Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Christianity

  • Finding the Tomb of Jesus

    A documentary to be shown on the Discovery Channel purports to have discovered the tomb and the ossuary of Jesus (CNN story here).

    I’m amazed that something like this would be called a “documentary” since there is next to no possibility of sufficient evidence for such a claim. The sad thing is that archeological claims, when popularized, rarely resemble anything a trained archeologist would actually say. Archeology is not about searching for a specific person’s remains or some specific artifact, Indiana Jones movies notwithstanding.

    This is not, however, solely a province of opponents of Christianity. When archeological discoveries have even the slightest relationship to the Biblical text, Christians will portray them as new “proofs” of the accuracy of the Bible. Inevitably they do no such thing, but each side contributes to this attitude of proving or disproving. Then of course others make discoveries that disprove Christianity, but later these prove to be no such thing either.

    Scientific historical study doesn’t work this way. The point is not to prove or disprove an entire collection of documents, such as the Bible, but rather to determine historicity point by point and create a most probable reconstruction of historical events. That process involves a great deal of nuance, and a willingness to admit ignorance in many cases, or tentative conclusions in many others.

    Both the statements “archeology proves the Bible” and “archeology disproves the Bible” are silly. The Bible is not a single source from the historical point of view, and sources are not proven or disproven, rather, individual elements of a story will be determined to be more or less probable.

  • Gifts Ministry and Blaspheming the Holy Spirit

    OK, that should be a sufficiently provocative title! 🙂

    Peter Kirk commented on an earlier post and gave me some advice–advice which I would normally consider quite good sense. Here it is:

    But maybe you are going a bit too far, at least to keep yourself out of trouble, in suggesting that those who do not accept women’s ministry may be guilty of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit.

    Now I would normally take that advice, because heating up a debate such as this is commonly quite unhelpful, but in this case, I’m not going to, and instead I’m going to make my reasoning explicit, paint a target on myself, and see who wishes to take target practice. I do not mean to destroy dialogue, but I have claimed repeatedly that there must be a balance between expressing one’s views forcefully and allowing room for conversation in any dialogue. Often what passes for dialogue consists entirely of watered down arguments and sentiments, and results in a mental fog rather than an exchange of opinions. I would reference my responses to the Adrian Warnock interviews with Wayne Grudem as an example. I responded with some vigor to a number of points, yet at no time was I actually angry with Adrian or with Wayne Grudem. I know that some things that I said did offend a couple of people, but I think I said what was necessary in order to be honest.

    Looking Back

    Now I’m going to refer back to my response to that interview on a couple of points. First, however, a correction. I quote from my own post:

    I would note however, that while I disagree with the idea of male-only church leadership, I am not particularly offended by churches that follow such a practice. Anyone who dislikes their view can go find another church, and there are plenty of those. What I object to is that this doctrine is made an essential of the faith. . . .

    I am going to refine that position in this post, because I don’t think I drew the line correctly, and I think that my response has become more vigorous due to some experiences since that time.

    In the same post, I also partially defend Grudem’s use of the term blasphemy for the views of another, from his viewpoint:

    Now I know that Dr. Grudem retracted his acceptance of the term “blasphemy” when used of Steve Chalke (with whom I am not acquainted). I’m a little less happy with that retraction than others are. Don’t get me wrong here please. I appreciate the humility and the willingness to dialogue that it represents. But I wonder if at root there isn’t some justification for the word form Dr. Grudem’s point of view on the atonement. Now I can’t speak for him, but what suggests this to me is my own reaction from the other side. The claim that penal substitutionary atonement is the essence of the atonement tempts me to use the word blasphemy because I believe it paints such a wrong picture of God, one different from the revealed and experienced God. Now I’m also going to resist use of the term, though my own use of anti-God could easily be as provocative. Thus I understand both John Piper’s desire to use the term, and Wayne Grudem’s initial agreement.

    Again, I want to refine that comment just a bit in this post by being more specific about why I use (and used) the term “blasphemy” in that particular context, and why I can understand its use by another against my own position. A bottom line point here, however, is that if anyone who is a part of the family of Jesus believes that I am in danger of blaspheming the Holy Spirit, my preference is that they say so. I may disagree with them, but I get the opportunity to examine my own beliefs and question myself, which is a good thing. I regard that as part of the attitude of repentance.

    The Unpardonable Sin and Blasphemy of the Holy Spirit

    I need to say just a few words about the unpardonable sin. It is commonly equated, and quite scripturally so, with the phrase “blasphemy of the Holy Spirit.” I am not going to fully defend my position on this in a post that will already be quite long, but I do not believe that blasphemy of the Holy Spirit is a single act, nor is the unpardonable sin singular. I have commented on this briefly in the Participatory Study Series pamphlet Repentance and Rejoicing:

    One of the tasks of the Holy Spirit is to convict of sin. If we turn away the Holy Spirit so much that we no longer hear His voice, we will no longer ask for pardon and it will, in fact, be too late.

