Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Bible Passages

  • Reason is all over Bible Study

    In a post on Complegalitarian, Molly Alley discusses how reasonable it is to hold a doctrine that assumes that women will never mature, as in men where once boys who needed the guidance of a parent, but eventually they become mature and are considered ready for leadership. But what about women?

    Of course, as an egalitarian, I think the idea that women can’t be in leadership is nonsense, and I want to focus on that word, nonsense, and the phrase good common sense in Molly’s concluding question that I quote below, along with the related term reasonable.

    Molly says:

    In other words, why does female subjection not seem to make good common sense (to me, anyways) when so many of the other commands do?

    Now there’s a lively discussion of Molly’s actual point on that blog, and it’s one I’m not going to get into. What I’m going to discuss here takes off at a sharp angle from the topic, but it may explain why I find it next to impossible to get into these debates.

    For many people that I encounter the idea that one uses reason or what is reasonable as part of one’s interpretation of scripture is somewhere between irritating and blasphemous, and it’s weighted toward blasphemous. Obviously God is wiser than we are, and he could ask us to do things that don’t seem reasonable to us, but that are reasonable from his perspective. Of course the question remains (and I discuss it in my book When People Speak for God), of just one decides whether one is doing something that is really stupid, or whether one is using divine wisdom.

    The fact is that we all use reason when we read, interpret, and apply the scriptures. There’s no way out. Our reason is what we use to process information. We can hope it’s reason guided by the Holy Spirit, but that doesn’t make it any less a matter of reason. So the question is not whether reason will be involved. The question is just how well one’s reason will function when it is involved.

    Let’s consider Molly’s question. There are several perspectives from which I can ask the question whether a command, such as the command not to let women speak in church, is reasonable.

    1. I can look from my own perspective. Does this look reasonable in my context? If I am as objective about this as possible, I will look at the potential harm and benefit to see whether a specific command works where I live. A good question is this: Does the command have the effect in my environment that it would have had when it was first given? The only reason I use the original context here is that it is helpful to have some anchor point when discussing the impact of a particular policy. This is largely a question of application and applicability.
    2. You can ask about the perspective of the original author. Does this command look reasonable as you interpret it in the world of that author? Does it appear reasonable that the command would have the effect that is clearly intended? What is that effect? (You can then check that effect with point #1.)
    3. What about God’s perspective? Since none of us have even a prayer of a God’s eye view, what I mean here is to ask just how universally the command could reasonably be expected to be in application. Does it look like the sort of thing that should be universal? As an example, “you shall not commit murder” is uttered and presented in a way that looks like it is intended universally. “Hide yourself by the Wadi Cherith” looks like it’s intended very specifically. But there will likely be a whole range of commands and statements between that will not be nearly so obvious.
    4. Does the command make sense theologically? Most of us have theological baggage. Some consider it an ideal to jettison all of that and come at the text anew. For exegesis, I think that can be helpful, but when it comes down to application, it has to fit into a system. Many of the Biblical commands that we no longer follow are regarded as inapplicable because of our existing theology. For example, the command to bring an animal to the tabernacle and sacrifice it instantly registers as “no applicable to me” because my theology says that one has passed away.
    5. Is there another reasonable way to understand the text? Many people struggle with texts believing they have to accept a certain interpretation when the solution might lie in rechecking the exegesis and application.

    Reason is not merely useful, it’s essential in applying the Bible to our lives. Molly has asked a good question. Even when we do something that appears weird because we believe God has commanded it, some combination of revelation, reason, and experience has brought us to the conclusion that, despite popular opinion, our course of action is reasonable. Thus I think Molly’s question is a good one, and could be applied to many aspects of this situation.

    As a sort of postscript, let me note that I do not find a modern application of the various texts that indicate that women shouldn’t preach or enjoy leadership roles to be reasonable at all. There are a number of reasons for this, certainly including the evidence that women carried out those roles in the earliest stages of the church. One of the best indications that a command is not universal is that you find exceptions in the very literature in which the command is contained.

