Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Bible Study

  • Book Notes: An Introduction to the New Testament (DeSilva)

    DeSilva, David A. An Introduction to the New Testament: Contexts, Methods, and Ministry Formation. Downers Grove, IL, 2004. ISBN 0-8308-2746-3. 974 pp. (904 without front matter and indexes).

    This is a bit out of place for review here and by me, but I wanted to write a few notes about it anyhow.

    If I were to teach an course in New Testament Introduction, admittedly not all that likely, I would want to use this text. I’m not an NT specialist, and this book is not well suited to the groups I usually teach. It’s designed for the seminary student, and I wish I’d had it as a text at that time. Alas, that was the 70s, and the copyright date is 2004.

    Why do I like it? The primary reason is that it covers issues in New Testament criticism effectively and practically. By “effectively” I mean that various critical methods are described briefly and clearly so that the student can grasp both the origins of the method and how the method might be applied even by those who don’t accept all the presuppositions of those who originated it. The description is rounded out by examples. By “practically” I mean that each such section concludes with practical exercises.

    I had to figure a great deal of this stuff out by working backward from commentaries. There are, of course, a number of rather good books which I discovered along the way (Augsburg Fortress’ series Guides to Biblical Scholarship comes to mind), but both my undergraduate and graduate experiences generally involved hearing or reading the claims, struggling with the material, and then finding the good explanations afterward.

    These sections don’t just cover a few traditional critical skills. They range from textual criticism to feminist criticism with the positive and negative aspects of each, and all those between.

    A secondary reason to like this book is the emphasis, indicated in the subtitle, on ministry formation. I work largely with lay audiences, but I do frequently get to talk with pastors, and one great weakness of seminary education, from my unscientific survey, is a lack of practical application. I can do [something taught in seminary], but how will I use it? Each book of the New Testament has a discussion of how it can be helpful in ministry formation.

    These sections are good. I would think that a good seminary student would want to keep this one for his library shelves. If he or she did not, it would set off alarm bells for me.

    Just to give an example of the types of topics, let me look at the book of Romans, since it’s one I’m studying for personal devotions at the moment, as well as at church. We encounter a full page excursus on the literary integrity of Romans, a slightly longer one discussing faith in Romans, another titled “Grace and Justification in Jewish Sources”, one on “Paul’s Hermeneutics and the Pesharim of Qumran”, another on “The Enigma of Romans 7:7-25” (he and I would disagree in part there, but it’s a pretty thorough discussion), and “The Law: Catalyst for Sin or Divine Remedy.” The “EXEGETICAL SKILL” section is a bit over 2 1/2 pages on social-scientific criticism discussing analysis of ritual. The Ministry formation section covers a bit over seven pages. All of this is the extras that frame an excellent introduction to the book and to tendencies in interpretation. DeSilva even manages to discuss homosexuality, though doubtless due to the nature of the topic, nobody will be satisfied!

    Not being a specialist in this area, I really haven’t surveyed the full field of New Testament introductions–there are quite a number of them–but I have read a few, and none matched the quality of this one in all ways.

    I should note that DeSilva is clearly more conservative theologically than I am and more negative on the values of some of the older forms of criticism–form, redaction, and source, for example. But that does not prevent him from presenting both the positive aspects and the nuts and bolts methodology, within the scope to be expected of a work of this size. I would not be uncomfortable basing a class discussion on his material on any of the topics, even homosexuality.

    Unfortunately, as I said, I won’t get much opportunity to use this book, but I did enjoy reading it, and I do recommend it as a way to kind of round up your New Testament exegetical skills, especially if you’ve gotten stuck a bit in a specialist’s rut. If you are an NT specialist about to teach NT introduction, check it out.

  • Book Notes: The Gospels for All Christians

    Bauckham, Richard, ed. The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998. ISBN: 0-8028-4444-8.

    I hesitate to call this a review. It’s more of an interaction with the text, a few thoughts as I read the book The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences. I’m going to allow myself to ramble! Also, as you will doubtless note, this was published in 1998, and thus is not “hot off the presses” and yet I think it is very relevant.

    This was one of the four books that I noted arrived via interlibrary loan on the same day, something marginally inconvenient, considering the size of the books and the height of my “to be read” stack. I had added it into the list at the last minute, because it was edited by the author of Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, which was one that was already on my list, and because a friend had recommended it.

    I will confess that I started reading this book with low expectations. The problem it addresses, as stated to me, did not appear incredibly urgent or gripping. I was tempted to start with a different book, but there was that return date staring at me, and I loathe returning interlibrary loan books that I have not completely read, so I dug in.

    If you were educated in a liberal school, especially if you come from a conservative perspective, you will probably respond to this material differently. I compared notes with a friend who had used different texts than I did (I was educated by fairly conservative professors at Seventh-Day Adventist schools), and he certainly reacted differently on his initial read. Since I started conservative and moved more slowly left, I never took quite the extreme position which Bauckham is addressing.

    In the first chapter, Bauckham addresses the consensus view, at least at the time of writing, though I think it largely continues, which is that the gospels were addressed to specific communities and that in interpreting them we must discover the beliefs and the situation addressed in the community in order to understand the message. A corollary of this is that we learn either largely or exclusively about the community, rather than about Jesus when reading the gospels.

