Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Christianity

  • Literary Criticism

    To conclude the content part of my series on Biblical criticism, I want to discuss literary criticism. Much of the practice of literary criticism is similar to genre and to a lesser extent canonical criticism.

    Essentially, literary criticism involves forgetting about the historical and theological aspects and simply reading the Bible as literature. One can even read portions as different types of literature. For those who are primarily concerned with extracting propositional truth from the Bible, this may not seem like a very useful activity, but as with any literary study, it can be a very powerful and useful experience for the student.

    This process does not require you to decide that the Bible is untrue, or that it does not contain theological or historical information. It merely means that you look at it in a different way. In many cases this will help you see more clearly the historical message, even though this is the goal.

    Consider Samuel and Kings, for example. These four books tell the story of Israel from the end of the time of the judges through the Babylonian exile, a time period of around 500 years. One approach, and indeed the most common approach, is to study the text and its sources in order to find the maximum amount of historical information possible. Alternatively we ask the question of what theological lessons the author is trying to portray through these events? But the literary critic would ask questions about the overall plot and various subplots, and look at the characterization of the various kings. Why does the author emphasize the kings that he does? What is the literary purpose of the Elijah and Elisha story cycles? Who are the characters and what can we discover about them?

    In the Psalms, this approach can be especially effective. Here again the actual genre of the text is more important. In Samuel-Kings we disregard the actual genre, a sort of historiography, and look at it in terms appropriate to a work of fiction. In Psalms, we are looking at poetry, and can study each Psalm as poetry while looking for the genre (more in the sense in which that term is used in form criticism). Here the questions are form and structure and the simple art of the poetry. (See my paper on Psalm 104.)

    Literary criticism is a large topic, and would require much more than a blog entry, so I’m going to err on the side of brevity–a very uncommon error for me!–and stop with these few very general remarks.

    I will be following this with a series of posts applying critical methods to Isaiah 24-27. I think this is a very interesting passage to use as a test case, and I expect to post several entries on it. Because these are demonstration passages for the critical methodologies I have been discussing here, I will post these on this blog rather than my new Participatory Bible Study Blog, where I’m currently discussing the New Testament book of Hebrews.

  • Witness without being a Pest

    Over on Philosoraptor, Carol Roper has an open letter to theists entitled Sick and Tired of God Talk. Carol talks about how tired she is of various standard questions from theists, general theists who want to convert her, and in this country one would assume mostly Christian theists. Carol is an adamant atheist, and she finds these people and their words and behavior annoying.

    I’ve been planning to write a response to this essay for more than a year, if I remember correctly, but I haven’t gotten around to it. My response is not directed at Carol. After all, she knows what annoys her and what doesn’t, and I’m not about to try to tell her what’s what. But reading her article suggested some things that Christians do that I think are quite annoying and also counterproductive.

    There seems to be a divide between some Christians who want to push themselves on everyone in a frantic race to convert and bring into church membership as many people as possible. “Jesus is coming back,” they think, “and he’s going to accidentally fry a bunch of people if I don’t get busy.” The answer, they seem to think, is to work on the statistics as fast as possible. Going door to door or randomly down the street and confronting people with what they think is the gospel is the only way they can see to really get into action and catch all those people before they go to hell. Their level of panic is matched on the other side by people who are quite apathetic. To hear them, Christianity is a dirty secret that one ought to keep as quiet as possible. Jesus may be returning, but he’ll have to deal personally with the people, because these folks aren’t going to do anything.

    The first group supports their behavior by claiming that the gospel does offend people, and if they share the Good News with someone and they become offended, it’s not their problem. They gave the warning! But the question is, is it the gospel message that’s offending people, or is it you and your behavior? Studies have shown that people who are persuaded to accept Jesus as their savior by means of manipulative monologue generally do not stay in the church, while those who enter the church through a relationship with an individual Christian normally do stay. (My copy is loaned out right now, but you can find extensive discussion of this issue in Faith-Sharing, by Fox & Morris.)

    I mention this because I think it shows that the frantic, manipulative method of witnessing is ineffective, even when measured by numbers. I don’t think measuring by numbers is the appropriate way for a Christian to measure witnessing. A witness is about being obedient to God. The fruit of that may show in your challenge to others to behave better, to help others more, or to think more seriously about spiritual issues. You may never see any fruit that you can hang on your church wall, so to speak. Fruit is God’s measuring stick, not yours. If we remembered this as Christians, we would cause far fewer problems.

