Threads from Henry's Web

Category: Religion

All posts relating to religion, including those on the relationship of religion to other fields, such as science and politics

  • Sunday School Today: Authority and Truth

    1893729389I think I titled the next chapter in my book When People Speak for God rather pretentiously: Authority and Truth. That’s what we’ll be discussing today in my Sunday School class.

    As I was reading the chapter, I came across the following, which ties into several things I’m thinking about these days:

    There is, however, a deeper claim that’s involved in both the virgin birth and the resurrection. These doctrines state that God is fundamentally interested in communion with human beings. In the virgin birth we have the statement that God is prepared to share our form and our condition and to become a part of that history. In the crucifixion, God says that he is prepared to carry that sharing all the way, to experience death. In the resurrection, he states that despite his willingness to share it, he’s above it, and thus able not just to communicate with us, but to redeem us.… (pp. 135-136)

    I call my view of inspiration incarnational, because I see God’s Word, however it is expressed when it is communicated with human beings, as a form of incarnation. The problem with this is that I think the orthodox doctrine of the incarnation is not well understood. (There is, of course, the sense it which it will never be well understood and will always be a mystery!) But the way people often hear the term “incarnational” in connection with inspiration is as a claim that the Bible is a mixture of divine and human. When I call scripture incarnational, I do not mean a mixture. I mean that it is all divine and all human. We can sense aspects of divine and aspects of human, just as we can with Jesus the man, but we cannot divide.

    Inspiration is all-the-way incarnation as well. God’s power is contained in the finite form. What we need is ears to hear and eyes to see.

    I’ll have more to say about this over the next few days.

  • Studying Through John

    Meditations on According to JohnWith the new year I’m starting a new online study, working through the Gospel of John using Herold Weiss’s book Meditations on According to John.

    A previous effort by my wife and I to conduct a group discussion failed both due to our schedules and due to low participation. In this case, I will be essentially video blogging live.

    I will personally be studying the book through in Greek, and also studying Leon Morris’s commentary in the NICNT series. That provides a conservative counterpoint to Dr. Weiss. I’ll discuss where I stand in connection with all this in the introductory study.

    I will always have the Q&A app enabled so that people can interact via text. In addition, I’ll be watching my Twitter feed for any comments or questions. If anyone wants to participate via video, let me know through the comments below or via e-mail (henry@energion.com). The only requirements I will have for participation are that you get a copy of the book (ebook is fine), read the material including the Bible passages, and if there is a sharp disagreement, be comfortable stating your position and then letting it go. I’ll state mine and let it go as well. I’m not expecting video participation but will be pleased if there is some. While I can’t imagine it will be a problem, there is a limit of 10 people (9 + me) on the video.

    So get out your Bibles and your favorite reference sources and plan to join the discussion! I’m posting the YouTube below. At 7:00 pm Thursday night, January 6, it will be live. Once the event is complete, it will show the recording.

  • Interview with Dr. Bruce Epperly

    On Tuesday, January 6, 2015, I will be interviewing Dr. Bruce Epperly on his newly released book Finding God in Suffering: A Journey with Job.

    I’ve just completed a trailer for this event:

    You can watch the actual event here:

  • Of Scholarship and Tribalism

    When I was working on my MA, one of my professors recommended a paper I had written for publication. He suggested submitting it to the university’s journal, Andrews University Seminary Studies. I was of course greatly pleased to have one of my papers recognized in this way, especially considering the respect I had for that particular professor.

    Some days later I was approached by the journal editor who informed me that the paper had been read by one reviewer, and that he wanted to talk to me before proceeding further. Apparently this reviewer had suggested that I was trying to become “a new Wellhausen” and that the paper should not be published for many, many reasons.

    Now the fact is that my paper was not as interesting, nor as creative, nor as radical as the work of Julius Wellhausen, and the reader was in no sense commending me by referring to that famous name. Rather, it was his way of saying I was jumping tribes. The editor had several suggestions for me, but the one he favored involved dividing my paper into two parts, separating my interpretation from my discussion of structure, and he would publish the one on structure and then “consider” publishing a separate paper on the interpretation. Considering the interdependence of the two portions of the paper, after seeking some advice, I chose to withdraw the paper.

    Now one isn’t supposed to know who one’s reviewers are in circumstances like these, but I found out because the reader cornered me right after graduation and told me. His reason for doing so was that he was concerned for my soul as, if I did work such as I had done in that paper, I was headed straight for perdition. Oh, and he also disagreed with my approach to the scholarship, but that was a footnote.

