Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Bible Passages

  • Update on The Way Sunday School Class

    Philippians: A Participatory Study GuideWe’ve completed our study of Philippians using Bruce Epperly’s study guide (Philippians: A Participatory Study Guide). This is the second time I’ve taught Philippians using that guide, and I’d like to compare the two experiences. This will tell you something of the nature of the guide.

    The first time I used this, it was in advance copies, and with a class that was much more interested in the facts (or perhaps data) and discussing the theology of the book and how it applied. They appreciated substantial sections of the book, but were not interested in what I consider the main feature, which is the spiritual exercises/activities. I don’t mean this as a critique of that class–a class or small group can be formed for many purposes, and they definitely found enough of the material they were interested in the book and in the discussion questions. We ran out of time on every lesson.

    In the more recent study, the class group was much more interested in spirituality and spiritual disciplines. Members repeatedly commented on how they normally don’t like printed prayers, but that the prayers were exceptional and right on target. We used the prayers and the accompanying meditations or actions in every class session, even to the exclusion of time to complete all the questions. And if you’re being serious with this guide, you won’t have time to discuss everything that is offered.

    Used in this way it is a transformative study, and that is the greatest strength of this particular study guide. I really enjoyed working through the book myself.

    For those who may decide to use this guide I do recommend following the suggestions for readings. In several cases we read passages from The Voice during the time in class. One might use The Message instead (in fact, I still prefer it), but there was a good deal of discussion of The Voice online during the course of our class. But simply reading the passages from the different versions in class time often opened enlightening discussions and times of meditation.

    The Journey to the Undiscovered CountryWe’re taking a brief interlude now in this class before we start another Bible book. The group has chosen to read the new book by William Powell Tuck, The Journey to the Undiscovered Country. There will be an opportunity to let more people in the church know about our class and invite them to join us on August 26, and then we’ll start a new study, probably using Ephesians: A Participatory Study Guide by Bob Cornwall.

    Note: This class was formed with the intention to use the participatory method and guides and continue regularly studying Bible books and passages.

  • Interactive Covenants and Prophecies or God Has a Plan B

    It’s interesting to me how we (and I definitely include myself) often read scripture. One concept can easily override another. For example, I recall a conversation in which someone was claiming that no human being was ever righteous. I brought up Job, who is described as righteous in Job 1. “Oh, but that is only as he was seen through the righteousness of Christ,” I was told. Of course, Job 1 isn’t speaking of the righteousness of Christ, and in fact the entire book would be very silly with that change. Job is concerned that he has been punished, but that nothing he has done deserves these results.

    This post is a follow-up to Psalm 89: When Eternal Doesn’t Last, and you should read that post first.

    It’s funny that I begin this post with an illustration from Job, because Job provides a counterpoint to the theology I’m looking at. Jeremiah 18, which I cited in the previous post, talks about how if God is sending disaster, and the recipients of the disaster repent, God will repent of that disaster. One implication that might be drawn is that good deeds result in blessing, and bad deeds result in curses. One need look no further than Deuteronomy 28 to find this theology made explicit, and it is repeatedly hammered in through the various books of the Deuteronomic history.

    But what I’m more interested in here is the interactive nature of the texts, the way in which people’s actions are woven in with God’s will with the implication that you can change the future. Even if God has said things will go one way, that might be changed through human action.

    In theology we tend to reconcile the differences in some way. God might only appear to react to the actions of humans, but he actually knows precisely what is coming and he does precisely what he planned. It may be considered blasphemous to suggest otherwise. But open theism and process theology both suggest that God is more interactive than traditional theology holds, though to different degrees and in different ways.

    My interest here is in the way we read the biblical text, and the way that we understand prophecy and its fulfilment. I’ll get to the covenants shortly.

    Imagine a father who tells his children that he will take them all to the movies in the evening. Now think about the father’s mental processes. Did he suddenly realize that in the fixed future he would have taken his children to the movies, and thus he informed them of this information he had received (or divined, perhaps)? Or did he decide at this moment that he wanted to take his children to the movies, and that he would, in fact, do so this very evening?

