiple chapters in the book. I think both the ideas involved with healing and of impartation share a common element, in that in both we have God’s gifts, and in both we have a danger both of losing the divine and the human elements.
I think my way of expressing this over the last few years has tended to lose the human element.
This coalesced in reading Numbers a couple of days ago. An amazing amount of my thinking has developed while reading the Torah, the first five books of the Bible. In this case I was reading the story in Numbers 11 in which Moses complains to God, and God tells Moses to bring 70 elders from the tribes. Numbers 11:35 reports that God took some of the spirit that was on Moses and gave it to the 70. (We later find out that two more receive the spirit, which brings up some interesting thoughts.)
There are even some commentators who believe this “taking” of the spirit from Moses was some kind of punishment for his complaining, but I think this is contradicted by the rather vigorous way in which the complaints of Miriam and Aaron are dealt with in chapter 12. There’s some important material there I will incorporate in my comments on Hebrews later. There the special position of Moses as one who spoke with God face to face is strongly re-emphasized.
Now this story is in no sense a proof-text for my change of view. In fact, one could read this story either way. I read it in the context of what I learned of Leviticus when studying Jacob Milgrom’s three volume commentary in the Anchor Bible series. God moves the people of Israel in the ceremonies he commands from the idea of some sort of magic or human manipulation of God to an understanding that God acts. It is not the ceremony that makes God act. For example, one offers a sacrifice, but God forgives.
What this story did for me was outline the ideas that are in conflict. It is the spirit that is on Moses (the human) that is taken and imparted to the 70 who are gathered. We are not told of any ritual or ceremony, but there may well have been. Then at the same time God touches two people who aren’t actually there. (I commend to your attention Numbers 11-14, with particular emphasis on how divine and human action combine. It’s interesting reading!)
God is always working, but he in scripture he is continually presented as working in and with human beings. It is possible that when you touch someone and pray for their healing, a healing “power” will go out of you and help the person for whom you are praying. It’s the “out of you” with which I have been uncomfortable. I think I’ll have to learn to live with it!
I ran headlong into my lack of explicit theological training today while studying Hebrews. (Yes, I’m still working on my revised study guide.) Now I’m certain that I’ve run into the word “piacular” before. The reason I can be so certain is that this is the second time I’m reading James Moffatt’s commentary on Hebrews in the ICC.
In discussing the view of sacrifice in Hebrews he states that the author takes the “piacular view.” He then quotes John Calvin. My Latin isn’t up to such a translation, so I went to a translation of the Institutes that I possess (ii. 15. 6) to get it in English:
… end and use to be, that as a Mediator, free from all taint, he may by his own holiness procure the favour of God for us. But because a deserved curse obstructs the entrance, and God in his character of Judge is hostile to us, expiation must necessarily intervene, that as a priest employed to appease the wrath of God, he may reinstate us in his favour. Wherefore, in order that Christ might fulfil this office, it behoved him to appear with a sacrifice. For even under the law of the priesthood it was forbidden to enter the sanctuary without blood, to teach the worshipper that however the priest might interpose to deprecate, God could not be propitiated without the expiation of sin. On this subject the Apostle discourses at length in the Epistle to the Hebrews, from the seventh almost to the end of the tenth chapter.
I have included one elision Moffatt made in the quote, between the first “intervene” and the final sentence beginning with “On.” I don’t think that makes a difference. In fact, the final bit before the elision, “piaculum intervenire necesse est” is part of my problem. Now of course the Latin definition need not match the English, but they seem to match in the dictionaries available to me.
After another quote, which he says parallels Calvin, Moffatt continues:
The interpretation of Calvin confuses Paul’s doctrine of expiation with the piacular view of our author.
I’ve read the section through a couple of times and I’m not sure I’m getting this. The difference Moffatt seems to be highlighting is that God, according to Calvin, is hostile to the universe through the curse, whereas the author of Hebrews sees no such thing. He is rather concerned with God’s wrath against apostates. On the next page (xxxvi) he adds, “What engrosses the writer is the need not so much of a medium between God and the material universe, as of a medium between his holiness and human sin (see on 12:23).”
I see a sense of the difference Moffatt is trying to make here, though I don’t completely understand it. At the same time, I’m not sure I see that the author of Hebrews has made the distinction Moffatt says he has.
Any thoughts?
I found Hebrews 1:1-4: A Study in Discourse Analysis via Dave Black Online today. Many elements here are not new, but this is the best concise presentation of these four important verses that I’ve found. Some may think that 19 pages on four verses isn’t concise, but considering the possibilities, I find it quite compact!
While reading this analysis of the first four verses of Hebrews, it’s important to note the pointers to the way in which the book will be structured. The connection between verse 4 and what precedes, as well as follows it, for example, has often been misread as separating verse 4 from the prior 3 verses. It belongs with what precedes as part of the introduction, but it provides the link to what will be argued in verse 5ff.
