Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Bible Passages

  • Point It at Yourself First

    One recommendation I make for Bible study is simple: Look for what speaks to, and yes convicts, you first. It’s very easy to read the Bible and find all the things that other people ought—or ought not—to do. This results in our practice of having lists of “clean” sins and “dirty” sins.

    Clean sins are the ones I’m personally tempted to. It’s just natural to fall for those temptations and I don’t really have to worry too much about them. For example, I’m overweight. I’m working on it, but I’m not a good example in that area. That’s my “clean” sin. Of course smoking, to which others are tempted but I’m not, is a “dirty” sin. It’s easy for me to condemn someone else for abusing their body by smoking when I have plenty of things to work on myself.

    Of course, what I mean here by “clean” and “dirty” is the way we treat those sins, as though my sins are OK, but those of other people are horrible, not the actual nature of the sins, none of which are “clean.”

    Today I read an excellent example of the right way to approach the application of a text of scripture Todd Wood is a creationist who teaches at Bryan College in Dayton, TN. I read his blog to get the perspective of an intelligent young age creationist who is also somewhat unusual in the exceptionally fair way he treats opponents.

    He was looking at II Timothy 3:16-17, and decided to look at the broader context. He noted the phrase “having itching ears” and “They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.”

    Now I’ve heard this verse any number of times, and generally teachers are prepared to point out the myths that other people believe, and explain how they believe that because of their itching ears. I’ve been the target of this, and I must confess I’ve done it myself.

    Not a good plan! Not the right way to apply scripture!

    I should look at myself first.

    That’s what Todd did:

    Now your average creationist reads that as a condemnation of evolution, right? That’s the myth what “itching ears want to hear,” or so we’ve been told.

    But I’m not your average creationist, so I wondered what myth I’ve turned to instead of “sound doctrine.” I think the danger is ever present, or Paul wouldn’t have warned Timothy so sternly to avoid it. That means the warning is for everyone, especially for those who think they’ve got it all together doctrinally (like us creationists).

    Precisely!

    Now if you think my point is that finally a creationist looked at the possibility he might be getting his doctrinal positions out of order, you’re missing my point. Todd is providing us with an excellent example of how we should approach a scripture. I’m a theistic evolutionist. It’s easy for me to see the faults and failings of young age creationists.

    In other words, the question to ask is what sort of myths am I going after? What do my itching ears want to hear? When you read this, ask what your itching ears want to hear.

    I’m not arguing that we should be unwilling to consider that our doctrinal positions or our scriptural interpretations are right. In fact, after we’ve done our best to study out a position, we need to stand up for what we believe to be the truth. But we also need to constantly look at ourselves.

    In addition to asking whether we’re believing myths, I think we need to ask whether we have placed some doctrinal position of our own in a place it doesn’t deserve, i.e. whether we have made an idol of some particular position. Have I made my position on origins, baptism, ecclesiology, education, or anything else more important than the good news of Jesus?

    Amongst the things for which scripture is valuable presented in II Timothy 3:17, are reproof and correction. Let’s receive it for ourselves!

     

  • Bad Girls, Bad Girls

    Rachel Held Evans, in her Sunday Superlatives links, provides a link to a post by Sarah Bubar on The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood blog titled The Bad Girl’s Club.

    In this post are featured four women for this “bad girl’s [sic] club”: Julian of Norwich, Ann Hutchinson, Margaret Fell Fox, and Phoebe Palmer.

    Now it’s not my plan to explain how these four weren’t bad girls. Rather, I’m interested in just what Sarah Bubar thinks they have in common. Apparently, the real problem is that they all failed to bow to the proper authorities and thus came up with doctrines that are, perhaps, objectionable. I say, “perhaps” because I would have a different opinion on certain of these.

    There are two critical things in common between these women, as far as I can see. First, they all saw visions or emphasized spiritual experience. Second, they exercised, or tried to exercise leadership.

    I recall once discussing biblical inspiration with another man. At one point I asked how, if one hears a voice, does one know whether it’s from God or not. His response was, “We’re not talking about voices; we’re talking about the Bible.”

    Well, I’m afraid that if you want to read the Bible you are going to read things written by and about people who heard voices. In view of this post, I’d add that your going to read things by and about people who saw visions.

    And you’re also going to read about women who did all those things. So here’s my list of bad girls.