    The usual excuse is simply that we are commanded to be witnesses and to make disciples, so how can we stop? I am absolutely not telling anyone to stop witnessing. In fact, I don’t think you can stop. If you are a Christian, you are a witness. The question is what kind of witness you are going to be.

    I’m also not saying that everyone on the street or knocking on a door is a pest. There are many legitimate reasons to do this sort of thing. If you are truly there to help, that’s one thing. If you are there to teach them your theology, that’s another.

    A person who is so apathetic that most people don’t know of they are a Christian at all sends the message that Christianity is a sort of sideline that has a very low priority in their life. Christians are, to borrow the words of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “mostly harmless,” but they also aren’t much good for antything.

    A person who is frantic, and portrays panic, while bumbiling ineffectually from person to person sends the message that Christianity is a group of people in a panic, afraid that the world will end. Not only that, they have a God who is not really prepared for the end. These Christians portray their faith as something that is actually dangerous to the world, as they live their lives contrary to the command of Jesus, as though the world would end at any moment. Ecology? Who cares? Jesus is coming. Social Security headed for bankruptcy? Don’t worry! Jesus will come before I need it!

    So how does one manage to witness without being a pest?

    Start by living your faith. Christianity worships God as creator and upholder of all that is (Hebrews 1:1-3), and also as a God who offers unearned favor to humanity, so much so as to cross the gap between infinity and the finite in Jesus Christ, who showed to us what God was like. We needn’t be in a panic.

    Love your neighbor. This does not mean to sneak your way into your neighbor’s heart so you can convert him. It means that you build relationships because you love and value people. People will know if you are insincere. If you live up to your Christian principles and don’t make your Christianity either a secret or a wall between you and your friend, you are being a witness.

    Learn to speak other spiritual languages. By this I mean to learn to talk about topics of interest in terms that the other person understands. Even as a Christian I am offended when a politician uses his or her faith as lever to get my support. I don’t know the sincerity of those faith claims. But if a candidate, of any faith or none at all, has lived according to certain principles, that is something I can understand and test. In communicating with a non-Christian, for example, WWJD (What Would Jesus Do?) is probably not the best question to ask. But if you think that your Christian principles are also good principles, perhaps you can find a way to express those good ideas other than by claiming they are divine commands. You are not denying Jesus just because you argue for his moral principles based on something other than the fact that he gave them as commands.

    Learn the basis for your faith. This may not be the same as the basis for my faith. What brought you to your position of faith? Are you confident of that? Your personal testimony is more important than any amount of logical argument. If you are not an apologist by nature or training, you don’t have to behave like one. (An apologist is one who answers questions about the Christian faith professionally.) When people ask, answer for yourself. That’s not waffling. That’s just talking about what you know.

    Wait for questions. If you live a life that is a good witness, inevitably people will ask something about your beliefs. That is your opportunity to answer. But remember it is not your opportunity to manipulate them. You believe that your Christian experience is a good thing, and it’s natural for you to want to share. When someone asks that means they want you to share. Then is when it’s fine.

    Don’t resort to force. Many Christians today are trying to get the government to do their job for them. By this I mean by advocating state-sponsored, teacher led prayer in public schools, public displays of religious documents such as the Ten Commandments, introduction of intelligent design into the schools, and radical action against abortion and abortion clinics. I think all of those things demonstrate that we don’t really believe in the power of the gospel shared with the power of the Holy Spirit to change lives. We think we need to use force in society just as we sometimes use manipulative language and behavior in our personal witness. Be a witness. Then let God do his part.

    Think about it this way. You might be a pest, rather than a witness if:

    • You knock on doors belonging to people you don’t know, but can’t name your own next door neighbors
    • You know all the details of soteriology*, but don’t know where to get help for a homeless person
    • You think salvation is equivalent to joining your church congregation
    • You talk to people you despise so you can “save” them, and yet continue to despise them
    • You’re sure your relationship with Jesus makes you more special than everybody else
    • The only language you know how to speak is “church-ese”
    • You set a mental timer counting down until you will break off a friendship if the stubborn jerk doesn’t accept Jesus
    • You can’t carry on any conversation that isn’t about your religion
    • You try to befriend someone only because you think you can get him to attend church

    *If you have to ask what that is, you’re probably a pretty reasonable person to talk to!

  • Does Integrity make you a Wuss?

    DaveScot over on Uncommon Descent thinks that having integrity and good judgment makes one a wuss. Of course, unless he also has the guts and integrity already displayed by the folks over on Telic Thoughts, he’ll have to come up with something to say, and I suppose this is as good, or as bad as anything. Let’s just say that one lie leads to another, and DaveScot is busily digging himself in deeper and deeper.