    Given that this human father does not know the future, such as to see himself taking future action, we’ll have to assume the latter. He makes a decision in the present, and he announces it to his children by saying, “I’m going to take you to the movies.” At the point at which he makes that statement it’s true. Being an optimistic sort, this particular father doesn’t think of all the possible reasons he might not make it or might change his mind. He just says he’s going.

    Let’s imagine now that the children, having heard of their good fortune, decide that nothing else matters. They fail to do their chores. They ignore their mother. The fail to put away their toys. They say unfortunate things. In fact, they generally make life miserable for their parents.

    Now the father says, “Because you have been misbehaving, we are not going to the movies any more.” Does this make his earlier statement a lie? It was true (at least in intent) when he said it, but it does not actually take place.

    My suggestion is that prophecies are more like this father’s statement than they are like scenes which one might see in a crystal ball. (If crystal balls worked, which they don’t!) When God says “Nineveh will be destroyed in 40 days,” he doesn’t mean that he has observed the future and seen that this happens, but rather that he intends, in 40 days, to destroy Nineveh. That’s clearly the way the Ninevites understand it. It’s the way Jonah is afraid it’s going to work.

    I’m not certain how much difference there is between these two ways of thinking when it is God making the promises or predictions. It makes a great deal of difference in the way we think about what God has to say.

    Now we come to covenant, and I’d like to call our attention to Jeremiah 31:31-34:

    31 The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. 32 It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. 33 But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. (NRSV)

    (Note: I would use “lawful lord” rather than “husband” in this passage, but that gets beyond the scope of this blog post.)

    There are a few things to notice about this passage. First, the covenant came with promises (or are they predictions?). Does this make a difference? There are conditions. It is by violating these conditions that the covenant is broken. Once broken, the covenant is not in effect.

    Then comes the unheard of grace—a new covenant. It’s not a restoration of an old covenant. That one has been broken, and as we learned in Psalm 89, no matter what we do we cannot make the promises “have been” fulfilled, because they weren’t. David’s throne was removed. There was no one sitting on it. No amount of restoration years later can make what did not happen happen. Instead, there’s a new covenant. God is now on plan B, unless it’s plan C or D and we didn’t realize it. But at least it’s not plan A.

    And this is where Christians can go off the rail, especially considering how much this passage is used in the book of Hebrews. The easy Christian solution is to assume that the new covenant that God created is a covenant with the church. And I believe that God does indeed have a new covenant with the church.

    But having a covenant with his people the church does not really fulfil the words of Jeremiah 31:31-34, because there he says that a day is coming when he will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. That precludes one set of ideas, specifically that the church replaces Israel, and that Israel as such is no longer a player.

    But on the other hand we have the view that everything said in the old covenant, the one that was broken, must still be fulfilled. That is not, in my view, scripturally justified. In fact, that is to make the same mistake as those Jeremiah mentioned (7:1-20) who kept repeating: “The temple of the Lord! The temple of the Lord!” God calls attention immediately to Shiloh which had once been the seat of God’s tabernacle, but which had not done so well.

    So it’s now plan B, or perhaps plan C. (Shiloh?) How do we know the form that God’s blessing will take? Perhaps no eye has seen it nor any ear heard it, nor has it entered into any human heart (1 Cor. 2:9).

  • Psalm 51 in The Voice

    I’ve been including The Voice Bible in my lectionary reading for the last couple of weeks. My early impression was that it was fairly good as a paraphrase, though the italics, while fairly consistent, were a bit distracting. I thought they were unnecessary.

    I was wrong. I have yet to do any sort of objective comparison of the use of italics in one of the various formal equivalence translations, such as the KJV, but at this point my impression is that these italics are not fully consistent. At the same time, the added material does not all fall into what I would understand as a paraphrase. Since what belongs in a paraphrase is not well defined in any case, however, this may not be a valid criticism.