    At the time, I associated such tribalism with conservative and fundamentalist scholarship. I had grown up in the Seventh-day Adventist Church with a belief in the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, a 6,000 year age for the earth, a literal seven day creation week, and traditional authorship for the books of the New Testament, including all the gospels, the pastoral epistles, Hebrews, and Revelation. So I had seen the arguments that would make the same John author of the gospel, the epistles and the book of Revelation. In that context, suggesting I was trying to be a second Wellhausen was to suggest a radical departure from the norms of the tribe.

    Well, I learned about jumping tribes. I first became unchurched and uninvolved. After many years I joined a new tribe. I became a member of a United Methodist congregation. In this new tribe, I thought, I would find church without the sort of loss of freedom to think represented by my former denomination. And indeed, there is a substantial difference. Yet there is a note of very similar tribalism.

    Repeatedly I have heard in meetings that one should only use United Methodist curriculum. Presumably this is because organizationally prepared and approved curriculum materials are safe whereas others might lead the congregation astray. These arguments come from all sides. At one meeting it was in objection to a piece of Baptist material that was said to have “too much Jesus” in it. Really?

    As a publisher, although not an academic publisher, I have noticed this same sort of thing from scholars. There are boundaries to the scholarship one wants to consider and discuss, and these boundaries often don’t have to do with the quality of the scholarship involved.

    Excursus: What do I mean by quality in scholarship? Primarily I mean that a scholar should have a good overview knowledge of the literature in the field, have given consideration to opposing viewpoints in forming arguments, cite good sources, include original work, accurately represent opponents’ work, and present arguments based on evidence.

    Readers give great latitude on all those points to someone they agree with, and become hypercritical with someone outside their tribe. Considering that people are people, there are always points to be criticized. In academic publishing, that’s one of the points. Hear those criticisms and hopefully improve down the road. The goal is consensus. (The tribes have labels such as “evangelical,” “fundamentalist,” “liberal,” “progressive,” “Methodist,” “Baptist,” and on and on.)

    But that consensus comes at a price. Once a consensus is formed, it becomes difficult to get people to reconsider the consensus, because there is a tribe named “mainstream scholarship” and membership in it is desirable. You don’t want to be a crackpot. So the scholars wait for a sufficiently famous individual to break with the consensus or for something earth shattering to happen, that will break the consensus. Then people can move.

    But if the consensus can later be broken, then surely it was already fragile even when it couldn’t be challenged, and the various crackpots who challenged it back then, and were summarily dismissed, may actually have been right. But no, we have to move with the consensus. Or so we’re told.

    Of course, if a different tribe opposes us, they are just anti-intellectual! Know-nothings! Nobody in our own tribe supports them, so they can be dismissed!

    What interests me most is that I see this view all around. Conservatives tell me that liberals are against academic freedom. Liberals tell me it’s conservatives. Evangelicals in the “evangelical mainstream” are accused of being there just because “evangelical” is a good label. Those outside are accused by those on the inside of just wanting the approval of men. The players and the playing field changes; the game does not.

    I think it is quite possible for someone who grew up in a traditional background such as I did to have studied the same material I did, and to have concluded honestly that he or she should stick with the same set of views. I should not accuse that person of just seeking the approval of people (the SDA community, for example) because of that conclusion. It is possible for someone who starts from a liberal position to move toward conservative positions. I would like to see these things argued on the evidence. In fact, I don’t think one has successfully defended a position until one has defended it against the folks outside of the tribe.

    It is from this view that I get my philosophy of publication. In particular, I designed the Participatory Study Series to represent different views. In this series the study guide to Ecclesiastes advances the claim that Solomon did, in fact, write the book, while the guide to Ephesians suggests that Paul did not write that epistle. It happens I disagree with both positions, but I’m delighted to see both books in the series. I also publish the book The Authorship of Hebrews: The Case for Paul, which claims that Paul did write the book of Hebrews. Three for three: I disagree with all.

    Well, I do admit that the last one has adjusted my position. I used to say that it was quite certain Paul did not write Hebrews, but beyond that it was impossible to say. Now I just say that there is no conclusive case on authorship.

    Many might (and do) say that I have no idea what I’m doing if I can publish things that differ this greatly. On the contrary I have a very specific aim. If someone studies through the Participatory Study Series, I would like them to have approached the study of various biblical books from a number of different perspectives and developed the ability to evaluate these viewpoints and come to conclusions of their own. I never had, and do not now have, the desire to provide a set of study materials that display just one viewpoint.