I need to post more of what I’m looking at right now in the book of Hebrews, but I have been short on time. Hopefully soon I will get to posting more.
There’s a thought provoking post by Morgan Guyton (Mercy not Sacrifice) discussing this issue. While I have some problems with the interpretations proposed when considered from an historical point of view, as Christian application of scripture, I think this is a good thing.
We should not forget, however, that the scriptures came to violent people in violent times. What does that say about how we should interact with them? I recall recently disturbing a group of people by noting that in some cases when the Spirit of God came upon a person, that person killed a bunch of other people (Samson, Judges 15:14-17).
We don’t want the violence to guide our lives, which is a good thing, but what happened, happened. Even if the story of Samson is fictitious, or perhaps somewhat embellished, there was a time when the people of God thought that was encouraging stuff. And for those fighting the Philistines, I doubt the lesson was, “Let’s have sympathy for the Philistines. That’s a lesson we (should) learn later.
Though we haven’t.
I’ve been thinking about the Hebrews outlines, but not posting them. I’ve printed out a copy of my outline and translation and I plan to color code the text according to major themes that I see in the book of Hebrews. It will be interesting to see how well that works. One test of the major themes will be what the color coding looks like, I think.
I’ll post more on this soon.
Andrew Wilson has a post on The Gospel Coalition (Voices) blog titled Why I don’t Hate the Word Inerrancy. In a certain way I have to agree with his conclusion:
But I don’t think the answer is to hate the word. If we were to abandon every word that had been tainted by poor use, we’d have to remove dozens of descriptors from our lexicon, beginning with “Christian”—only to find that the replacements we brought in were also sullied over time by clumsiness, groupthink, insensitivity, and arrogance. …
Just so! It’s pretty difficult to hate a word when the word hasn’t really done anything bad. It just fell into the hands of cruel people who have tortured it a bit.
But I still have to wonder about the value of the word in the first place. As a substitute for saying that God’s word is true, it draws much of its usage from the effort to narrow down the concept of what we mean by “true.” It ties truth to a collection of facts, to data, and not to the message. Properly interpreted, the message of the books of Kings in the Hebrew scriptures can be true without being accurate in every detail of the numbers. There are serious issues in the chonology of the divided kingdom, and resolving these is an interesting hobby, but it’s not really something that impacts the truth of the Bible message.
I think inerrancy, as used—and in effect a word is the way it is used—tends to put our focus on the wrong aspect of any story. It makes our first question be “did this happen precisely as stated?” rather than “what message does God have for me in this story?” That’s unfortunate.
I think there are worse problems for inerrancy than the ages and reigns of kings, but that provides a good starting point. Once we are past that, we need to look at how God communicates. How did God send us scripture? How did God cross the gap between infinity and our finite existence?
This is one of those questions that plagues discussion of topics such as the meaning of Genesis. I believe that God communicates to us in our language, and that Genesis communicated God’s message about creation to people who believed in an earth that was flat (though round, like a dinner plate), with the waters under and the heavens above. They also believed that earth was the center of the universe and had no concept of the size of the universe. In that context, God spoke about God’s involvement in human lives.
That means that the science of Genesis is doubtless in error, when looked at from our point of view. But it’s not in error by mistake. It’s in error intentionally. By God’s intention, not by the intention of the human authors who knew no better. It’s in error in the same way as my explanation of some technical topic might be if I presented it to a child.
And lest you get the idea that I think we are on a pinnacle or knowledge, I expect that, if the world continues and we don’t set ourselves back to the stone age through our own stupidity, people a few hundred years from now may consider our view of what the universe is like to be hopelessly primitive. They’ll look for new ways to tell the story of God’s involvement.
I don’t like the word “inerrancy” because it says that the Bible is going to mean what I think it needs to mean rather than saying that the Bible gives God’s message in the way that God wanted it to be presented.
As I read it, God did very little to scratch our modern itches.
My title is slightly modified from No Scientific Revelation in the Bible, posted by RJS at Jesus Creed, with links in turn to work by John Walton. I think this is an important point.
My argument since I was an undergraduate just trying to work my way through these issues, has been that if you can easily explain terminology used in terms of the cosmology of the time there is no adequate reason to try to read modern ideas into the text.
Some find every reference that might just allow them to sneak advanced scientific revelation into the text and try to claim that as evidence that the Bible writers had some advanced knowledge. But unless one makes a claim that is clearly different from what was commonly believed about the way the world works, and that claim matches later knowledge, there’s no basis to assume advanced revelation.
The Bible speaks within the world of its original hearers and readers. That shouldn’t be a problem for us. That is precisely what it should do. It’s our function to carry on the story in our world as we know it. Should the world carry on for so long, in another couple of millenia other people, who may know as much more about how the universe functions as we do compared to the ancients, will be telling the story within their context and their knowledge.
God didn’t intend to provide a science textbook, or a crib sheet for scientific advancement. I can make this claim because if God did try to do such a thing, it was a miserable failure. I prefer not to call God a miserable failure.