    I discuss this a bit further in my personal testimony, and also in a sermon which was broadcast on the radio here in Pensacola, and will be podcast via the Pacesetters Bible School New Blog within the next few weeks.

    In summary, I believe that we are all more or less on the path between pardon and the unpardonable sin, which elicits the stern warning of Hebrews 6:4-6. There is a point of standing up against the urging of the Holy Spirit at which you will no longer hear the Holy Spirit speaking. When you get to that point, you will no longer as forgiveness, and thus will no longer be forgiven. Thus the unpardonable sin is that sin for which you do not ask pardon, and every time you resist the Holy Spirit, you head that direction. Fortunately, God’s grace is greater than our sin, and constantly pushes us to listen.

    To go even further, however, I believe that every time we resist truth in any area of our life, we build habits of resistance that start to shut our ears to new light and to correction. If I become so angry with Wayne Grudem (see above), for example, or John Piper for their comments on penal substitutionary atonement, that I refuse in the future to hear anything they say, I have taken a step away from being corrected. Now obviously I can’t physically read or hear everything that anyone might desire. I’m talking about the attitude.

    Gifts, Women’s Ministry, and Blasphemy

    So this brings me to the actual point of this post. (I imagine you thought I was never going to manage that!) I start from the simple position that the Holy Spirit gives gifts in the church as he wills in order to do the work of ministry. Unlike our federal government, God doesn’t give unfunded mandates. The Holy Spirit can accomplish your call and your congregation’s call through you provided that you let him. The presence of the gifts of the Holy Spirit in the church indicate God’s intention that those gifts be used in ministry.

    Every time I close myself off to that call, every time I place a barrier in the way of the Holy Spirit carrying out his ministry in and through me, my family, or my congregation, I am speaking against the Holy Spirit, putting up my views and my agenda as greater than God’s. That is not only a form of idolatry, but when done in the face of the conviction of the Holy Spirit it is, I belive, a step on the road to blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. That blasphemy will become unpardonable if I get to the point of being unable to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches (Revelation 2-3).

    Now one caveat here. While I am now more offended than I was previously by churches who deny women a place in ministry according to their gifts, I do believe there is a substantial difference between believing that something is right and failing to do it and not being aware that something is right. Both are dangerous, because our awareness of the Holy Spirit–God’s breath in Christ’s body–is key to our Christian life. But the first can be disastrous in a short period of time, while the second erodes. If completely honest, those with the second error correct their course.

    This does not merely apply to women’s ministry. It applies to all forms of restrictions on ministry. I have seen churches where ministry was artificially restricted based on age, on economic status, on whether one was part of the founding families of the church, on intellectual ability or lack thereof, or on a buddy system with the elders and pastor. All of these things are, I believe, a way of flying in the face of the work of the Holy Spirit.

    My bottom line is this: Be open to what the Holy Spirit is actually doing. While you need some structure from sound doctrinal beliefs, it’s easy to be wrong and to place your own agenda above God’s agenda. The one way to be safe is to maintain that attitude of repentace, to remain correctable.

  • On the Retirement of Marcus Borg

    Marcus Borg has announced his retirement. After completing his current class at Oregon State University, where he has been the Hundere Distinguished Professor of Religion and Culture, he will retire, and may even slow down a bit! He does have a few books in the works and other outlines in mind, according to this story in the Corvallis Gazette-Times.

    I have watched a little bit of Christian discussion (CompuServe Christian Fellowship Forum) of this retirement with some interest, though I haven’t gotten involved in any of the debates there. I think it is pretty much pointless for us to debate Borg’s state of grace or to pray for him more, or less for that matter, than anyone else in a similar relationship to us. I can observe that he is a person who diligently seeks, speaks honestly, and doesn’t give up.

    I have long recommended that if you are going to read just a single book on the life of Jesus from the liberal perspective–and Borg is doubtless liberal–then let it be one of Borg’s, preferably Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. I prefer him for this purpose to John Dominic Crossan, though I think Crossan is a bit more thorough in discussing his sources and methodology. Crossan seems to dry his Christianity out, while Borg maintains an active spirituality that is reflected in his works.