    And note that the folks over at Telic Thoughts are not endorsing Dr. Pianka’s ecological ideas. Like many other people they are simply noting that he did not call for release of a nasty virus or desire the killing of 90% of the world’s population. His other ideas remain to be discussed. In fact, most posters on this topic have distanced themselves from some of Dr. Pianka’s ideas, while still challenging the false accusations.

    DaveScot’s reaction to the decision by the folks at Telic Thoughts? “Gag me with a spoon.”

    Keep it up DaveScot. Your credibility can’t get any lower, but perhaps this additional confirmation will keep someone, somewhere, from forgetting about your behavior.

  • Kudos to Telic Thoughts

    Telic Thoughts has issued a very forthright statement and retraction regarding certain comments they made about Dr. Eric Pianka. Since I had linked to them as one of my sources in my entry Christians and Defamation, I think it is important that I take note of this retraction and the very good intentions (and may I call it good advice?) that they offer: “The next time the media circulates an accusation that has the potential to do serious real-world harm to a person’s reputation, we promise to treat such accounts with extreme skepticism and caution” (A Promise). Good work!

    Incidentally, I agree that Dr. Pianka’s actual comments are extreme, and themselves require serious scrutiny, something I’ll leave to those more qualified than I in the field. I would be pleased to see these ideas examined and discussed dispassionately. Perhaps that can happen once the furor over the original false accusations has died down.

  • New Bible Study Blog

    I’m creating a separate blog as I start to post Bible studies online. Threads from Henry’s Web is a place for me to post general commentary and background information on religion functioning in the world. As I got ready to start blogging through the book of Hebrews, I started to believe that it would be better to separate that kind of posts from my general posting here. The audiences are very different. Those who read this blog especially for material on Christianity and the creation vs evolution controversy will rarely be all that concerned with my exegesis of a particular Biblical book. (Some may be interested when I blog on Revelation, as I expect to do in a few months. I’ll post a notice here.)

    So let me introduce Participatory Bible Study Blog on my domain hneufeld.com. I have already posted the first introductory entry there, and will start getting into the meat of the book this weekend.

    I expect to continue to blog here about as much as ever. I’m simply moving another piece of my offline work online. This material will be made available to my upcoming face-to-face class on the book of Hebrews, and indeed people who comment may expect that some of my students will read their notes.

  • Home and Church Education

    As intelligent design (ID) propnents complain about censorship and freedom of speech, one thing is being ignored: They are getting their message out to the public, and any scientist who wishes to examine their data, should they care to provide some, can acquire the material should they desire to do so. In addition, high school students do not get all of their information in the classroom, nor should they. There are many other opportunities for us, as parents, to educate our children in things that are not part of the high school curriculum.

    I think that claims that ID materials are being censored are particularly empty. In this time in which internet publication is incredibly easy, it is practically impossible to keep an idea quiet. Acceptance is another matter. What the ID proponents crave is the opportunity to say, “See, we’ve been published in a peer reviewed journal.” It is unlikely that if the reviewers for a particular journal determine that an article is not sound enough to be published, the readers of that journal are going to be interested in it. After all, the journal has its customers as well, and if they are not presented with material that interests them, they will read something else. Thus creationists of various stripes create their own “peer reviewed” journals, that are read by those who are interested in such things. But the information is available to any scientist who finds it interesting.

    So it’s not that there is no way to make the information public that is the problem. The issue is really simply whether the high school students of the nation should be made a captive audience for ID. ID proponents are going to say, at this point, that right now these same students are a captive audience for Darwinism, but that is not accurate. They are a captive audience for science, whatever is the current consensus body of knowledge that represents. What every other new idea has had to do in order to get into the textbooks is to demonstrate through the scientific process that it is truly science, and to become the consensus view, it has to convince the key thinkers in the appropriate field that it (a proposed theory) represents the best explanation. ID propoents want to dodge this part of the process.

    But then there are those who, for religious reasons, believe that evolutionary theory is wrong, and they want it replaced with something. For the moment they are kind of united on the plan of getting their collective foot in the door, but be assured that once that is accomplished, there will be plenty of differences of opinion over just what variety of creationism should be taught. But I believe that these parents have a right, to a certain extent, to raise their children as they see fit. The limits of that right, in my view, involve avoiding abuse, and failing to prepare their children to live in the real world. I’d even go very far in allowing parents to determine to educate their children in ways I might find very counterproductive, though I do see a state interest in setting some standard of education. Within those limits, however, parents have many options, including home schooling, private schools, and supplementary materials provided at home or at church.