    1. How about Miriam, a prophetess? She was leading singing, but there must have been a reason she was called a prophetess. And yes, I know about her later experiences for challenging Moses; but remember she wasn’t the only one who had such problems (Exodus 15:20-21).
    2. How about Deborah (Judges 4:4), prophetess and judge? You may argue that Miriam was leading women, but Deborah went much further than that. You know, this prophetess thing pretty definitely indicates some kind of spiritual experience.
    3. How about Huldah (2 Kings 22:14-20), giving God’s instructions to the men of the temple in Josiah’s time? Visionary experiences and teaching the men, I’d say.
    4. Or Anna, a prophetess who affirmed Jesus (Luke 2:36-38). If women can’t speak with authority, why record her words for all Christian generations?

    But there’s another side. How many men who do not claim any special spiritual experiences go off track. We’ve had plenty of heresies started by men whose method for finding their own “new truths” was in searching through texts.

    The fact is that you can find good an bad examples of people of either gender in any time and place.

    And since I note that women in scripture exercised more authority than certain modern Christians believe is legitimate, I think there’s good reason to think that exclusions of women were, in fact, limited in terms of time and place.

     

  • Reading Acts Series on the New Perspective on Paul

    I’ve written a bit about this before, but it’s hardly my main area of expertise.

    Philip J. Long has written a very nice introductory series on the New Perspective on Paul. Here are the links:

    Basics of the New Perspective –

    I link to this in detail because I think it is one of the best short introductions I’ve read, and it’s available right her in blog form. I am frequently asked for a short version of just what is the New Perspective on Paul. Now I have something easily available that I can recommend.

  • The Biblioblogs Strike Back

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

  • Brannon Howse Quotes an Etymological Fallacy

    Well, not a terrible one, at least not in the quoted material, which is from John MacArthur. But Howse makes an even bigger error. He first quotes Romans 16:17-18:

    Now I urge you, brethren, note those who cause divisions and offenses, contrary to the doctrine which you learned, and avoid them. For those who are such do not serve our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly, and by smooth words and flattering speech deceive the hearts of the simple. [as quoted in referenced article, emphasis his]

    In commenting, he then quotes John MacArthur:

    The little word simple of the Hebrew language is real concrete, not abstract like Greek. Simple comes from a root word that means an open door. And a simple-minded person was somebody whose mind was always open… the simpleton was the person who had not enough discernment or discrimination or knowledge or understanding or wisdom to know what to accept and what to reject. And the Word of God will teach you how to close the door. It will teach you how to be wise. Wise is chakam in Hebrew, it means skilled in all aspects of living. [Howse’s source: John MacArthur, The Nature and Sufficiency of Scripture: http://www.gty.org/Resources/Sermons/GTY111_The-Nature-and-Sufficiency-of-Scripture?q=simpleton]

     

    Do you notice the interesting error there? Howse quotes Romans, written in Greek, and then quotes John MacArthur, commenting on a Hebrews word. Now while I don’t think MacArthur’s definition of the Hebrew word is too bad (and he gives the actual reference, Psalms 19:8 [7 Heb], from which one can discover the intended word, pethiy), I still think demonstrating it from the etymology in this case is not the best plan. The word can be studied quite well by usage as it occurs 19 times in Hebrew scripture.

    A second issue for me would be whether this word is indeed more concrete than the Greek word used in Romans 16:18, akakõn. That seems plenty concrete to me. But of course, John MacArthur made no reference to Romans 16:18. He was dealing with Psalm 19:8, so we don’t know that MacArthur thinks pethiy is more concrete than akakõn.

    Howse, on the other hand, borrowed the etymology of a Hebrew word in order to apply it to a Greek passage. I’m not concerned with whether you agree with Howse’s position on the major topic. The problem here is demonstrating a lack of good procedure and knowledge in applying biblical languages.

  • 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.

     

  • Thoughts on Translating Psalm 22

    First, two warnings. I’m not going to go into detail on the numerous translation difficulties in Psalm 22 and this post results from a book currently in the final stages of release from my company, Energion Publications. So if you want to avoid the potential commercial side, skip this one. On the other hand, that’s the book cover to the left!

    The book is a collection of responses to the Psalms written by various members of my home church (First UMC, Pensacola). One of my contributions was a translation, and I chose Psalm 22 because of the numerous translation issues.

    This process underlined for me the number of different possibilities there are in translation. We accept pretty readily that a piece of literature has particular circumstances and purposes for which it is written. It has a setting. It has a background. This could be said of any act of communication, but especially of something written.