    To get the negative out of the way first, I felt that Bauckham overstated the nature of the consensus to some extent. Unfortunately, however, I can’t deny that there are folks around who exemplify precisely the attitude he is addressing. In turn, I think he overstates his case, practically eliminating any study of the audience from interpretation of the gospels. There are cracks in this extreme case, though they occur much more in the other essays, and he displays what strikes me as a slightly more moderate approach in chapter 5, John for Readers of Mark.

    Since he is attempting to force a paradigm shift, perhaps all this is understandable. Paradigms rarely shift when only nudged; they have to be attacked with sledge hammers. Then moderates (perhaps like me!) come around and start playing “moderately,” but in the new paradigm.

    I think this reflects a fairly common problem in Biblical studies (and perhaps other disciplines, but that’s their concern), in that when someone proposes a new approach or tool there is a tendency to apply it broadly to just about everything. Form criticism provides a useful tool for studying certain sayings that are transmitted orally, and then find themselves part of a written text. Form critics tended to make their tool the tool for Bible study, and soon they were studying things that probably never existed separately as part of the oral tradition using a tool that was really only well suited to that one task.

    If a carpenter worked in this manner with his tools we’d call him crazy. When Biblical scholars do so, we call them pioneers. And to be honest, in general they are. Their critics reverse the situation and throw out the tool because it doesn’t do everything its initial practitioners claim for it. This would be much like observing a carpenter using a hammer in many places where it should not be used, and concluding that the best option would be to discard the hammer.

    In turn, redaction critics come along and discard much work that goes with form criticism. Quite regularly they correctly criticize form critical work, yet at the same time they want redaction criticism to be the tool for Biblical studies, and soon we have it applied to texts that really show no signs of redaction.

    My suggestion here is that we need to salvage something from each of these things and make it useful, as many commentators (Brevard Childs comes to mind quickly) have done, not dismissing the methodologies completely, but putting them in their place.

    In the case of the gospel audiences, it strikes me that there would be significant impact of the author’s more immediate community, but that the broader audience would certainly reduce the amount that one could properly deduce about about the audience. Yes, it’s a moderating position, to which I am naturally attracted, but I think it is a valid one, a case in which a moderating position is precisely what is called for.

    I would use one of my own sermons as an example. I am very likely to prepare a text, preach it to a specific congregation, and then also post it here on my blog. The sermon is designed with the congregation I’m addressing in mind, but my words are not exclusively for them, and you should not interpret all of my words in terms of addressing that congregation. My ideas have formed in conversation with many people who hold many differing views. Yet there would be points that would be specific to that group.

    Similarly the form critical approach which heard the voice of the community in everything and the voice of Jesus in nothing needed some moderation. If you think about a modern preacher telling a story, ask yourself whether the preacher’s story is determined by the lesson he’s teaching the congregation or by the facts of the story as history.

    For me, the answer would be that I am loathe to adjust a story. I seek one that fits the situation I’m addressing without too much fudging of the facts. Nonetheless I do adjust emphasis. I have used the same story in different situations to make different points. I also know preachers who are quite comfortable adapting a story quite substantially to their needs at the moment.

    Would the disciples do this to the story of Jesus? Intentionally? I doubt it. But unintentionally I think they could apply stories in very different ways as time went on, and thus the audience and the situation of the early church would impact the message. It may be difficult or impossible to determine just how much, but given the possibility, it seems useful to me to try.

    The second chapter, The Holy Internet: Communication Between Churches in the First Christian Generation (pp. 49-70, Michael B. Thompson) is probably one of the two most helpful chapters I’ve read in the last five years, and the other one is the third chapter, Ancient Book Production and the Circulation of the Gospels (pp. 71-112, Loveday Alexander). This information is available elsewhere, but not in such a compact and helpful format. It’s very easy to underestimate communications in the ancient world.

    I’m reminded of the difference between the way my children communicate and the way I did when I was their age. We were in South America during my teen years, and it cost several dollars a minute to make international calls. You just didn’t do it, unless things were really, really critical. Now I get pictures and videos of my grandchildren moments after whatever great milestone–or merely interesting moment–has passed. When I talk about it, they’re likely to look blank and say something about how we must have really been out of touch! But we weren’t. Those snail-mail letters actually did communicate.

    When you compare snapping a picture with your cell-phone and sending it to a list of folks from your contacts to taking the picture, getting it developed, waiting for it, writing a letter, mailing it, and waiting for it to travel the necessary distance, it might seem like nothing would get communicated. But we did precisely that all the time.

    In the same way, we might imagine that if we had to walk from days to weeks in order to visit a neighboring church, we wouldn’t do it. Yet the folks in the early church did, and they did it quite a bit. We might also imagine that few books would be distributed if they were copied by hand, but again, we would assume incorrectly. People did go to all that trouble, and produced quite a few.

    One further thought I got from chapter three was the close connection between oral and written forms. I have argued this before in terms of the New Testament autographs. It’s quite possible that texts were revised even by authors after they were written down. We consider something more set in stone once it is written, but they perhaps did not. Some variations in early manuscripts might be explained by such freedom rather than scurrilous scribes (Western non-interpolations?)