    I recall one time as I was preparing for a sermon dealing with historical Jesus studies. I wanted to find readings that would include a short statement from a conservative and a liberal perspective just what the essence of Jesus actually is. I wanted to put on display what, at the core, a good representative from either side of center would see as the right answer to that question. As I often do when looking for words that communicate, I read a couple of selections to my wife to get her reaction. Both were from The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions, by Borg and N. T. Wright. Now I have to say that while I have a generous dose of agnosticism regarding our ability to prove historical events, and even question the use of the term “proof” at all, and don’t believe that one can ultimately prove a miracle in any case, since historical study involves some sense of probability, I still would tend more in the direction of Wright than Borg on the historical issues. Wright is a wonderfully thorough–some would say too thorough–scholar. Yet after reading the two passages, my wife’s suggestion was simply to read Borg’s. It caught the essence for her.

    Now I don’t claim the mantle of orthodoxy, less because of massive disagreements with orthodox doctrine. I am a trinitarian Christian. My own answer, theologically, to who Jesus was is that he was both son of man and son of God, fully divine and fully human, and that this simple point is at the core of Christianity. I am a supernatural theist, in the sense that I believe God can and does intervene in the natural world, though I believe he does so rarely and only for very particular purposes. But the claim of orthodoxy, in my view, requires that someone spend more time defending a doctrinal standard than one does being a spiritual person. By “spiritual person” I mean one who is in communion with God and filled with God’s Spirit. Now there is nothing about orthodox that prevents such spiritual living, and in my view much that helps. But an obsession with orthodoxy can and often does prevent us from keeping our focus.

    In the same way, someone who is reading Marcus Borg from the conservative side of the spectrum can spend all of his time determining what is wrong with everything that Borg teaches. If you are conservative, there is no doubt that you will find plenty, and you will doubtless find lots of reasons to object. From your perspective, you should. In fact, from my perspective, I do as well. But nonetheless I have found reading Borg’s books to be an educational experience, and a spiritually challenging experience.

    Though I don’t think any of the three fall on the extreme, which I reserve for folks who deny the existence of a historical Jesus at all, I think it’s instructive to compare Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, and Bishop John Shelby Spong. All react to an orthodox Christianity that they think is failing. When I look at their works, I ask myself just why it is that people see that orthodoxy as failing, and since I hold more orthodox doctrines than any of the three, I have to ask myself whether those orthodox doctrines are, themselves, problematic. As I said above, I don’t think so. I think an obsession with doctrine can be problematic, but I know people who seem, to me at least (and I must guard against judgment, favorable or not), to be genuinely and truly spiritual in the sense I’ve discussed, who hold many different doctrinal positions including ones with which I have little sympathy. I know conservative, hard-line Calvinists with whom I could join on a broad range of social and spiritual issues, provided we could trust one another sufficiently to do so.

    Spong takes a few root ideas and runs with them, often making massive reconstructions based on very limited evidence. I should, of course, note that pretty much all purely historical reconstructions of the life of Jesus and the early Christian church operate on the basis of very little evidence. I think Spong’s concern is genuine, but I think his reactions are not so well considered. (I make these comments simply to bracket my reaction to Borg. Discussing Spong’s views would require a great deal of time on their own. Crossan is the dry scholar. I truly enjoyed reading his longer works on the historical Jesus and early Christian history, and yet there I find that while I get a good deal of food for my mind, especially in responding to the methology, I find very little food for soul and spirit. Borg manages to do both careful scholarship, avoiding Spong’s flights of fancy and at the same time Crossan’s dryness.

    I do need to note that another favorite of mine, N. T. Wright, is drier than Crossan and so extremely thorough with his details that he can drive you nuts while you’re agreeing with him! A similar book from the conservative perspective is Darrell Bock’s Jesus According to Scripture which sets out with the fairly basic task of presenting a picture of Jesus based purely on the canonical gospels, and winds up as a potential cure for insomnia. Yet Bock’s work is an essential, in my view, precisely because of its thoroughness in dealing with issues in the canonical gospels. I would no longer discuss the historicity, the meaning, or the setting of any saying or event in the life of Jesus without having read Bock’s outline on the subject.

    I welcome Borg’s retirement, not because I have longed to see him out of academic life, but because I hope to have the opportunity to read and be challenged by many more of his books. Perhaps he’ll even give a lecture somewhere near where I am so that I can go and listen. Interacting with his work has been a growing experience for me.

  • Book: Identifying Your Gifts and Service

    Finally, after many delays, every one of them my fault, my new edition of this book has gone to the printer. Titled uncreatively Identifying Your Gifts and Service: Small Group Edition, it fills a need, expressed by a number of people who have taken my class series of the same name, for an edition of this book that could be used by small groups in a continuing study of spiritual gifts. The original edition was really simply my way of gathering my handouts and exercise sheets into one binding to use in my own teaching. It was just a workbook.