    The fact is that these ideas are not suppressed at all. They simply fall outside of certain boundaries for discussion at certain places and times. We don’t expect the psychology teacher to discuss horticulture in class (except, of course, as therapy!), and we don’t expect the science teacher to discuss religion. This is very similar to the frequent arguments about prayer in school. I hear parents complain regularly that their children can’t pray in school. But that’s not really the problem. The problem is that their children are not directed in prayer by teachers or staff, or that prayer is not officially mandated or provided for. The children can, and do pray. What the parents need to do is teach their own children how to pray, and how to lead prayers, and the young folks can meet as much as they want. I think that’s a much better idea than asking the school to teach children.

    The same thing applies to things that are not taught in science class, but we think our children ought to hear. I have some suggestions:

    1. Turn the TV off one night and spend some time talking to your children about your faith and how it relates to science. If you think the earth was created in one literal week, tell them. Explain your reasons. If you don’t know much about the subject, get one of the many books on your particular view of creation and learn.
    2. Provide your child with books that support your viewpoint. (I recommend having someone read materials on all sides, and then critically examine them. That will probably require you to get involved again.)
    3. Ask your church education department, to offer a seminar, Sunday School series, Wednesday night program, or series of sermons on origins. It’s your church, and you and your fellow believers will get to decide what the content should be. As you might have guessed, I think such teaching should talk about all views that Christians hold on origins, but that’s just my view. (I offer just such a seminar for churches.) Now we’re talking about your church.
    4. Regularly communicate with your children about your faith and theirs, and let them express themselves on what they have heard at school and elsewhere. Get involved with their education, whether they are in public, private, or home school.
    5. Encourage your church to have a substantive Sunday School program for various ages, so that children can learn about their faith and how it relates to the world. There’s no reason for young people to be shocked when they get to college because they find out the world is so different from what they are used to at church. I have frequently encountered young adults who feel that their pastors and Sunday School teachers lied to them. (It is more likely that those individuals simply didn’t know, although I have heard pastors justify withholding facts from their congregation.)
    6. Make your home a place where learning is an expected part of life. Books, computers, and opportunities to learn about the physical world should be plentiful. Let them know that questions are good.

    You will do much more to build your children’s faith by these means than by any amount of political activity to include religious materials in public school.

  • Christians and Defamation

    One who covers up hatred by lying,
    And one who spreads defamation is stupid.     — Proverbs 10:18
    (my translation, but try any version you like)

    I’m often interested in the portions of the Bible that some Christians think they must follow, and what portions many Christians think they can avoid. For example, right now many conservative Christians seem to think they are more bound by Leviticus 18:22 (you shall not lie with a male as with a woman: it is an abomination) than they are by Leviticus 19:34 (The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you).

    But when it gets down to lying, slander, and defamation of character, it seems that the Biblical mandate is pretty clear. Christians definitely should not be engaged in slander or defamation. But how far can one go in “misunderstanding,” shall we say, and still fall within the bounds of Christian behavior?

    There is just such a defamation going on right now, defamation of the character of Dr. Erik Pianka. I’m not breaking this news. I’m going to provide you with some blog entries so you can research it for yourself. These blog entries contain both opinion on the topic, but also links to other sources of information so you can research this for yourself. I would simply note that the accusations made against Dr. Pianka are of such a nature that any reasonable person should question them, and should research very carefully before making such accusations or repeating them. This is a very clear case from the Christian biblical point of view of slander.

    Let me just list some sources:

  • Some of my Best Friends are Atheists

    . . . but I wouldn’t want my daughter to marry one.

    You can replace “atheists” with any of a number of groups, and that’s a saying that underlines a manipulative approach to human relationships. There’s exploitation on the one hand because such friendships are often solely for the purpose of getting something out of the “friend.” On the other side there is exploitation because the person is using the claim of friendship with members of the group to get social points with someone else.

    Ed Brayton has picked up a column by John Allen Paulos (Who’s Counting: Distrusting Atheists), where Paulos notes, in part:

    Atheists are seen by many Americans (especially conservative Christians) as alien and are, in the words of sociologist Penny Edgell, the study’s lead researcher, “a glaring exception to the rule of increasing tolerance over the last 30 years.”

    Ed notes:

    There isn’t a shred of evidence to suggest that atheists are any different from theists in terms of unethical or anti-social behavior . . .

    And of course Ed is quite right about this.

    But for many Christians, it is necessary to conclude that atheists are immoral and generally reprehensible because they reject the very core belief of our faith, and do so, as many of us see it, contrary to overwhelming evidence. How could it be possible that someone has been presented with overwhelming evidence for the existence and sovereignty of God and still rejects God absolutely? Is it possible that such a person could be anything but morally depraved?