    Readers of The Living Bible and The Message have gotten used to some extensive rephrasing, and also a good deal of cultural translation. In the voice, we have a text that translates the text using principles of dynamic equivalence and then adds notes. Rather than using foot- or marginal notes, these notes are in the text in italics. The feel of reading this version is rather different.

    The Psalm for this week is Psalm 51, and some of the notes really grate on me. I probably need to spend more time reading and thinking about this, but let me give some examples again. (These are not intended as a representative sample. I’m listing passages that grated on me. Numbers refer to verses, not list numbers.)

    1.  … wipe out every consequence of my shameful crimes. — Huh?

    2. Thoroughly wash me, inside and out, … — What does this add?

    7. If You wash me, I will be whiter than snow. — If you want to make this a conditional, then it’s part of the translation. If it’s not justified, putting it in italics doesn’t help.

    9.  and erase my guilt from the record. — Again, what does this add?

    16. I would surrender my dearest possessions or destroy all that I prize to prove my regret, but … — This note just seems wrong to me. The verse is not talking about giving up possessions or destroying things you prize. It’s talking about presenting sacrifices to God. There’s a good theological point here, also often made by the prophets, and this note makes it less clear, in my opinion.

    Thus far these are just thoughts as I read. I haven’t formed an overall opinion on this translation. But I am concerned about some of this content.

     

  • Italics in The Voice – The Story of Bathseba

    Last week I mentioned that while I found the italics in The Voice more logical than I usually do in the formal equivalent translations that use the device (e.g. KJV, NKJV, NASB), I still found them annoying in the text. One goal of a dynamic equivalence translation is generally readability, and for me the italics tend to detract from that.

    Then there’s logic. Here are some examples from this coming Sunday’s lectionary passage from the Old Testament, 2 Samuel 11:1-15. This is not a complete list, just those that caught my eye. Numbers refer to verses

    1. most kings – I think readers could figure out that not every king in the world went to battle; it was the season.

    1. Joab out as general in charge of – Again, I think readers could figure this out. Was the addition necessary? Is it necessary to mark it as an addition? It’s pretty clearly implied. But the text also reads very sparsely, “David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel.” So why is “as general” in italics and “in charge of” not? Note also that “his” is interpreted (correctly) as “David’s”.

    1. whole army of Israel – again, a well justified addition, but I question whether the reader wouldn’t assume this easily, and whether, if one thinks the addition is justified, italics are necessary. It’s pretty clearly implied.

    2. Early one evening – In this case I think the Hebrew, l’eth ha;ereb, implies the “early” part pretty clearly, but saying “in the evening” in English seems to me to imply it as well.

    2. bathing on a roof below his – Here there’s clear justification for the italics, as this is definitely beyond simple dynamic equivalence translation. I’m not sure if all bathing would have taken place on a roof, but if that’s what the translators believe to be the case, these italics are justified by their rules.

    3.Uriah was one of David’s officers who had gone to war with the rest of David’s troops. – Here we get into a problem with the meaning of dynamic equivalence, which is intended to produce the same effect for the reader. It think letting the reader know where Uriah is weakens the story line. We’re only supposed to be reminded of where Uriah is as the story progresses. Thus my suggestion would be not to add this point. It will become clear later. If added, of course italics are justified by the rules expressed in the preface. (Note that in the course of 2 Samuel, the reader has not been introduced to Uriah at this point, so the storyteller is able to introduce the fact that not only had David committed adultery, but he’d committed it with the wife of one of his soldiers currently at war.)

    4-5. David couldn’t get her off his mind, so he sent messengers – What are the translators doing to the storyteller? The story line does not imply that David spent time thinking about it. It presents a “see, query, get” sequence that is very stark and does not portray David in a good light. The material should clearly be in italics, if added, but I don’t see that it contributes to the story.

    4-5 after the purifying bath after her period, her husband Uriah could not have been the father. – What is this? Bible exposition for dummies? Who missed this point?