    About People, by People, for People: Gospel Genre and Audiences (pp. 113-146, Richard A. Burridge) is more dense and less useful than the preceding two chapters, but nonetheless is rather helpful and provides some of the very balance I was requesting in the first chapter. I think I would still lean a little bit more toward seeing an impact of the audiences, but the argumentation here is definitely worth considering.

    I found Bauckham’s second essay, John for Readers of Mark (pp. 147-172) to be more interesting than his first, but ultimately unconvincing. I say this not in the sense of having a ready refutation, but rather in the sense of having a tentative verdict of “not proven” regarding his case. There are some intriguing connections here, and I’m not going to try to summarize them. Bauckham provides a way to read John as complementary to Mark on the assumption that Mark could be expected to be available to his readers. I think some of his arguments would be considerably blunted if gospel stories were transmitted orally, and especially if Mark represents a great deal of that oral tradition. But that is too much to try to argue right here. Bauckham does address the issue of oral traditions, but rejects them as adequate explanations; I find his rejection premature.

    The sixth essay, Can We Identify the Gospel Audiences (pp. 173-194, Stephen C. Barton), is a discussion of how accurately we can determine the gospel audiences. I think we do well to be skeptical, especially of our own reconstructions, but I also think that we will be saying something about audiences if we interpret at all. In general, however, the chapter is quite balanced in my view.

    Finally we have Toward a Literal Reading of the Gospels (pp. 195-217, Francis Watson). Again, this probably pushes a little further than I would be comfortable with, but it is nonetheless a valid counterpoint to the tendency to believe the gospels have nothing to do with literal events. Note here that Watson is using the word “literal” as it would be used in literary discourse, not the more popular idea of “having greater truth value.” The literal reading that Watson is looking for is one that allows the gospel writers to talk about actual events and people, even if he also wishes to symbolize something else.

    Nicodemus is a good example. One can understand him as symbolic of a particular group of people with whom the community had to deal, yet there is no particular reason to assume that there was no Nicodemus, or that there is no underlying actual story. This is an area again that calls for careful nuance. I’d like to quote Watson:

    Is it possible to envisage a future Gospels scholarship in which person and text are reintegrated? This suggestion would not entail the naive positivistic assumption that the Gospels are to be understood, so far as possible, as a direct transcript of historical reality. Like the various incompatible models of the so-called historical Jesus, the Gospels are interpretations of the historical reality to which they refer. The Gospels represent the early Christian reception of the life and person of Jesus, and the eventual emergence of the fourfold Gospel canon represents the decision that the Christian community will henceforth appeal to this complex rendering of the received reality and no other. . . .

    All in all, this is a worthwhile goal.

    In conclusion I must say that while I approached this book without enthusiasm, it grew on me as I read, and I think that the authors and editor have done a great service. I commend it to those who are interested in the study of the gospels.

  • It’s Raining Books, Hallelujah!

    I haven’t been blogging much for the last two weeks, as I’ve been pretty busy with other things.

    While I was too busy to get right two them, all four books that I had on interlibrary loan arrived at the same time, one of the unfortunate problems of requesting lists of books. Several of them are pretty big as well. Now I have just under a month for the one I have for the longest period of time.

    Some of these were recommended by readers, particularly Richard Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, which was recommended to me by a commenter as a follow-up, hopefully more convincing than What Have They Done with Jesus by Ben Witherington. I owe my readers another post or so on that previous book. Perhaps when I’m done with Bauckham, I’ll compare the two. At the same time, I requested Bauckham’s The Gospel for All Audiences, which looks like interesting reading.

    The same commenter recommended DeSilva’s An Introduction to the New Testament: Contexts, Methods and Ministry Formation. Besides having some comments on the same topic (gospel eyewitnesses), I feel the urge to read another New Testament introduction. It’s useful to do so every so often–it helps me organize my thoughts.

    Finally, I have Waltke’s An Old Testament Theology: An Exegetical, Canonical, and Thematic Approach, which is also a fairly substantial volume. I wanted to read a clearly evangelical Old Testament theology, and this looks like a good option.

    Considering my other reading, I could have wished that the books would have arrived over a longer period of time, but hopefully I’ll be able to do them justice in the time available. Reading on books that are on my own shelves will have to go on the back burner.

  • The Pain of Reinterpreting Scripture

    In several recent posts I’ve been referring to the relationship between scripture and evolution, and particularly how I moved from young earth creationism toward theistic evolution not because I studied evolution and became convinced, but because I studied Genesis and became convinced it was not narrative history.

    At the same time I’m looking at bit at theodicy, specifically the question of how a God who employs violent means (or at least appears to do so) can also be seen as a good God. This also requires one to look in some perhaps disturbing ways at how we interpret scripture. For example, if I take the Genesis flood to be literal history and also as a direct action of God, then I have a level of violence in God’s behavior towards humans that is much harder to explain, in my view, than the mass extinctions that occurred millions of years ago, or than the ongoing struggle for survival in the natural world.

    Why is it so difficult to take a new look at scripture and to decide to take some things in some way other than as a factual historical account or as a transfer of data?

    In my own experience I would list fear first. This fear is of two types. There is one’s own fear that in the process of looking at scripture in a different way, one may become separated from one’s community and support structure. I remember sitting down in Hebrew class and encountering some of the classical problems in the way we understand scripture. What was around the next corner?