    In case you think I’m making this attitude up, let me first refer to the common Bible texts: “Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is no one who does good” (Psalm 14:1, NRSV). That one pretty much covers it. Then there’s Paul’s statement, “20Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; 21for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened” (Romans 1:20-21, NRSV). So there it is! They reject the overwhelming evidence and therefore become totally depraved morally, and thus one really oughtn’t to want one’s daughter to marry one.

    Based on these scriptures some Christians have justified despising those who do not believe, and basing their relationships with them solely on the desire to convert and reform them. Before I respond to that, let me take a moment to discuss the background of those scriptures.

    In the case of Psalm 14:1, the passage comes form a time when a philosophical atheism was hardly an option. Everybody believed in some god or another, and the idea of believing in no gods at all, simply because one couldn’t find evidence for the gods was not a live option. I would guess there might have been some folks who abandoned a belief in any real sense, but they were not so numerous as to occasion much comment. The basic charge of atheism, in the ancient world, normally meant that one was rejecting the gods of a culture, and the consequent moral system that the culture lived by. Early Christians were called atheists. Why? Not because they had formed a philosophical conclusion that there was no deity, but because they rejected the deities that undergirded the Roman system of government. (As an aside, let me note that use of this text as an argument for the existence of God is quite useless. You use the fact that a book that your opponent does not accept calls him a fool. That would only matter if he already accepted the book as authoritative.)

    It’s very hard for some people to transfer Christian ethical principles into a secular society, because so much of the Biblical literature was written in a culture that assumed one religious and cultural framework. In a secular society, we generally agree to follow a set of laws and principles that we can agree upon irrespective of our particular religious viewpoint, and we allow the spiritual decisions and thus sometimes the reasons for adhering to those principles, to be an individual matter. Christian reconstructionists run hard against this tradition in America, trying to restore something like the Old Testament covenant, only with the United States as “God’s country” inhabited by “God’s people” and blessed as we obey “God’s laws.” They are a group that should frighten Americans from all across the spectrum. That’s not how we do it.

    And that’s not how Jesus advocated doing it. His commands were clearly designed to allow his followers to exist peacefully in a world that did not accept their value system. In fact, it was their goal to stand contrary to the surrounding value system, but to do so peacefully, and not as political revolutionaries. The Christian mode of revolution was individual, that is, the conversion or changing of people one at a time through living as the “salt of the earth.” “Christian” reconstructionism thus is not Christian at all, at least assuming that part of Christianity is following Jesus of Nazereth. But some of those attitudes have crept through into the daily activities of Christians who don’t accept Christian reconstructionism. These include the idea that our nation is cursed because of toleration of homosexuality. This is an insidious invasion into our general thinking of the idea of Christian reconstructionism. It results from belief, conscious or unconscious, that blessing or curse is a national thing, and is upheld by behavior according to the covenant with God. But there is no evidence that God has made any kind of covenant with the United States of America, or that God wanted to make any such covenant.

    In Paul’s case in Romans, we need to be aware of the flow of Paul’s argument. Romans 1 is so commonly taught alone that often Christians are not aware of the overall flow of the argument. Paul is building his case that all of humanity is in need of salvation. In Romans 1 he says that the gentiles have fallen into sin. In Romans 2 he adds to this that the Jews have also fallen into sin. Each has enough revelation, according to him, to understand who God is, but neither has successfully lived it out. Note thus that Paul’s intention here is not to single out those who don’t believe from those who do; rather, it’s to point out that believers and unbelievers have both fallen short. Romans 3 then continues by saying that thus we are all in need of the grace of Jesus. One should be careful using a small portion of an argument that Paul uses to place believers and unbelievers on common ground in order to demonstrate that unbelievers are, in fact, more reprehensible. For those who will point out that Paul is talking about Jewish believers, let me simply note that Paul does not argue that those who believe in Jesus are morally superior, but rather than those who believe in Jesus receive grace in spite of the fact that they do fail. But that’s a whole other topic.

    So neither of these common texts really point to what some modern Christians use them for. But now let me step out on the ice a bit, because some of my best friends are atheists, and I’ve had some interesting conversations about that fact. There are really two groups that have produced conversations of this nature. First, atheists and agnostics, and second, the local Unitarian-Universalist congregation. I feel free to mention these conversations because I’ve discussed them with members of both groups.