    This is not because I don’t have a viewpoint. I definitely do. While I never pursued academic work beyond the MA level, and while I do not write scholarly articles myself, I have been a lifelong consumer of biblical scholarship. What I want is for people to interact with these different viewpoints, especially those outside of the views of their tribe, and to be able to make up their own minds and defend their position. I bluntly find all the tribes (including the “no-tribe tribe) to be deficient on this point.

    I’m often told that I look scattered. My response is that biblical scholarship looks narrow to me. I don’t mean in the sense that one can’t find a great variety of views, but rather in the sense that there are too few conversations between the various tribes.

    My suggestion for the New Year is that you include in your reading a variety of materials written by people who would not be comfortable in your church or in your scholarly “club.” When you do so, try to give them the same benefit of the doubt that you would give to someone who was in your own crowd, or alternatively apply the same critical approach to those on the inside.

    I think the results could be great!

  • So Why Don’t We Do Something about It?

    I’ve been exchanging thoughts with Dave Black about the pastoral role and biblical languages, including textual criticism. One of my difficulties here is that I am more likely dealing with people on a day to day basis who are not well acquainted with their English Bibles, and thus it’s a bit harder to talk about whether they should know textual criticism. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t, necessarily. It just means the goal is further away!

    But in some comments today I think Dave got right to the heart of the issue. Then another Energion author, Allan R. Bevere, linked to a post by Thom Rainer titled Seven Myths about a Pastor’s Workweek. That reminded me of a short story I wrote some time ago titled Our Pastor is Lazy.

    It seems to me that we all know that “pastor” as a “job” is crazy. It isn’t working. We’re wearing out our pastors and we’re not accomplishing the work of the gospel. I find remarkably little disagreement with that.

    So my question is this: Why don’t we do something about it?

  • Embrace Interpretation

    multimeterWhen I tell someone that they need to consider how they interpret a particular verse, I often get that glazed-over or eye-roll expression that says, “There you go again. Why can’t it just be simple?”

    The fact, however, is that we have to interpret everything. As I look out my window at the branches of a tree in front of my office, there is a great deal of interpretation going on automatically that lets me see this in a coherent way and identify it as a tree. Everything requires some interpretation.

    The picture at the top shows a multimeter that I use in my work. It’s a fairly simple piece of equipment as such gear goes. The other day I was trying to measure a simple voltage and was getting weird results. I must have been tired because I didn’t realize immediately that I had it set on the wrong range for the voltage I was trying to measure. I single click of a switch and all was well. The result was in the interpretation.

    When we study the Bible we are interpreting a tradition that is thousands of year’s old. It involves the experience of people over a great deal of time. Consider how difficult it can be to understand the culture of people in our own country even centuries ago.

    I don’t mean that the Bible is incomprehensible. I just mean that we should be surprised that it requires some effort for us to adjust ourselves to hear what it says. It’s not like reading today’s newspaper, though interpretation is required there as well.

    It’s worth the effort.

  • Should Pastors Learn Textual Criticism?

    I’ve been watching one discussion and participating in another that converge in this post.

    The first discussion is via blogs, David Alan Black (extracted to The Jesus Paradigm for a permanent link) and Thomas Hudgins both posting significant numbers of entries recently regarding textual criticism. The second is one I’ve had personally, and it regards the ways in which people lose their faith.

    Let’s look at the second first. It’s hard to find a mainline Christian community where the discussion of how and why people are dropping out of church and/or losing their faith. There are many groups and ideas that get the blame. Some blame liberal university and seminary professors. The idea here is that being told about these ideas by people with some academic authority drives people out of the church. Often the proposed solution is to pull back from advanced education, lest one be led astray by the notions of the excessively educated.

    On the other side, the blame often is placed on excessively conservative church leaders and parents. Many believe that those who have been pushed into too narrow of a mold will tend to break out when they get the opportunity, or the first time they have a chance, for that matter. The solution suggested is usually that we loosen up and be more open about questioning and re-examining our doctrinal beliefs so that young people don’t feel excessively constrained. In addition, they can come up with different answers in many cases and still remain in the community.

    I haven’t done any scientific studies, and I have some doubts about those studies I have seen (question design is interesting, and helps drive results), but my observation is that both of the scenarios I have mentioned are possible, as are many others. The stories of faith, loss of faith, return to faith, and struggles with faith are as diverse as are the people who live them.