    One’s own fear of losing one’s anchor is bolstered and validated by the fear of one’s family and friends back at home. When I was still in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, I thought this was a feature of smaller, more isolated denominations. Now that I am a member of a United Methodist congregation I have come to realize that this is nearly universal. Even in conservative evangelical churches that are sending their young people to conservative evangelical schools there is a tension between the way they have been raised and what they might learn in seminary.

    The fact that some young people come back from seminary quite thoroughly altered, and not always to the good, simply feeds into this fear. I would suggest that we look at this differently, however. Might it be possible that less young people would lose their moorings in their community, if that community prepared those young people to joyfully undertake a voyage of discovery rather than repeatedly trying to make those moorings more secure?

    Let me illustrate from my programming experience. I recall an early effort written in C, in which I had had a serious bug in a function. I worked on the code but found nothing that I thought should cause the problem. When I tested it again, however, it started to work. There was something in what I had done that had fixed the problem without me knowing it. For some time I was afraid to tinker with that function, because I was afraid that I would break whatever unknown thing I had unknowingly fixed!

    I use words built on “unknown” intentionally. Part of the problem we have here is that preachers and teachers do not talk enough about how interpretation is accomplished. To many young people about to leave for college or seminary, Biblical interpretation is a black box. They have read a number of texts and they know how they are supposed to apply, but they aren’t all that sure why. The good thing about the black box is that it is acceptable to their friends and relatives.

    At seminary, a professor may ask them to take the black box apart, i.e. to make it no longer be a black box. The professor may suggest applying a different black box just to get the students to start asking what’s inside. There are many tricks of the trade for getting students to think.

    I think that there is a fear here on the other side–the fear of pastors that their parishioners won’t sit still to learn what went into interpretation, or that they will choose to get rid of a pastor so irreverent as to tinker with the nuts and bolts of Biblical interpretation. That’s why so frequently even in pulpits held by preachers who are skilled in historical-critical methodologies, we never hear the method, even if it has been applied in preparing the sermon. The results, such as sources, dating of documents, forms, and so forth are presented as the products of another black box.

    These black box results are often presented with great confidence, and become, to the parishioners, the true meaning of scripture. When someone else gets different results form the black box, for example dates for Mark that vary from 45 – 85 CE, that’s disturbing, and people begin to wonder if seminary ruined the pastor.

    It’s not that easy to solve, because it would require us to spend a little more time dealing with the nuts and bolts and a bit less time merely exhorting congregations to live more precisely according to the interpretations they have always held.

    But there would be a major benefit. When you know what goes into creating a new interpretation, you also know how to argue against something that doesn’t make sense, and so instead of a journey into the unknown without a map, you can explore with reasonable confidence, always knowing that there are some landmarks, and if the landmarks run out, you know how to survey the territory.

  • Is Sunday my Sabbath?

    As an ex-Seventh-day Adventist I get this question frequently. This fine Sunday morning while I’m playing with my computer, let me answer both yes and no!

    There are several ways in which ex-SDAs deal with the Sabbath. The first is to accept the Sunday as the Sabbath in accordance with the letter of the commandment, with the day changed by authority of Jesus or the apostles. I find this change unsubstantiated. The second is to apply the Sabbath command in some other way, but nonetheless explicitly, such as to the command to “rest in Christ.” I take neither of these approaches, though I think the second of them has some merit.

    For me, Jesus presented the ideal that all commands were to be taken in spirit and from the heart rather than in terms of simply following the letter. In fact, the letter could get in the way of living right if one didn’t find a way to soften it from time to time. The difference would be between an employer giving one employee a list of work rules, while telling another employee to work as he pleased, but to make sure to get certain tasks done.

    Thus for me the fourth commandment simply provides a guideline. That was how sacred time was delineated for a specific time, place, and group of people. I do not live at that time, nor in that place, nor am I part of that group to whom the specific command was specifically addressed. (However you read this, don’t assume I think I’m better than that group of people. Just different.)

    So in answer to the immediate follow-up question: Do you discard the rest of the commandments? Yes and no, and in the same sense. The ten commandments were part of Jewish law. They express principles that would be part of any divine law, but they do not apply as letter to all of us.

    Sunday is time I set aside to spend with God, along with many other specific times during the week, but it’s not a fulfillment of the letter of the commandment. Rather, it’s the application of the principle of time set aside for God as I believe it applies to my life, my place, and my time.

  • Is Anything Biblical?

    Over on Complegalitarian Wayne Leman asks whether either side of the complementarian/egalitarian debate should claim to be Biblical. Since I am openly egalitarian, perhaps I should try to answer the question “is egalitarianism Biblical?” instead.

    But the fact is that I’d rather question the term “Biblical,” as indeed some of the commenters to Wayne’s post have done. The fact is that most people in the Christian community claim to believe things that are Biblical in one way or another. And depending on one’s approach, almost anything can be called Biblical.

    I’m sure I’ve told the story before of the young man from an Independent Baptist church who came to my door wanting to share the gospel with me. It didn’t matter to him that I was already a Christian, or that I pulled out my Greek testament to follow along with his texts. He was arguing in favor of “once saved, always saved” but more particularly that the “once saved” had to be a complete and total dependence on grace without any inkling of any form of works. He had a quite legalistic definition of grace, in fact! We both presented texts, and as those of you acquainted with the topic may guess, books like Matthew, Hebrews, Acts, 1 John, and James featured in my part of the discussion. When it was over and he was about to leave he said, “I’m worried about your salvation. I’ve presented you with nothing but scripture, but you haven’t responded with any scripture.” Then he paused. “Well, except for Matthew, Acts, Hebrews, and James, and they don’t count!”