    6. his general Joab – We have, presumably, forgotten who Joab is since the first verse.

    8. go to his own house to clean up, relax, and visit his wife. – Again, are we to assume he was going to his house to clean up and then ignore his wife? Surely this is implied by the text, but it makes for much poorer storytelling than does the original.

    That is enough sampling, I think. I see much less logic in the use of italics in this passage as well as in the way in which the translators choose to expand on the text. It’s possible that italics in the text doesn’t bother other people as much as it does me. I’m more than ordinarily aware of typography issues.

    But in this case we add an additional problem. Is the explanatory material making this story easier to read in English or is it just adding stuff? Any storyteller will be aware that adding implied information to a story does not necessarily improve it, and will often destroy it. If that added information was something that modern readers would not be likely to know, it might well be justified, according to the rules stated in the preface to The Voice.

    But I would say that modern readers are at least as likely as ancient ones to get the point that if Bathsheba was purifying herself after her period, that counted out conception prior to that event, and thus made David the father.

    I don’t want to become hypercritical of The Voice. Many people are reading it and benefitting. I don’t think anything here gives a wrong impression. It just takes a rather well done story and reduces its impact.

     

  • Psalm 89: When Eternal Doesn’t Last

    This week’s lectionary (RCL) texts for this week (Proper B11) form an interesting set, complete with the occasional weird cut-off for the scripture. For example, 2 Samuel 7:1-14a chops off the last part of Nathan’s message to David, the part about both the eternal covenant and the potential for God’s discipline. As I read this, I was thinking that they didn’t want to go into that “eternal covenant” territory.

    (Note that for this post I am reading the Old Testament as a Christian and I am not making use of Jewish interpretation. I use “Old Testament” when referring to the Hebrew scriptures as a part of the Christian Bible. I use “Hebrew scriptures” to refer to them as a literary collection or as the Jewish Bible.)

    But then we have Psalm 89:20-37. Here they have all the stuff about the eternal covenant, but they don’t go on to deal with the most important topic of the Psalm. Verse 38 (not part of the reading) begins:

    But you have spurned and rejected him;
    you are angry with your chosen king.
    You have repudiated your covenant with your servant;
    you have thrown his crown to the ground (38-39 NET).

    If you continue reading you get a scene that sounds very much like the Babylonian exile or thereafter, though there might be a couple of other dates that would fit in. In fact, the author of this Psalm is addressing God specifically because he doesn’t see the eternal covenant being fulfilled. Rather, at this point it is impossible for that covenant to be fulfilled as originally written because it called for a descendant of David to be on the throne “forever” and “forever” is not to be interrupted. Unfortunately “forever” has been interrupted.

    Now there are a number of Christian workarounds for this issue, and most readers likely will have one so readily to mind that they may never have noticed the problem in the first place. We get so used to an imposed or traditional interpretation that we actually hear the interpretation when we think we’re reading the text.

    Many of our common answers involve what I call in my essay Facing the Proof-Text Method “text trimming.” Using this method we trim a text down to size so we can claim either that we obey the command or that a promise or prediction has been fulfilled. In this case a common interpretation for this eternal covenant is that Jesus is of the lineage of David, and either is now sitting on David’s throne (conveniently, if figuratively, transported to heaven), or that at a future date Jesus will sit on David’s throne, thus fulfilling the terms of the covenant.

    But somebody future sitting on David’s throne again, or someone sitting on a throne somewhere else doesn’t fulfill the terms of the covenant as expressed here. In fact, these terms cannot and will not be fulfilled because they have already been overcome by events–specifically there was and is a time when no son of David has been sitting on the throne of Israel. To make this seem like a fulfillment, we must make the covenant itself say less than it actually says.

    If we transport ourselves briefly to a time when the door was still open, but this very issue was front and center, we may see some of the difficulties. I refer to the time when Jerusalem was under its final siege prior to the 586 BCE fall of Jerusalem. There we have some people saying that the city cannot fall because it is, after all, the location of God’s house, and God has promised that there will be a descendant of David on the throne.