    Thus I tire of detailed exegetical arguments about these texts on both sides, even though I understand my more conservative brothers and sisters feel the need to go that way. Paul speaks pastorally to his situation. It should be no shock that he doesn’t overturn every aspect of the culture–he’s overturning enough already. But my situation in the modern world is so much different, that I find it extremely unreasonable to try to apply Paul’s pastoral advice in unadjusted form to the modern church. Thus when Paul says “husband of one wife” in my application I think “monogamous.” When Paul argues based on Adam being created first, I think, “I bet that made sense to Paul and that audience and got them on board, but it doesn’t make any sense to me.

    But then I guess I’m a dangerous liberal (per my accusers) or passionate moderate (by my own confession) and I’m just intent on ignoring the Bible. Well, no, not actually. I think the Bible is a gold mine of principles, and more importantly it guides me in hearing God speak to my situation today. I’m glad that God continues to speak, and today he does so both through women and men.

  • 2 Corinthians 3:17-18: Freedom to do What?

    2 Corinthians 3:12-18 (CEV) (from BibleGateway.com).

    This post is less about the exegesis, which I’m only covering briefly, and more about application. I have frequently heard this passage (verses 17 and 18) cited in support of a free and unscripted style of worship. In particular, the phrase “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (NRSV) is often repeated on its own in response to any complaints about order in worship. The intended meaning is that if the Holy Spirit is present in a worship service, then restrictions on how people act in worship and what they do for worship will be removed.

    Now I suspect nobody intends it to mean anything quite so radical, but since it is used in response to questions about order, it is hard to tell where people draw the line. I want to make clear that I consider unscripted worship to be valuable as one approach to worship. My point here is not to challenge the idea of unscripted worship and call for a more liturgical style, but rather to put this text in context. Unscripted worship should be supported in a different way.

    Note also that the terms “charismatic,” “contemporary,” and “free or unscripted” are often used with reference to worship nearly synonymously, but that usage produces a dangerous confusion. A charismatic worship service is most frequently one in which you can expect a manifestation of the gifts of the Spirit (at least as understood by that congregation), such as prophecy or words of knowledge, and sometimes tongues. A contemporary worship service is usually less structured and involves contemporary music, but the structure may simply be different. In one local church, a worship service is planned that uses contemporary praise and worship music, but does so in the context of a very liturgical service that might even be called high church. It will be interesting to see how that develops.

    But 2 Corinthians 3:17-18 has only a very tangential relationship to all of this. If we look for the context, in broad terms Paul is defending his ministry. In this case he has come to a more specific point about the glory of the new covenant ministry. He compares this to his own description of Moses and the way in which the glory of the Lord shone from his face after he had been in God’s presence on the mountain. This is loosely based on Exodus 34, but Paul’s focus is different. First, he describes the purpose of the veil as being to cover not the glory itself, but its fading. Second, Paul switches the location of the veil and its function. It is now placed over the heart of contemporary readers. Paul is alluding to Exodus 34, but not interpreting that story.

    This veil on the heart prevents readers from understanding when they read the law. You could connect this to the way in which it concealed the fading of the glory according to Paul, and understand the readers to still see the old covenant as carrying the glory, while Paul wishes to attribute that glory to the new covenant. In any case, it is necessary for the reader to have that veil removed, otherwise they will not see or understand the new covenant and its glory when they read.

    When someone turns to the Lord, that veil is removed, and they can see that true glory. It is debated whether this is Christ or God the Father, but I tend to prefer Christ. This is not my primary subject. Furnish, whose commentary I am currently working through, maintains that this is God the Father. I think there is a substantial theme in the New Testament that suggests that seeing the scriptures through Christ is the key to new understanding. This is reflected in the Emmaus experience (Luke 24:13-35) and also in the book of Hebrews. Perhaps I’ll expand on this in a later post. (Then again, I’ll probably forget!)