    His reason they didn’t count was that according to him those books were written either for the Jews or for a “transition period” between the Jewish dispensation and the dispensation of the church. Those with theological training will recognize a fairly detailed and intense form of dispensationalism.

    Now my point isn’t whether his form of dispensationalism is right or wrong–I happen to think it’s silly, but that is unimportant here. Rather, I’d like you to notice that both of us though we were being Biblical, but neither of us would be likely to recognize what the other one was doing as Biblical. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has a sermon illustration about visiting this guy who read Greek and who kept using texts that just didn’t apply in that particular context.

    Depending on how you approach interpretation, a great variety of things can be made Biblical or not Biblical. That’s because the Bible is a collection of different books from different times, places, and written for different purposes. They are brought together as a “Bible” by the recognition of the Christian community. I happen to think that collection is Holy Spirit driven, but that’s not the key issue here.

    There is enough diversity in all those books that depending on how I tie them together, I can come up with very different results. Yet over and over I encounter people who won’t even discuss their approach to interpretation or their understanding of the Bible as a “canon.” What many want to say is that they are just teaching what the Bible says, and then they quote a line, a verse, or a passage and apply it to their particular time and circumstances. But that line, verse, or passage wasn’t written at that moment, and its author didn’t point it at that particular time, place, and circumstance. The interpreter is taking something that was written at one time and place and applying it to another.

    And we have to do that. But we should acknowledge that our understanding is involved in our interpretation and application of the passage. We each interpret, we each have to take responsibility. Some think it appears selfless and humble to take ourselves out of the equations. “I’m just proclaiming the word of God.” But it isn’t humble to do the work and then claim that it was really God all along instead of you.

    Let me just list some key approaches to understanding the Bible as a complete canon.

    1. Community – the community receives, collects, and interprets, then in various ways mediates the application. The Catholic church’s “magisterium” is one aspect of this type of approach though there are many others. In some charismatic churches the pastor has become a local “magisterium” and nobody can question the pastor’s understanding of scripture. It may get labeled in different ways, but few of us are immune to the attempt to create some kind of authority.
    2. Dispensationalism – since the Bible appears to say very different things in different places, one way to make it work is to divide it up. Then if you have one text that says “faith without works is dead” and another that “you are saved by faith apart from works” (pardon my loose paraphrasing here), you just assign them to different dispensations.
    3. Proof texting – rarely claimed as a method, but very commonly used, this involves taking your favorite key texts and applying them while ignoring everything else. The more accomplished proof-texters have ways of explaining away all other texts, and seem oblivious to how ridiculous such explanations may seem to others.
    4. Historical-critical – I enjoy the tools of this method, but it too has its weaknesses, usually in that it takes texts apart without ever putting them back together. One can come up at the end knowing about everything there is to know about a text, but still having no idea what it actually means.
    5. Covenant theology – fit the texts within the various covenants God made. I like large portions of this idea, though a bit of overdoing it can result in something that looks remarkably like dispensationalism, though the two are not really that closely related.

    Of course there are more, and I’m not here trying to advocate one or the other. I’m just trying to point out that we all have some approach or combination of them, and often when we think someone else is hopeless non-Biblical, it is more the result of a difference in approach than to any ignorance on their part.

    In the end, however, I think the term “Biblical” is not a very meaningful one. I’d prefer “true” and “false.” Once we’ve made our claims we can then discuss the issues based on whatever evidence and process of logic we used to arrive at them. At a minimum, however, we have to look at the approach, otherwise the debate will be intractable.

  • Biblical Studies Carnival XXIII Posted

    . . . at Ancient Hebrew Poetry. I don’t have a post in there this time, but that’s not a complaint–I can’t think of what I’d nominate in this case. I will certainly get some blogging fodder from reading the posts. There are certainly a substantial number of excellent biblioblogs available.

    Speaking of which, John continued his postings with things he left out of the first one and then a map of the world of Bible bloggers. The latter is especially useful.

    Enjoy!

  • Theological Arguments Against Evolution: Sin and Death

    Yesterday I wrote about the senses in which the phrase “bad theology” is used in the creation-evolution debate and in particular on the question of ID. To call something “bad theology” generally requires either a challenge to the internal logic of the statement, or a reference to a particular faith community, because there is no single “good theology” against which theological statements can be tested.

    I’d like to follow up by looking at a theological argument against evolution, and how it relates to the some faith groups. While there has been considerable argument against intelligent design on theological grounds, the theological objections to evolution have been addressed less frequently.

    In fact, I am frequently told that a belief in evolution really doesn’t have any theological consequences. The Bible tells us that God created the world, science tells us how. The only folks who have a problem with this are a few who incomprehensibly treat the Bible as a science textbook. There are two problems with that. First, there are quite a considerable number of folks who believe that the Bible is true in a sufficiently literal sense that they expect to connect the factual dots of Genesis to scientific data. They are frequently addressed with the rather inadequate statement “You shouldn’t take the Bible so literally!” Second, an excessively literal reading of scripture is not the sole theological problem with the theory of evolution.