    First, there is surprise that I get along with such people. Just reverse the statement, and add a good bit of shock in the tone: “Some of your best friends are atheists!” That’s about got it. The point being that it is very surprising to them that I can enjoy myself in the company of such unbelievers. But the second reaction is one of great sympathy in that I am called to witness to atheists and agnostics. Now I believe that a Chrsitian is always witnessing. It’s just unfortunate that so many of us feel that we must witness by talking when shutting up would be so much better. So yes, I am a witness of one person, myself, who is a Christian. That witness will be either good or bad. But nonetheless, I note the tones of sympathy that I get, the offers of special prayers, and the desire that I report back when I’m “finished.” There is a hidden assumption here that my interaction with atheist, agnostic, or Unitarian-Universalist friends is a episode that needs to be completed and then reported on.

    There’s the hidden assumption as well that my purpose must be to change these people into something else, and thus my friendships are strategic. Now my friendship with members of the Unitarian-Universalist church has resulted in numerous opportunities to speak there (see my sermon Fences: Mending or Rending, from September 11, 2005), but the question of my motivation remains. You see, for me, this is simply another group of people, wonderful people in fact, with whom I can share some thoughts that I hope will help them on their journey. I’m not there to convert them. I do appreciate prayers, but I would ask people to pray that I will be a good example of a follower of Jesus Christ, not that I will change some other group of people. Change in them is their personal choice.

    I have found, however, that this attitude is very hard to convey to other Christians. That’s the problem. Do we, as Christians, make such an assumption that it is our job to fix other people that we have difficulty entering into non-manipulative relationships with those not of our faith? I know many Christians who do think as I do, and many who are less conscious of it than I am. I’m made very conscious of it because every time I go speak anywhere there are people praying for me. I want them to pray for me. I ask them to pray for me. But the atmosphere is a bit different when I’m going to speak to a group that is not Christians.

    Jesus was known for associating with those that the religious folks didn’t approve of. He was criticized for it. It didn’t seem to stop him. If you asked Jesus “Who is my neighbor?” do you think he would include atheists? Could you retell the story of the good Samaritan and have an atheist be the one who rendered aid? Whether you can do that or not will tell a great deal about how much of the “Jesus attitude” you’ve absorbed.

  • Genre and Canonical Criticism

    Continuing my discussion of Biblical criticism and the tools that make up that method, let’s look at genre and canonical criticism together. I do that, because they look generally at the same point in the production of the text as we have it, but look in different ways at that point in time.

    We have already encountered the term “genre” in discussing form criticism. Make sure to distinguish the way in which “genre” is used in “genre criticism” as opposed to the way it is used in form criticism. In the former, it is a category of short elements, normally of orally transmitted material, that takes certain forms due to that process of transmission. Here we are looking at the genre of a larger literary document.

    You may gather from that definition that we have shifted our focus away from the prehistory of the text and its development, to looking at the document as we have it now. At the same time we move from looking at smaller portions or even fragments of the text to looking at it as a whole document. Thus if we consider the book of Matthew, for example, form criticism is concerned with the individual sayings of Jesus and reports of his deeds, source criticism looks at how these were collected into documents which became sources for the author of Matthew, redaction criticism looked at how those sources were combined into the whole gospel in order to tell us what Matthew himself was trying to accomplish. Tradition criticism looked at this whole process. Genre criticism looks at the gospel of Matthew as a whole, asks what its genre “gospel” may be, what are its purposes, and how was it used by the community that saw it as a gospel. Canonical criticism looks at the whole of Matthew but looks at it as part of the canon of the bible and of the New Testament, and insofar as it is interested in a community, it would be the one that first saw this as authoritative for the church.

    Genre Criticism

    Recently I’ve been doing some study of the book of Daniel, in which genre criticism can be extremely important. Previously, I discussed the dating of Daniel, particularly from the point of view of Anthony Di Lella, author of the Anchor Bible commentary on the book. Di Lella believes that the book is pseudonymous, written in the 2nd century BCE, and also that its stories are not generally historical, but rather are edifying stories. (See Dating the Book of Daniel.) At the same time he maintains that this view does not conflict with inerrancy. How does he do that?

    The issue is simply one of genre. He believes that one of the characteristics of apocalyptic is that it is pseudonymous, and he determines on various grounds that the stories are edifying tales and not historical, but he also determines that the use of this genre was to encourage people in a particular time of persecution, looking at the community that first received the book as a whole, and the purposes for which they would use the book.