    Jeremiah has to argue that there is no safety here. The city can fall. The king can be removed. The temple can be destroyed. He makes an extended argument to this effect in Jeremiah 18, which is sometimes quoted to support God’s sovereignty. “Yes, indeed! God can do whatever he wants!” But that is not the intent at all.

    There are times, Jeremiah, when I threaten to uproot, tear down, and destroy a nation or kingdom. But if that nation I threatened stops doing wrong, I will cancel the destruction I intended to do to it. And there are times when I promise to build up and establish a nation or kingdom. But if that nation does what displeases me and does not obey me, then I will cancel the good I promised to do to it (Jeremiah 18:7-10 NET).

    I recommend reading the entire chapter. The message here is not so much God’s sovereignty, though that is a fundamental assumption of the chapter. Rather, it is that God responds to our actions. Eternal blessings involve responsibilities. You can reverse the blessing, but the good news is that you can also reverse the punishment.

    The book of Jonah illustrates this point in narrative form. Jonah assumes the type of theology that Jeremiah states explicitly. Jonah is actually afraid that God will be merciful and won’t fulfill the promise, yet the story does not include any notion that Jonah preached a possibility of repentance. He hoped the Ninevites would not repent. He was annoyed when they weren’t destroyed. (Again, read the whole book! It’s only four chapters.)

    So what do we do with eternal promises that don’t happen precisely as predicted?

    First, Psalm 89 itself makes it clear that any variation here doesn’t involve abandoning Israel. Canonizing this as part of Christian scripture (or accepting it as canonical) indicates that we believe God is in action in Psalm 89, after the king has been removed. God is still active with his people Israel. We acknowledge through this act that Israel is not abandoned, even if we don’t always remember that we did.

    Second, we have another explicit statement of God’s approach in Jeremiah, this time in chapter 31:31-34. (Again, if you are not well acquainted with this passage, shame on you, go read it!) This is the famous passage used extensively in the book of Hebrews. I am reading it in Jeremiah’s context (to the best of my ability), however, and what I want to note is that the new covenant made is not with someone else, but with the house of Israel.

    There is an argument that God transfers his promises from Israel (Israel is said to have failed) to either the church or in some cases to another nation. There are those who think the United States has become God’s chosen people in some way. But a sudden transfer of the promises from Israel to the church is not a good option, because the new covenant is made with Israel.

    I base my interpretation here heavily on Jeremiah, even though I started with Psalm 89, because Jeremiah is the guy who had to deal with this issue when it was live. He had to proclaim his view of the covenant and the results of violating it in the face of torture and death, not sitting comfortably in front of his computer screen or in a church office somewhere.

    At the same time, if we as Christians are to understand this as God’s will, and ourselves as part of God’s will, we will have to see some way in which we become connected. Thus we “trim the text” in some ways, allowing modification, but it’s a modification that is, I think, well supported. Jeremiah maintains there is a new covenant. Even the old covenant called for Israel to bless the entire world.

    Paul makes his argument in Romans 9-11, which is again less concerned with God’s sovereignty, though that is again a fundamental assumption of the passage, but rather with how God deals with Israel. Like a parent, God doesn’t say, “I think I’ll put aside this one son in favor of someone else.” Rather, he looks to extend his blessing. Thus we gentiles are grafted in and receive some of God’s blessing. (It would be interesting to spend some time on Paul’s use of scripture in Romans 9-11. He does some interesting things!)

    It’s easy here to imagine that the Jews must somehow be blessed less. It’s hard for us to understand that God’s love and his blessings are not a limited commodity. When I became a step-parent I was careful never to suggest that my step-children should love their birth father less. I loved them as my own, but I knew the love was shared, yet I felt no loss. Love isn’t a limited commodity either. And we, limited as we are, can add more people into our circle of love. So can God.