    In any case, when the reader turns to the Lord, the veil is removed (16). Then we are reminded that the Lord is Spirit (skipping a bit of linguistic argument on that phrase), and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. I like the CEV’s rephrasing, “17The Lord and the Spirit are one and the same, and the Lord’s Spirit sets us free. 18So our faces are not covered. They show the bright glory of the Lord, as the Lord’s Spirit makes us more and more like our glorious Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:17-18).

    There is a specific type of freedom here, the freedom to see God’s glory as displayed in the new covenant. When we can do that, then we are able to look there, and this results in our transformation. There is nothing here said about styles of worship directly.

    I do, however, think there is a slight implication about worship. There is a point here to experiencing the presence of God, and in worship, we can hope this happens. But it happens in different ways for different people. I am led into God’s presence through Bach, Handel, and sometimes Haydn, for example. My wife truly enters worship through contemporary music. I like a good order of worship; she prefers freedom and flexibility. This passage provides us a direction to look as a result of our time of worship, whether of hearing the word of the Lord spoken, reading it, or anything else. We long to look upon God’s glory, to the extent that we can, and allow him to transform us. That is not Paul’s point, however.

    It is important to see commonly used passages such as this in context, because they often get a quite heavy weight of baggage all their own in the context of the church community, sometimes ending up used for something that would be quite foreign to the one who originally wrote them. New ideas may be valid, but they need to be supported in other ways.

  • Reading the Passion Narratives

    I was reading from Darrell Bock’s book Jesus According to Scripture, and I was struck by a footnote. I’ve been reading from the passion narrative in Matthew, because it is the lectionary selection for this year, but I like to read Bock’s notes because he points out the similarities and differences between the various accounts.

    In his note on the last supper (p. 359n54) he comments that:

    . . . To the extent that an interconnected tradition makes these points about the event, whether explicitly or implicitly, the order of the Gospels becomes less relevant, beca7use the basic symbolism of the event is there in all these elements in all versions.

    I’m not writing to critique Bock’s approach, though he is somewhat more conservative than I am. But I’d like to suggest a couple of things about reading. First, no single gospel story makes a train wreck of the passion accounts, i.e. the message is still there. Second, each gospel account has a unique emphasis, which we should watch.

    We tend to read these stories for history, which is why reconstructions of the sequence of events, telling us precisely how many cock crowings there were, or when Peter made each denial, or clarifying just who went to the tomb and when they did it. That sort of thing has a certain interest. But when we’re looking at those details and compiling a full story from our multiple sources, we can easily be missing the message of the gospels.

    As a believer, I like to read these stories simply for the impact, the symbolism, or might I say, the “mythical” element. “Myth” has a bad name, but one element of myth is that the story has a meaning beyond the narrated facts. A myth explains how one’s world hangs together and why. What I mean by looking at the mythical elements is to read the story for its broader meaning in salvation history. Change the questions. Go asking, “How can this story impact my life and the life of my church?”

    I have no problem with reading for history, but such reading is only a small part of truly absorbing the text and letting God work on your life through what you read. I would recommend reading or hearing these texts read aloud. I know the passion narratives are long, but the gospels spend all that time on them because they are important. Read them slowly. Absorb the symbolism. Let God speak.

    It’s much more important than sorting out the crowing cocks and denying disciple!

  • Thinking about the Servant – Isaiah 50:4-9a

    I made a mental connection this morning while reading the lectionary passages for Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday. I’m not certain just how valid this is, but I thought I’d write about it. There are multiple views of the servant passages in 2nd Isaiah. Some see each passage separately, with some being prophecies of the Messiah, and others not. Others see a collective Israel that occasionally gets specified down to one individual.

    This passage, seen as Messianic by many Christians, is one that is frequently identified with the voice of the prophet himself, the writer of 2nd Isaiah. He has a message to give, it comes from God, and he is to present it in spite of opposition. (As an example, see Joseph Blenkinsopp, Anchor Bible: Isaiah 40-55, pp. 319-323.)