    Similarly a translation has a purpose, or perhaps multiple purposes. In this case, my translation was to fit into a collection of reflections. The ideal would be that it be in some way a reflection of what the Psalm has meant to me. Would that be a translation? In my opinion, yes.

    But my personal bias would suggest I make every effort to reproduce the original form of the Hebrew text and reflect the forms of Hebrew poetry in my translation. I suppose that would have been an acceptable approach—it would have reflected me as well as the historical text.

    But then I also thought about the uses of the Psalms in Christian worship. While I’m translating a Hebrew Psalm, I’m doing so in the context of a collection created by and for a Christian congregation. This may not be used in the liturgy of the church, but it might well reflect the church at worship.

    Thus I made a choice to allow the LXX and the Vulgate to have a greater than normal impact on my final translation, and while I reflected the sparseness of some of the Hebrew expressions, my effort was much more intended to make it easy for the modern reader to understand. At the same time I intentionally did not take all the foreignness and roughness out of it. Some of it sounds abrupt.

    Readers of the New Testament will find the passages the church has traditionally read christologically translated in fairly traditional terms. They’ll find a few mildly obscure passages still obscure. I felt a certain freedom in this regard since I can be certain that nobody will be using this particular translation as their standard, authoritative translation of the passage.

    I would again note that I find any claim that all translations must aim at just one thing to be unjustified. There is room for a variety of translation approaches and even the translation of a variety of texts. If my translation reflects the LXX in places, I remember that the LXX was the Bible of much of the early Christian community.

    What do I think of my own translation? That’s hard to say. It was an effort of several days and I could have spent a good deal more time on it than I did. In fact, it’s hard for me to decide that I’m done with such a translation. I guarantee that if I went over it at this moment I’d wind up making changes.

    My wish is that we could judge translations in terms of their aims and how well they accomplish them rather than against some ideal plan that all translations must follow. I like Clear Accurate and Natural, and generally commend that approach for people’s reading and worship Bibles. I like a close reflection of the forms and culture of the source for serious study.

    Approach must match occasion and purpose. Or am I allowed to use the word “must”? 🙂

  • A Four Year Lectionary

    Will Humes has drawn up a four year lectionary, which he believes offers the chance to give the gospel of John its own place in worship, and also covers some passages we never see in our three year version. He’s looking for comment.

    My immediate comment is that I really like the basic idea. I’m going to spend some more time looking at the specific passages before I make further comment. One of the great blessings I see to lectionary preaching, besides covering the various seasons, is that it prevents a preacher from getting stuck on a small set of favorite passages. The inclusion of additional wisdom readings, as well as a year for the reading of John, should help with that problem.

    Head on over and comment. This is a project worth thinking about.

     

  • Quote of the Day – Way of Christ vs Way of Caesar

    From the forthcoming participatory study guide to Philippians, by Bruce Epperly:

    The way of Christ differs markedly from the way of Caesar, who was also worshipped as a deity. Christ’s peace is based on non-violence and inclusion, while Caesar’s peace is based on the sword and subjugation.

    (Used by permission.)

  • A Sense of the Spiritual

    I once met a woman who claimed that Jesus had come to her in her kitchen and spoken to her. The reaction of friends, neighbors, and even family to this story was fairly negative. She was regarded as a bit odd, and finally quit talking about it. It was only with some hesitation that she told the group of which I was a part.

    Now I see no particular reason to doubt that she saw precisely what she saw. It was, I believe, a visionary experience, and she would have no objection to its being described as such. But the general reaction to such an experience varies between tolerance and avoidance.

    That story came to mind as I was reading the lectionary text from Genesis 28:10-19, which tells the story of Jacob’s dream of the ladder at Bethel. Jacob has a dream. Note that like the lady I met, he doesn’t try to claim some sort of physical presence. Yet his reaction (v. 17) is that “this is none other than God’s house, and this is heaven’s gate.” For him the presence of God was a profound reality, even though it was manifested in something as simple as a dream.

    If someone said they saw Jesus in a dream, we would have a more positive reaction than people did to the visionary experience. We expect dreams. But we wouldn’t generally respond as Jacob did, considering the experience a profound spiritual event.

    One of the things I suggest in trying to understand stories in the Bible is that we come as close as we can to understanding the way in which the characters in Bible times would have reacted. Otherwise we will fail to get the full impact of the story.

    Spiritual things were very near, and God’s presence, even in a dream, was deeply sacred.