    But even here we can make a mistake. We often see “chosen-ness” as being chosen to receive blessings, to be the best loved favorite. But God tends to choose people to do things. Jeremiah was chosen, just as Israel was chosen. It was a different time and place and different purpose (though not as different as it might seem), but being chosen wasn’t fun for Jeremiah. In fact, it was quite miserable.

    So the gentile church has no cause for boasting or for thinking of themselves as better than others. That’s not the point of being chosen by God. The point of being chosen by God is mission–whatever mission God has for you.

    Thus while I say that the promise cannot be fulfilled as written, because it wasn’t, yet God is faithful to act with consistency. A rebellious church might consider a serious reading of Jeremiah 18.

  • Is Cessationism Another Gospel?

    A guest contributor to The Jesus Creed asks this question. He comes at it from the angle of just how far such a teaching would be from what is implied in the gospels, from which our definition of “Gospel” should come.

    I’m not a cessationist, though I think it is important for people on the charismatic side of the spectrum to be careful in what they claim. The more false claims there are, the more likely people are to reject any and all claims. For me the most important reason to oppose cessationism is that I see no biblical warrant for suggesting that the Holy Spirit would cease to put these gifts in the church as long as there is a church.

    In fact, I suspect the main reason we have for denying that the gifts can continue is that we are embarrassed, either because there are no gifts (and we feel there should be), or because there are gifts and related behavior that is embarrassing, such as false claims and sensationalism.

    In the fifth comment on the Jesus Creed post, the commenter goes back to 1 Corinthians 13, and the “cease” language in that chapter. I’m not going to go into detail here, but I previously posted my notes on 1 Corinthians 12-14 (follow the links to the next post at the top right, and you can work your way through the whole series). I believe 1 Corinthians 12-14 must be seen as a unit within the larger context of 1 Corinthians, and in that context, I don’t think the expectation that the gifts would cease relates to any time while there’s still a church.

    In fact, Paul is dealing here with some of the embarrassments I listed above. The Holy Spirit is active in the Corinthian church, but people are active as well, and people like exciting things. How do spiritual gifts fit in with being spiritual people? How do we relate as a body to spiritual things? Those are the questions Paul is answering.

    But is cessationism another gospel? “Another gospel” is one of those epithets we use to attack those with whom we disagree strongly, ever since Paul used it in Galatians. It’s a way of setting a particular teaching outside the bounds of fellowship.

    I disagree with cessationists, but I’ve met plenty of cessationists who believe in God’s present and active power, but who simply don’t believe that God works through giving gifts to individuals. For example, for them there is no active gift that would make a person a healer or miracle worker, but the church can get together and pray for someone and a miraculous healing is possible. I would note that I agree that gifts aren’t given to individuals as such, but rather to the church, but Paul clearly envisions individuals within the church exercising those gifts. So while the gift belongs to the body, the individual is the steward.

    Thus I disagree with cessationists, but I don’t see where they would merit the title of teaching “another gospel.” In fact, suggesting that if one’s beliefs do not reflect the whole Gospel as taught in the four gospels one is teaching another gospel, means that we would be deciding fellowship based on our understanding of everything in the four gospels, which would surely mean that just about every doctrine would become an essential determiner of fellowship.

    Any time we’re off track on one of these doctrines there is obvious danger. But I’m pretty sure all of us are in error on something, possibly many things, and somehow the church struggles on. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to correct bad doctrine. It just suggests we should do so as graciously as possible and avoid anathematizing phrases.

     

  • Ken Schenck on Women in Ministry

    Ken Schenck outlines his reasons for supporting complete equality in ministry, and he even uses the t-word — trajectory, as I did in my previous post. The arguments are related to those used by Kubo, but Schenck goes into some detail on the specific texts rather than just laying out the approach.

    I think all of the referenced posts illustrate the importance of going over our hermeneutics at the beginning of a discussion like this. Too often we shoot past one another because while we’re reading the same texts, we’re using a different method of interpretation. And the most varied aspect of interpretation is the way in which a text is applied to the interpreter’s context.