    Earlier in the day I wrote a devotional emphasizing that Philippians 2:5-11 addresses us collectively as a church (“you” is plural) and not merely as individuals. It seems to me that the collective and the individual commands are much less distinguished in scripture, i.e. the tasks to be performed by God’s people and those performed by God’s person tend to blend into one another. Thus an extremely “clean” interpretation is not particularly desirable. The focus can shift freely.

    I should note that I am already quite invested in a collective interpretation of the servant passages, with Jesus Christ presented in the New Testament as the ideal Israelite, not to mention ideal person, but I think this connection kind of gives me a better feel for how this works.

  • Parsimony of Miracle Assumptions: Matthew 21:1-7

    Or I might title this “Was Jesus a Horse Thieving Magician?”

    I learned this story so long ago I don’t remember just when it was, but I got a Sunday School version that left me with the impression that because Jesus was God, either he knew everything, or his father revealed to him the location of the donkey, and the words to use so that the disciples could get away with it. Probably the divinity of Jesus and his command shone through his disciples, thus preventing their arrest as horse (or donkey) thieves.

    This left a glow in my mind until I thought about the story some more later. I’ve observed this same interpretation in debates online. Someone objects to the story on the basis that Jesus is supposed to be sinless, so how could he steal a donkey? (Or perhaps merely borrow one without permission.) Sadly, in the most recent case I observed, the next comment from the defender of Christianity (non-professional variety) was that Jesus could take the donkey because he was God, and after all owned everything. So who was the owner to object?

    While it’s true that in Christian theology Jesus is God, and God owns everything. But if you think about it a bit, such an argument could make the sinlessness of Jesus pretty meaningless. Why was he sinless? Well, anything he did could be justified by the fact that he was God.

    Now real Christian apologists will generally regard this as a particularly weak stab at Christianity, though I would have to say that I take seriously those objections that objectors take seriously, even though it sometimes requires effort. There is, however, no reason to get stuck on this one.

    There is no need to justify donkey stealing. Let’s go back to the start, sticking with only the version in Matthew 21. There is simply no suggestion of a miracle, such as miraculous knowledge of the donkey’s location. There is no suggestion that divinity needed to flash forth to make the story work. It is simply told bare bones. So supposing this is a modern scene, and you’re walking down a road with someone, and he says, “Go over to that farm you can see off to the left, and you’ll find a horse tied to a tree. Untie it, and bring it here. If anyone asks, say, ‘His owner needs him.’”

    Would you assume that your walking partner had received a vision, or that he knew there was a horse normally tied up there, or perhaps had some valid reason to know there was one tied up there now? Would you assume that he was asking you to participate in a bold act of horse theft, or that he had the appropriate rights to use the animal? I suspect our first assumption would be that the person had naturally acquired information, and that unless he was some kind of criminal, that he was not choosing this casual means to launch a life of crime.

    So why do we assume that Jesus did otherwise? We know he fed the 5,000, but we don’t assume that he miraculously produced every breakfast. We assume he’s sinless, so why would we assume an explanation here that opens him up to the charge of theft?

    Imagine this story instead. The day before, Jesus was going through that village, and a follower there offered him the donkey for his use. He told the man that he didn’t need the donkey that day, but would call for it later, and they agree where it would be. When he was ready to use it, Jesus used this purely mundane information to call for a donkey to which he had every right. And that is hardly the only possible set of assumptions that works with the story.

    So why didn’t Matthew fill in a few more blanks for us? First, I doubt he thought anyone would make the assumption that Jesus was stealing the donkey. Second, Matthew is trying to present Jesus as king, and telling the story in this bare bones way leaves open the impression of a sovereign requisitioning what he needed to accomplish his mission.

    Most objections to scripture result more from what we say about scripture than from what scripture says itself. Don’t get stuck with unnecessary assumptions, even if they sound miraculous and holy.

  • A Difference in Agendas – John 11:1-16

    I noticed a theme in this passage that I think is important. If you look at the response of the disciples when Jesus proposes to go to Bethany (v. 7-8). They believe it’s too dangerous to go there. It appears to me that for the two days that Jesus delayed, the disciples assumed that he was not going to Judea because of the danger.