    Regarding the first point, the issue is a bit more complex than simply “not taking the Bible literally.” One has to ask just how one is to take it. I’m not going to address this in detail in this post (I talk about it a great deal more in my book When People Speak for God), but at a minimum one needs to specify how someone ought to take the Bible. For example, assuming Genesis 1 is not narrative history (one of the things loosely grouped as literal) what is it? I would suggest that it is liturgy, and that in turn suggests some things about how to understand it.

    But today I want to look at a theological argument in a different form. Instead of arguing that evolution must be incorrect because the Bible makes certain historical claims, one can argue that evolution must be incorrect based on certain theological claims. These theological claims may be derived from the Bible, but the important issue is that they seem to contradict certain things derived from evolution.

    Those who are not religious, or specifically not Christian will find this a strange form of argument, but it is valuable to see how certain people think about these issues in any case, and to realize that there are many for whom evolution poses substantial theological problems, quite apart from the interpretation of Genesis 1-11 as narrative history.

    Sin and death is such an issue, and in my experience, it is the key issue. The theological proposition involved states that physical death is the result of human sin, and that had human beings remained loyal to God, there would be no death. Now I’ve discussed this position from the point of view of theodicy in Theodicy: Taking a Stab at Natural Evil. Since some may have a hard time comprehending this argument, it states that evolution cannot be true simply because it involves creatures dying before there were human beings to have committed sin. As I discuss in the referenced post, this is a problem for old earth creationism as much as it is for evolution, and Dembski has proposed an alternate suggestion, that God created physical death as a sort of pre-emptive response to sin, which God’s foreknowledge told him would occur.

    But I’m dealing here solely with those who hold a chronological relationship. In this view human beings are created perfect in a world without death, they rebel against God, and death results. Obviously, for someone who holds that position, evolution cannot possibly be true. I grew up with that view as a member of the Seventh-day Adventist church. It took me some time to step away from it, as it can get pretty much ingrained.

    I can now argue against the theology involved, pointing out that Genesis doesn’t actually say that, but in fact suggests that barring the way to the tree of life is a way to prevent human beings from becoming immortal. One can understand spiritual death in many other passages that relate to death. None of that really matters for my purposes here; this particular position demonstrates that there are theological consequences to belief in evolution, and the presence of physical death as a fundamental fact of the universe is one of those.

    Indeed, one key mental exercise I propose to such people is to propose a universe in which there is no death and yet there are things such as “fruit” to eat. How exactly does such a thing work? In particular, choice seems to be a fundamental of the universe and of the Bible, and what exactly is choice without a chance of failure?

    I heard this very recently presented in quite different terms, dealing with God’s care, grace, and gentleness. How could a God who teaches the law of love create by means of such violence? Then there are those promises of a future, peaceful world where “the wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox; and dust shall be the serpent’s food. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, saith Jehovah.” Isaiah 65:25 (ASV). Surely if it’s promised for the future world, it must also have been true of the past!

    Now I personally would compare this approach to a belief in verbal dictation of scripture, for example. People accept this position while ignoring the abundant evidence of different writers, backgrounds, perspectives and so forth throughout. Don’t come to a conclusion of how something ought to be, and then assume that it is that way. The physical evidence for evolution is extremely strong, and for an old earth it is overwhelming, either of which would require substantial modification of this particular doctrine.

    The key thing to remember, however, is that for someone who holds the specific form of this doctrine I cited, there is a serious theological impediment to accepting the theory of evolution, and this is based not necessarily on reading the Bible literally, although the sequence is. You can argue the evidence for evolution as much as you want, but they won’t be moved, because they have a key theological proposition that directly contradicts it.

    I have been interested to note as well that my own view of God is perceived as more distant, because I believe that God honors choice and allows the consequences to take place. In fact, I believe those who suggest I see God as more distant are quite correct. I believe God is distant enough to allow human responsibility to be meaningful.

    This separates me just a bit from the NOMA (non-overlapping magisteria) approach, since I hold that the discoveries of science can have a substantial impact on one’s theology. They certainly have had such an impact on my own theology. In general, I believe NOMA to be the correct approach, and theology and science must clearly be separated to prevent theology from attempting to predetermine the results of scientific research. (I’m reminded of the notice at my graduate school offering grant money to those who would do research “to support a 6,000 year model of the earth’s history.) But physical reality should have an impact on theology.

  • Translation, Exposition, and Communication

    Yes! I have found another pretentious title for a relatively simple post!

    I’ve been following the discussion around the blogosphere about literary translation, which has involved any number of blogs. I’ve been too busy to write about it. I was about to start last night, and then Doug at Metacatholic said part of what I wanted to say, and I waited until this morning to put it all together a bit more.

    In working with secular literature, and even with much religious or spiritual literature, there are many ways in which a work can be transformed to reach a particular audience. One of the methods I’ve been playing around with is simply writing a very short fictional piece that tries to teach the same lesson (example here). The point here is not to produce professional fiction or for the teacher to produce a “better” story, but rather for students to study the story by changing its form. I would ask students to tell a story from their own lives or to create a fictional one to teach the lesson. In studying Bible stories I also use the technique of having students tell the story from someone else’s point of view (see the section toward the end on Ahab’s Viewpoint).