     

     

  • Alan Brill Interviews David M. Carr

    … and a mighty interesting interview it is, including discussion of how authors, readers, and texts were understood in the ancient world.

  • Bruce Epperly Interview on Philippians

    Bruce Epperly, author of Philippians: A Participatory Study Guide, was interviewed today on WGTS. I’m listening to this right now and it’s great! He’s applying spiritual disciplines from the book to daily life.

  • Connecting the Scriptural Dots – From Then to Then … to Now

    When it came time for third year Greek at Walla Walla College (now University), I had Dr. Sakae Kubo, who had just become dean of the School of Theology. Taking a Greek class with Dr. Kubo was an experience. I credit him with bringing my Greek to the level that allowed it to stick with me. He gave me a workout!

    Recently he wrote two articles for Spectrum, the first Slavery, Circumcision, and the Subordinate Role of Women (Nov.  21, 2011) and second Jesus, Galileo, and the Interpretation of Scripture (Dec. 19, 2011). The Seventh-day Adventist Church is going through a great deal of controversy right now over the ordination of women. Right now they have women as “commissioned” ministers. In local churches in North America and Europe, these ministers perform the same function as ordained ministers, just under another name. One of the key questions of the moment is whether women can be conference presidents, which would place them in a position similar to that of Bishop in the United Methodist Church.

    Kubo’s basic argument is that in the case of circumcision we see a change in right and wrong within scripture itself. At one time circumcision is commanded, and then at another that command is set aside and membership in God’s people is determined by a different means. He notes as well that the new means, faith in Christ, is no longer male-centered as was circumcision. In the case of slavery, we came to understand that slavery was wrong at a much later date, but nonetheless a change was made.

    He extends this argument to dealing with the subordinate role of women, and thus to ordination and to eligibility for other offices in the church. (This is a very abbreviated form of the argument. You should read both articles linked before commenting on Kubo’s position.)

    Now this is not a complete argument for the ordination of women. One could (and should) discuss some specific texts as well. But what Kubo has done is provide a framework for the egalitarian argument. This is not how it is often done, but I think it is a more robust approach. It is similar to arguments I made earlier regarding trajectories in Scripture.

    That is why I used “then to then” in the title before “to now.” We often do biblical interpretation in a simple progression of discovering what the Bible writer was saying to people then, determining from that eternal principles, and then applying those principles to a modern situation. This is similar to the nutshell process illustrated given by Michael Patton on his blog.

    That approach is generally quite useful, but we also need to recognize that there is more than one “then” involved generally before we get to a good general principle. And if we look at multiple points of “then,” such as statements regarding vengeance that I referenced in my trajectories post, then we may find that the eternal principles are somewhat different than what we would get if we took just one passage and went from the “then” statement through theology to the “now” statement.

    Now many egalitarians make their argument almost exclusively with the very same exegetical methods as complementarians, which sometimes results in some odd readings of the various texts. I would argue that the key here is in the hermeneutics, and particularly in the way we get at the principles and apply them to modern times. It is much easier, though not necessarily simple, to discover what a passage meant to the original hearers/readers.

    I believe that Kubo’s method allows one to both be very faithful to what the text said originally, while also being flexible enough to apply the principles to modern times in a valid way.

    But why do we need flexibility? The accusation is generally that those who are more liberal in their interpretation are flexible in order to avoid the plain commands of Scripture. I would say instead that the flexibility is required so that we can be faithful to the broadest (and I think clearest) principles of Scripture. I see a very clear effort to move people from one set of practices to another in many areas. Galatians 3:28 provides a template for this, I believe.

    But in addition, I think we often ignore the story (or stories) of Scripture, and the fact that what is practiced is not what we think the authors are preaching. I think the evidence of women in leadership in the early church needs to be laid alongside our understanding of specific commands. Which should have priority? Perhaps if we follow the trajectory, neither. Both can have their place.