    My own experience led me from a rather fundamentalist upbringing in the Seventh-day Adventist Church to a relatively moderate theology as a member of a United Methodist congregation. I experienced the various players in these stories. There were the overbearing and oh-so-superior professors, though frankly not many of them. Most of my professors were quite helpful. Some were more liberal than my upbringing, but by the standards of the general Christian community, all would be considered conservative. My father, whose beliefs were doubtless fundamentalist, was at the same time one of the influences in my life that allowed me to explore. He had a practical, living approach to faith that carries over to my practice today, even though I don’t hold all the same doctrines that he did.

    I have also seen many people who are strongly influenced by college, graduate school, or seminary. I observe a “seminary effect” in newly graduated pastors. They tend to hold views that were taught by the professors at their seminary. Sometimes they dismiss views held by professors at other seminaries. It’s not a surprising thing. One lives in a particular community and one absorbs its values, unless one is recalcitrant or perhaps just independent. In my case, I held closer to the values of the theology department at my undergraduate school (Walla Walla University) than to those at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary, though in the end I left the SDA community entirely.

    The positive side of my education was the ability to look at serious issues of theology and Scripture as part of a community of faith. One of the greatest difficulties involved was the simple fact that I was unable, in the end, to remain part of the community in which I grew up. I simply came to disagree with them on too many issues. I was able to maintain respect for them, and for many individuals who helped—and still help—me in my spiritual walk.

    The result of my observations of my own experience and that of others, including many who were raised as Christians but no longer are, is that a key component to maintaining one’s faith while learning new things is the ability to explore these issues inside a community of faith. I think that even if your community maintains boundaries, if they can bless you as you move on to explore with another community, the result will frequently be positive. If you’re extremely sectarian, and equate leaving your existing community with “leaving Christ” or becoming an apostate, then you’re likely to drive someone away from faith entirely.

    A friend of mine once noted that the greatest problem with the King James Version Only movement, especially as represented in this area by Peter Ruckman, is that it ruins people for the rest of Christianity. They have heard other Christians vilified so much that if they find they can no longer support their movement and its leader, it is impossible to move into a mainstream Christian community. There are those SDAs who still regard me as an apostate. I recall one meeting where I was working with an SDA author, and I was approached by a young man who quickly informed me that he could not comprehend how someone could possibly leave the SDA church because of doctrinal differences. I was prepared to discuss with him, but he wasn’t interested. He just wanted to inform me as to how wrong I was and move on. Fortunately, the majority of my SDA associates had a much more open attitude. They may disagree, but it’s a disagreement we can live with.

    So my view is that exploration in community is an essential to keeping one’s faith. In the age of the internet, a congregation will not remain unaware of other positions on major topics. A pastor used to be able to figure on the majority of the congregation getting all their information from him. Not now. There is no “ignorant congregation” option. The only question is where the discussion will take place. I think pastors who try to avoid all the hard issues would have been wrong in the old days, but they’re both wrong and in serious danger now. They need to discuss the major issues of the day with their congregations, recognize that people will read and study books which the leadership doesn’t approve, and learn to work with this.

    Note especially that I’m not saying what the position of the congregation needs to be. The key is that the congregation cannot be deceived. The pastors and teachers in the church need to openly discuss the issues, give their views and their reason for holding them, and then work with the congregation. If people find that they are no longer within the boundaries of a congregation, do your best to find a way to bless them as they seek elsewhere. I’m not suggesting that you change your beliefs or the doctrinal statement of your church in order to keep people. There are times to change and times not to change, and that is a process of discernment for a congregation. But if an individual or group needs to move on, that should be facilitated with a loving attitude. “Truth with love” is a difficult standard to meet, but I think it must be our goal, even as we recognize that we may fall short of the truth ourselves.

    Which brings me back around to the discussion of textual criticism. How much textual criticism does a pastor need to know? One of the problems I have with this discussion is that we keep piling things onto the pastor’s plate. Who else is going to handle this issue? But my experience is that often pastors barely have a working knowledge of their English Bibles while people who read the biblical languages are trying to get them to learn more advanced things. I recall one continuing education event in which one of my authors, an Old Testament scholar, was teaching a group of United Methodist pastors. A number of the pastors couldn’t keep up with finding the Old Testament texts referenced. I had been concerned they might not have studied the Old Testament enough to even have the questions the speaker was answering. I was unprepared to find that they couldn’t find the texts.