    In secular literature we can have a book re-presented as a condensed book, a movie, a play, a children’s edition, illustrated edition, modernized (for an older work), and so forth. In each presentation, there are many choices made in terms of what of the original work will be presented again and what will be left out. Any time one changes the presentation, one loses something, and one may also gain something. The person who alters the form may well instill some additional meaning into the work that was not there before.

    But in Bible translation it seems to me that we tend to operate in fear of doing it the wrong way. Now don’t get me wrong here. I have very strong preferences in terms of Bible translation. I’m an advocate of dynamic equivalence, and of using ordinary, natural expressions in the target language. That is what I want most in a translation. If you think about it, and then realize that the most common thing I’m doing with a Bible translation is using it in a teaching context, you will realize that my preference of translation and my purpose tend to line up. One must add that I do not pretend to teach my classes Greek or Hebrew (unless that’s the subject!) and thus I am uninterested in a presentation of the forms of the source language.

    Nonetheless, as I talk about translations, I tend very strongly to speak in terms of lines of division. There are formal equivalence and dynamic equivalence, and never shall the twain meet. Now I actually believe there is a continuum (illustrated here), but that continuum easily gets lost in discussion.

    Let’s take [tag]The Message[/tag] for example. The key question people ask me, and the one I’m likely to bring up if they don’t, is whether this version is really a translation or not, and whether it is “good to use.” I can then analyze the language, and how close it is to the source, and in general I must admit that The Message doesn’t seem to me to reflect the original very accurately in many cases.

    But let’s shift context. Would I say the same thing about [tag]Eugene Peterson[/tag]’s teaching or his exposition in other material that he has written? There’s a bright line there that we may not always acknowledge. If he’s expounding, it’s OK. If he’s translating, well, not so much. What we are generally looking for is a solid line that divides working with the original languages from translation, and then working with a translation from someone’s exposition.

    But is such a line realistic? Let’s compare my reading of Hebrew, for example, to that of a Rabbi who has spent his entire life working strictly with the Hebrew text. Alternatively we could compare my reading to someone who has spent his entire life studying comparative ancient near eastern languages, which is closer to my own study. Since I went from that study at the MA level to teaching Bible at the popular level, I have spent a great deal less time in the details. I would expect there to be points that either of those experts would see in the text that I would easily miss. When I read their expositions, I see this in action.

    Let me belabor the point a bit before I build on it. I had read Leviticus through in Hebrew several times on my own, and done so in connection with Nahum Sarna’s JPS commentary, for example, but then I picked up Leviticus with Jacob Milgrom’s three volume Anchor Bible set. I claim to study from the original languages, and I do–in a sense. But not like that!

    On the other hand I regularly encounter preachers who say that they prepare their sermons from the original languages, and yet can barely work through the material word by word. Now don’t take this as criticism. I congratulate them for using all the tools at their disposal, but their specialty and their calling doesn’t allow them to become experts in everything.

    Hopefully that portrayal will do to show three levels of reading of the source texts–the expert in the texts, the person with facility in the language yet who does not professionally research on linguistic issues, and the pastor/teacher who knows some of the language. Anyone with experience could fill in the blanks either direction.

    We could similarly work our way through a continuum of levels of study with various English translations, based on how accurately the text conveys the maximum possible content of the source text. Somewhere in there we should fit someone who studies from multiple English versions.

    Finally, if we keep looking, we’ll find those persons who really don’t learn directly from the text or a translation at all, but rather learn the Bible in their community through exposition. There is a contempt in conservative Christianity for such people, but there are many who do know their Bibles quite well simply because they are regularly in the church when the scriptures are read and expounded, or they get similar knowledge from reading. This kind of thing makes folks like me nervous, because there are plenty of written materials that I believe distort the meaning.

    Now note that the continuum I have presented is based solely on comprehending the intended message of the text. If I were to abandon that particular question, I might ask instead what methods of study and exposition result in the greater absorption of the spirit of the text by the students. That would result in quite a different list.

    I could again shift views and try to build a continuum based on what produces a community sense of worship in reading scripture. This is a tremendously neglected area in many protestant churches. The information content is the sole criterion. The notion of the scripture reading as a vehicle for community worship is rarely considered. I can evoke cries of dismay when I suggest that respect for the scriptures might well be enhanced by reading all four lectionary texts on a Sunday. There seems to be a sense that if we don’t talk about it, if there is no sermon that builds directly on all those texts, there is no point in reading them. That comes from the idea that only knowledge is important.

    When reading scripture for worship, the literary quality of the text becomes more important, and especially the sound of the text when read aloud. Out of modern versions I like the sound of the [tag]New Jerusalem Bible[/tag] or the [tag]Revised English Bible[/tag] in public reading, but I know a number of people who would still go for the [tag]KJV[/tag] solely for its literary beauty. Now I don’t happen to like the KJV all that well myself, but I believe that literary taste has only a small objective portion and a very large subjective portion (a few notes on this here).