    On a much less radical note, genre criticism of the gospels asks just what type of literature the gospels are. Are they histories, and if so what type? Are they novels as some literary critics have proposed? For many, the answer is that there is a specific genre of “gospel” which is not identical to any other form of literature. Once we have determined the genre, we ask just what that genre was intended to do. It would appear that a presentation of a coherent chronological picture was not part of the plan, as the various gospels, even though they show signs that the authors were acquainted with certain of the others, do not present a consistent chronology. These are the types of questions that genre criticism is supposed to cover.

    Canonical Criticism

    Canonical criticism is concerned with where those gospels fit in that broader scheme. In studying the gospels one might ask why there are four, and just four, gospels, and just where Matthew fits into that scheme. How does this one gospel contribute to the function of the “gospel” genre (or whatever one may have determined that genre was)? Why do we have “gospels” in the canon at all?

    In the case of Daniel, there are also issues of canonical criticism. Where does this type of literature fit into the faith life of the church? Why would we value an apocalypse, whether we see its stories as historical or not? Daniel itself is placed in different positions in the Jewish canon and in the Christian canon. Is there a reason for this? Canonical criticism is not largely a matter of looking at the order of the books, of course, but rather looking at how the book functions as part of the community’s Bible as a whole. Nonetheless the fact that the Christian canon seems to put a higher value on Daniel than the Jewish canon is probably significant in the way each community sees that book.

    One can continue by asking what role Revelation plays in the New Testament canon. Many people didn’t think it should be there, and even some moderns don’t feel the right choice was made. When they say that Revelation should not be canonical, are they commenting on its usefulness in the church, its potential use, or the way in which it has been used or abused? These are questions that the canonical critic applies in study.

    Putting things Together

    Though this is not my last entry, the introduction of these two tools of Biblical criticism provides an opportunity for me to comment on the use of the tools in general. Too often Bible students who do start to use critical methods get tied up on one or two methods. These tools provide different ways of looking at the text, but in order to understand both the text itself and how it applies to the modern church or community, one needs to look at it in a variety of ways. Commentaries that focus solely on one aspect can be quite hard to use practically. A form critical commentary, for example, will look heavily at the prehistory of the text, paying much attention to hypothetical material while passing over the text as we have it. On the other hand, a canonical critic can be tempted to ignore the fact that a text does have a prehistory and act as though it dropped from heaven whole.

    The Bible student who wants to get the most from the text will use a balance of tools as they are appropriate to the particular text he is studying.

  • God is Creator of Everything

    In a previous post in my series on Christian view on origins, Biblical Doctrine of Creation, I listed six elements of a Biblical doctrine of creation. I need to specify this more precisely as a Biblical doctrine of creation based on the Christian Bible and on one or another Christian approach to Biblical interpretation.

    Excursus – What is Biblical?

    Very often debates on whether any particular doctrine is Biblical founder on the fact that people are using different approaches to interpretation, and thus a text that applies in one way in one person’s argument means something completely different to the other, simply because of a different approach to interpretation. Since this is so important as I start discussing a Biblical doctrine of creation, let me give a simple example.

    In Matthew 5:17 Jesus says, “Don’t think that I have come to destroy the law and the prophets. I have not come to destroy, but to fulfill.” Now I interpret this text to mean that Jesus came to bring the law to fruition, that is to give it its deeper meaning, something defined by the texts that follow indicating a new way to look at various laws. Murderous anger is now like murder, lust like adultery, and so forth. In each case Jesus discusses the motive. I see these as examples of how Jesus invites his followers to look at the law.

    Now some people will say that Matthew 5:17 means that Jesus came to put an end to the law by keeping all of it, and would not see the following instructions as examples of that, but as a separate topic. When Jesus died, according to these folks, taking the penalty of the law, he removed the law and now we live by the Spirit. Others hold that since all of the preaching of Jesus was given to the Jews, the moral instructions of this chapter only apply to Jews. Christians belong to the church age, and are under grace. Somewhere in there most Christians will have found an approach to interpreting Matthew 5:17 that resonated with them, and may feel that the alternatives are quite weird. (I might not have included your view, and I certainly oversimplified them all.)

    Those differences in interpretation illustrate what I mean when I say that everyone approaches Bible study within some kind of interpretational matrix, and that if yours matrix is different from mine, we can debate about the matrix (or paradigm), but likely we’ll just degenerate into yelling if we try to argue what is “Biblical” and what is not based on completely different interpretational matrices. In the first three chapters of his book Faith, Form, and Time, Kurt Wise builds a case for a literal reading of the Bible in general and the early chapters of Genesis in particular. Thus he believes in a literal creation week of 24 hour days, patriarchs who literally lived hundreds of years, and a worldwide flood with all creatures preserved on the ark. For him this is Biblical, and any view holding that these materials are not narrative history, but rather are of other literary genres and thus should be understood very differently, would be unbiblical. For me, on the other hand, Wise’s view is not Biblical, because he is reading genres such as liturgy, myth, and legend as narrative history, and thus makes them mean things that are inappropriate to those genres.