    We will be offering a pre-publication price of $10.00 rather than the $12.99 cover price form now until March 13, 2007 in celebration of this release.

    Commercial announcement over–back to our regular programming!)

  • Quick Note on Persecution

    The other day I wrote a note about Christians feeling persecuted in the United States and how I felt that devalued the term “persecution.” This morning I got an alert from Christian Today (I subscribe to the Christianity Today Connection e-mail), which gave the story of a persecuted girl in Pakistan and led, inevitably to the Voice of the Martyrs site Persecution.com.

    I suggest to any American Christians that if you’re feeling persecuted, go read some of the stories on that site until you get perspective. Even better, take some action. They’ll give you some options.

    I believe we should be alert to the persecution of any people for any reason. We should be alert against discrimination in this country as well, no matter who is targetted. But we also need to realize our blessings in this country, and at the same time come to a clear understanding of what it means when people claim authority of the spiritual lives of others through the power of the state.

  • Put Your Bible Down for a Day

    That would be a weird thing for a Bible teacher, such as myself, to say. And indeed, I didn’t say it. Dennis Stout did, over a Christianity Today/Christian Bible Studies.com. There’s some good advice in this article, so I wanted to commend it to my readers.

  • And Yet Christians Speak of Persecution

    I am continually annoyed when Christians claim to be persecuted in this country. I know that we are, from time to time, inconvenienced and troubled, but it seems to me that calling ourselves persecuted simply devalues the term. I’ve lived where persecution was a reality, as in fleeing ahead of someone intent on killing you because of your activities as a Christian, and it’s truly not at all like living in America.

    I’m not saying that we should not oppose discrimination. We should. We should oppose discrimination against anyone, not just ourselves. That should include Wiccans and their right to worship, even in the armed services, Muslims, including protecting them from discrimination based on a bias to assume they are terrorists, and even . . . [gasp] . . . atheists, true infidels!

    Thus I was interested to note the following poll (HT: Abnormal Interests). The apparent resistance to Catholic, Black, and Jewish candidates is headed toward negligible. There’s a larger resistance, totally unjustified, against a woman candidate.

    But only 55% would vote for a homosexual candidate, while only 45% would vote for an atheist. Gay atheists, obviously, need not apply!

    So the question is this: Who’s getting persecuted in this country, and who’s doing the persecuting? I’m sure people are going to claim that refusing to vote for somebody is not persecution, yet many claims of persecution of Christians that I hear fall into very much the same category. Often they are effectively claims that one is losing one’s favored position. But taking one characteristic of a person, and refusing to vote for them on that basis, is a reflection at least of an attitude of persecution.

    Many Christians are likely to tell me that I should, as a Christian, assume that Christian candidates have better character. But that is demonstrably false. In fact, in voting for “Christian” candidates, all I’m voting for is a professed Christian candidate. God only knows whether the claim is true or false. He may attend church simply to gain political favor. He may be 100% sincere. The only way I have to know is by a person’s record of doing what he says and his competence. But that’s precisely the same way that I can determine whether an atheist, a homosexual (who may well also be a Christian), or a Wiccan deserves my vote. What does the record show? I may guess wrong, but a couple of years in office will let me know whether I should vote for that person again.

    As for me, I will vote for a person who has demonstrated integrity and competence, whether that person is gay or straight, Christian or atheist, Black or White, or any combination of characteristics or claims. It’s not the label, it’s the deeds.

  • Hebrew Teacher Dismissed Because She’s a Woman

    This is incredible. The post on the Christians for Biblical Equality blog is dated January 25, but I just came across it today. My own advisor at the MA level was a woman, Leona Glidden Running, who was both a godly woman and a wonderful teacher. It’s incredible to me that this sort of travesty of the good news of the gospel takes place.

  • Jesus the Logician Project

    Joe Carter at evangelical outpost is trying to relaunch his Jesus the Logician project. I think it’s an interesting idea, and an index that I would like to see, though writing this type of material would not be my cup of tea. Thus I will simply put in this plug for those who might participate, or who might want to access the index of articles on this topic.

  • Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin

    This is one of those automatically controversial topics. Jordan J. Ballor made an entry on it at Power Blog bearing the same title as my post.

    I don’t have a major problem with the intention of this article. Loving the sinner, but hating the sin is a very Christ-like thing to do. The problem I have is that so many claim to do this, but very few do. We use the term “sinner” in a special sense–love the sinner (guy who sins much more than I do), but hate the sin (stuff that’s badder than what I do!). We despise the person because we can’t dissociate certain activities from the persons who do them. We classify as “sins” differences in personality or things we happen not to like.

    Other than that, this is good advice! 🙂