    If I were to work solely from my own tastes, I would suggest trying to match the literary quality of the original in translation. If so, [tag]Hebrews[/tag] should be harder to read, even when you know all the vocabulary words, than is [tag]1 John[/tag]. But of course it should not merely be harder to read; that’s just a product of someone not steeped in the language and rhetorical techniques reading a rather sophisticated text. The translation would need to be a literary masterpiece in English. My question would be this: Can you do that without reorganizing the material? In order to present the message of Hebrews as perhaps a masterful short theological essay, would we not need to take liberties with the structure of the book? After all, few English readers even notice the various literary features.

    What I’m suggesting here is that none of these issues are binary issues, and that there are very few absolutely right and wrong answers. I use the slogan “the best Bible version is one your read.” My point is that different people will be comfortable reading, and will understand different Bible versions. There will always be a compromise on what is conveyed and what is filtered out by the translation choices. That is simply a feature of translating, transforming, or expounding a message.

    One last note for those working on single translations into languages that are likely to have only one. There I can think of no better goal than “clear, accurate, and natural.” It’s very easy to set goals that are out of range of human thinking. In English, where so much effort is expended, we have the luxury of using multiple version and thousands of books of exposition to get the message across. In languages much less privileged–or abused–that doesn’t exist. There I would have to say that having something clear, accurate, and natural would come before anything else.

    I sense that understanding in Peter Kirk’s post “Literary Translation” and Obfuscation, which I think brings up a number of points. Look at that post from the perspective of a Bible translator who is not adding yet another English translation to the literature.

    Let me note the following from John Hobbins: Is Literary Translation Possible and If a text is literary, its dynamic equivalent in translation must also be literary From the second I take the following:

    But that means that dynamic equivalent translations like the Good News Bible and the Contemporary English Version are improperly done. For vast swathes of the Old Testament, the translation they offer is not literary enough.

    My point would simply be that I don’t accept the phrase “improperly done.” They are done according to the goals of their translators. The proposed “literary” translation would not accomplish that goal. Let me belabor the point some more. I love reading the [tag]REB[/tag]. It sits open on the reading stand by my computer because I love to consult it. I love to read it aloud. But I cannot use it in teaching, because I end up with too little understanding of the text. What to me is literary beauty obscures the meaning for them.

    For my goals in teaching, the REB is “improperly done.” But for my goals in reading and study, it is quite “properly done.”

  • The Human Face of Scripture

    Psalm 137 came up in the lectionary for this week. Now there was a time when we would get this Psalm at least with the final verse left out. That verse reads “Blessed is the one who seizes your little ones and dashes them against a rock.” One should understand, of course, that this was a Psalm about/by Jewish exiles in Babylon, and that the Babylonians had done precisely that sort of thing to them. One strong element of the Psalm is revenge.

    I was teaching a class on the Old Testament, drawn from the book Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God? once, and I asked people in the class whether they would feel the way the Psalm describes if someone had come into their community and killed their children. Would they want their attackers to suffer the same fate?

    Person after person in the audience expressed their desire to be forgiving, and their disapproval of the attitude expressed in the Psalm. Then one lady, a grandmother, interrupted the flow. “I think many of us are lying to ourselves,” she said. “I would feel bad that I wanted it, because I know what Jesus said, but I would want them to suffer the same fate.”

    Several people changed their minds. That one lady had given them some cover to be honest with themselves. The fact is that Psalm 137 is a very human Psalm, and a very real Psalm. It makes us uncomfortable, but I believe part of that discomfort is that we know that those feelings are not far from many of us.

    Does this justify a search for vengeance? That’s another matter. It is an expression of the true desires. Perhaps what we need to do when we have such feelings is express them and then seek the grace to forgive. That’s another subject. My point right now is that the Psalm expresses who we are.

    This Psalm makes me think about what the Bible actually is. I’m amazed at how frequently we decide what the Bible ought to be, and then try to force it to be whatever it is we think it ought to be. But we have the Bible itself and we can observe that it doesn’t fit these prescriptions we make for what it must be. People decide it must contain hard information sent from God by means of verbal dictation. Humanity should not have any real involvement. A little personality here and there, but no impact on the actual message.

    But in fact the Bible displays a range of human attitudes, emotions, cultural baggage, and even mental capacity. God’s commands are not merely God’s commands; they are what people heard God commanding them to do. And communication is limited to the capacities of the least capable end of the line. Scripture displays both a human and a divine face. (See The One-Ended Cord.)

    I also recently read a post titled Minimising mistakes in the Bible (or not). This is a good discussion of a minor Biblical error. The “error” a problem for inerrantists, who have to find a way to work around it. I would suggest, however, that it’s a natural part of the human face of scripture. The message comes through clearly, while there is a minor glossing over of fact.

    People often assume that I don’t believe in inerrancy because I have a long list of errors in the Bible. But that is not my problem with the doctrine at all. For those who want to ask me for my list, I don’t have one. I’ve encountered many things that I put down to “the human face of scripture,” but I don’t keep lists of them, because to me they are not very important. I suppose that if I did not reject inerrancy on other grounds, such a list might become important to me. But as it is, I think inerrancy simply misses the point of a communication between a perfect God and imperfect (or at least limited) human beings. Such a communication is simply much more dynamic than can be described in the phrase “error-free.”

    Scripture is divine, because it involves communication with God. It’s human because it is communicated through and to humans. Because it is what it is it requires careful and prayerful–Holy Spirit guided–interpretation and application, accomplished, of course, by humans, who are hopefully aware of their own limitations.