    Note that the doctrine of inerrancy is not at issue here. While I do not accept the doctrine of inerrancy, there are theistic evolutionists who do. The issue is intent. An inerrantist can read the book of Jonah and determine that it is not historical. How is this possible? Because if he determines that the genre is “edifying story” it is not an error that the book is not historical. One doesn’t test a work of fiction based on whether the characters in it actually existed and did the things described. (For a connection of this same concept to the book of Daniel, see Dating the Book of Daniel.)

    So keep in mind as I discuss these various views that when I discuss how each view handles the Biblical materials relating to a particular doctrine, I’m considering their approach to interpretation. I’m not trying to say that all views are Biblical; I’m simply pointing out how each group relates its view to the Biblical material.

    Creator of Everything

    Major passages: Genesis 1:1-2:4a, Psalm 104:24, Hebrews 1:2, Romans 11:33-36, Isaiah 45:7.

    Most of these passages are quite self-explanatory in connection with this topic, though they are subject to different interpretations in terms of how and when God created. The key common element is that nothing is attributed in Christianity (or Judaism as I understand it) to any entity other than God. There are some points in Christian theology in which negative results have occurred in creation based on the activities of hostile entities. It is common, for example, for Christians to credit Satan with the “creation” of evil.

    The problem here is the understanding of God’s responsibility for the actions of creatures with free will. Many Christians remove God from responsibility for evil simply by attributing it to Satan. But Satan himself is a created being, again according to the Bible. (Note here that this statement is a bit loose, as the doctrine of Satan is not clearly fixed, especially in Hebrew scriptures.) In general, however, if someone makes something that causes damage, one is regarded as responsible for that damage. If I light a fire in my back yard, and then don’t control it, and it burns out of control and damages my neighbor’s yard, I cannot claim that the fire is responsible but I am not.

    That is not quite analogous to our case, however, because God is creating a creature that can choose what behavior it will engage in. Nonetheless, God created a creature who was capable of becoming evil, and thus set in motion the process of evil coming into existence. While most of the texts I listed simply speak of God creating everything, one text is more specific.

    7Forming the light,
    Creating the darkness,
    Making well-being,
    Creating disaster,
    I YHWH do {or make} all these things.

    There is some debate about the word I have translated “disaster” and the KJV translates “evil.” Some people think this alternate translation solves the problems. But this passage is actually using two words indicating the extremes in order to include everything between. No matter how light it is or how dark it is, God is the one who made it. No matter how good things get or how bad they get, God is the one who made it. God is absolutely the creator of everything. We may look for excuses (Satan did all the bad stuff), but God is not looking for such excuses. According to the Bible, he readily claims responsibility for the creation of everything.

    This doesn’t mean that I’m unaware of texts speaking of the devil. It does mean that I see the Bible as ultimately attributing all creative activity to God. For some reasons (best know to God, presumably), God created entities that were capable of evil, and gave them the freedom to exercise that option.

    In my view all of the Christian views of origins potentially fulfill this first requirement. Some Christians use the concept of the devil to avoid divine responsibility, but one can’t even make a generalization there, as many do not.

    Nonetheless, thestic evolutionists are frequently accused of not seeing God as the creator of everything, but rather of maintaining that all living things are produced by evolution, and thus not created by God. This accusation is itself unbiblical.

    It’s clear (I think) to both creationists of all varieties as well as to evolutionists that there are things in the world that come into existence on a regular basis. (I’m leaving stellar evolution for a later article discussing whether God is still creating.) For example, a new island might be formed by a volcanic eruption. I recall a visit to Crater Lake in Oregon, which was formed in only moments ago geologically speaking. Would any Christian claim that the lake and islands are not created by God?

    But the text of Isaiah gets very specific on this by calling God the creator of Israel (Isaiah 43:15). Now God clearly did not create Israel out of nothing. Rather, their ancestors were called, went through the normal processes of population growth, migration, and conquest, and eventually became the people to whom the message of 2nd Isaiah was proclaimed. Thus God is still the creator even of things that are produced through natural processes. Finally, let me mention every human baby, and in fact every form of new life, all of which is a creation of God, even though it is the result of natural processes.

    That is the first element of a Biblical doctrine of creation, and I believe that all of the views of creation we have discussed so far are consistent with it.

    For other entries in this series see Post Series.