    It doesn’t say that explicitly at the beginning of the chapter, but since that is their immediate reaction when Jesus says he is going, I suspect they spent those two days in relief that Jesus had chosen not to go to Lazarus, even though he was sick.

    But when Jesus announces that he will go to Bethany, the disciples suddenly realize that Jesus is not on their program. He has a kingdom agenda. He is going to do the thing that brings glory to God. Ultimately, this trip is dangerous–so dangerous that it leads to the cross.

    The question for each one of us is this: When we come to that fork in the road, which agenda is first for us: personal safety or advancing the kingdom?

  • Anointing in the Passages for Lent 4A

    For finding lectionary passages online, I recommend Textweek.com, which provides some quite valuable services for lectionary passages.

    This is just a brief note on this theme which has been very striking to me as I repeatedly read these passages. Anointing has a variety of implications in the Bible, and these passages would allow one to teach or preach on those uses.

    In 1 Samuel 16:1-13, God instructs Samuel to anoint David as king. In this case anointing represents a selection and empowerment for a particular position of authority. It’s interesting that the two books of Samuel make a fairly strong case that the king of Israel must be chosen by God and that the prophet is the one who executes that decision. This tradition presumably lasted, as we find it applied to Jehu, who is a general in the army (2 Kings 9:1-13). Once one of the sons of the prophets anoints Jehu, he goes and claims the throne. Now Jehu is a general, and certainly has the force behind him, but the anointing clearly has effect as a catalyst, and in bringing people in behind him.

    In Psalm 23 we have anointing more as grooming and comfort. You feel good when you are anointed, and this anointing shows God’s care for the psalmist.

    In John 9, we have the anointing with mud made with spit. The material is interesting, and the result is also different, in this case the giving of sight. I’m not sure the two (empowerment/authority and healing) are not related to some extent. Notice that throughout the passage the actual chosen (were some anointed?) religious leaders were unable to see, while the man who had been born blind but is now healed sees clearly.

    Ephesians 5:8-14 may seen unrelated because it doesn’t reference anointing. But it references light and darkness, seeing and not seeing. It ties very closely to John 9. While we tend to focus on the physical miracle, the spiritual implications are front and center for the gospel writer, and for Paul. Once one encounters Jesus, one sees in a way that one has not seen before. The contrast is light (after Jesus) versus darkness (before Jesus). The healing (anointing?) presence of Jesus makes the difference.

    I haven’t really fleshed this out, but these are some initial impressions on these passages.

  • Healing and Restoration from Jeremiah 32

    Thomas Durst has a nice, short, devotional post drawn from Jeremiah 32:36-44, which he quotes from The Message. It’s titled Healing and Restoration.

  • Testimony – John 4:39-42

    There’s a short sequence of thoughts here at the end of the story of the Samaritan woman (Woman at the Well) that makes an important point about testimony. Many Christians are hesitant to share their testimony. One of the reasons is that they’re afraid they don’t know enough. But you don’t have to know very much to express what has happened to you personally.

    The woman at the well gives her testimony that Jesus had told her everything she had done (John 4:39). The same verse notes that many believed because of her testimony. But what did her testimony accomplish? Did it, by itself, convince people to believe in Jesus?

    In verse 42 we get the testimony of the people afterward. They have come and seen Jesus because of her testimony, and now their belief no longer rests on her words, but on their own knowledge and experience of Jesus. The weight is off the woman who originally gave testimony. Her testimony didn’t need to do anything more than bring the people who heard it to Jesus.

    That’s all our own testimony needs to do. We can be joyful when people come back and say, “It’s no longer because of what you said that I believe. I’ve seen and experience Him for myself!”

  • 10 Psalms Not Heard (much) in Modern Worship

    Don has a post titles 10 Tough Psalms for Worship Songs that deserves some serious thinking. I relate it to my recent post Psalm 95 and 81: Interrupting Praise with Prophecy?. Do we tend to censor the more challenging material in our worship?