    In that context, what is the most important thing to pursue in terms of pastoral education? Is it textual criticism or basic biblical knowledge? And then what about the range of things we want pastors to be able to do? I recall sitting with a pastor while planning an event and somehow our discussion turned to my education. He remarked that he was “in awe of” my ability to pick up my Greek New Testament or my Hebrew Bible and just read. I was shocked by the phrase “in awe of.” I’m kind of in awe as well. I’m in awe of the experience. There is nothing like sitting down to my devotional reading with the text in the original languages. But I am in awe of the power of the word and thankful that I can experience it in that particular way.

    After a moment, I simply responded that I was in awe of his ability to sit down with a couple, and through counseling, restore a marriage. The point was simply that God gives different gifts to different people. I cannot imagine being a marriage counselor. If I didn’t have many other reasons not to want to become a pastor (quite apart from not being called by God), the idea of people coming to me to share problems with their marriages would drive me away.

    So how long does it take one to train to be an effective marriage counselor? A church administrator? A human resources director? A theologian? A biblical scholar? A textual critic? The problem is simply that we have too many things that we expect pastors to be. I think this is where we need to share the functions of the church more. The ideal can be the enemy of the good, in that we ask so much of pastors in their education that they simply can’t make it. But it’s more important that we ask all these things of a single person. Most of the pastors I’ve met simply would not have time to maintain a high level of proficiency with their biblical languages. They’re too busy with other things.

    Which brings us full circle. How can a church sponsor a community where exploration can take place on serious issues of theology and biblical studies, not to mention social issues, when there is no way the pastor can be an expert in all these things? Believe me, the number of things I’ve been told “every pastor should know” is quite astonishing and beyond the ability of a super-genius.

    Divide and work together.

    Huh?

    We need to divide the tasks between members of the church. Unlike some, I don’t have a problem with paid staff, provided the staff is paid for the right things. We should be paying the staff to do the work or ministry of the church. I suspect practically any church out there has people in it with business experience. Most have people with training in counseling, teaching, and various other academic subjects. Not all churches have all of these things, however.

    So first, divide the work of the church amongst the members. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been invited to teach about biblical studies by a pastor who didn’t have my knowledge of biblical languages but knew there was something that needed to be taught. There are lots of people with the right sort of knowledge. Don’t try to force them into the boxes created by planned curriculum. Let them bring their experience and knowledge into action.

    Second, work together. Not all churches will have people with expertise in biblical languages, for example. Find the churches that do. Work together. Share your educational time so the congregation can hear from other people with different expertise. Will they hear some things you consider wrong? Doubtless they will. Get over it. They’re going to hear such things in any case.

    I think we have tremendous resources in the church. The problem is that we aren’t making the necessary effort to use them.

  • Links: Some C. S. Lewis on Christmas

    Thomas Hudgins provides samples: here, here, and here.

    For those who may not know, Thomas Hudgins is the lead translator for the Spanish edition of David Alan Black’s intorductory Greek grammar, Aprenda a Leer el Griego del Nuevo Testamento, which we expect to start shipping around mid-January 2015. If I can find the time, I’m going to comment on some posts of his regarding teaching textual criticism.

  • Helping One Another Change

    I just extracted a note from Dave Black’s blog to The Jesus Paradigm. (That site supports his book by the same name as well as a few others that don’t have their own domain name.) In it Dave talks about admonishing, encouraging, and upholding. You’ll have to go read the post to find out what these are about.

    For my purposes here, they are all ways in which we help one another change for the better. In my view, there’s too little helpful activity of this nature in our churches today. We don’t want to get into each other’s business, and often we’re in congregations that are large enough that we don’t really know one another’s business enough to be helpful. In my own congregation I know that one of the considerations whenever we discuss greeting people is that there is a risk of approaching a life-long member as a new visitor. If I can’t be sure a person is a part of the congregation, how can I possibly respond to them in a helpful way about anything else?

    But I think that even in groups small enough to do so, we would have a hard time doing it. We seem to move too easily from neglect to condemnation without taking the necessary steps in between. Dave points out the different ways of handling different people. In order to interact with someone in a helpful way, whether correction or encouragement or any other approach, you have to know them pretty well. One big difference between correction and condemnation is simply the relationship between giver and receiver.

    I “correct” my wife’s use of the computer on a regular basis. I know more about computers than she does, she knows that, and so it generally works. Even so, it still won’t work if I am condescending or impatient. But if I both understand her starting point and work to help her get to where she wants to go, things work extremely well.

    She, on the other hand, corrects my work in the kitchen. It turns out that in the same set of circumstances, I can actually produce a meal with her direction. The things I don’t know how to do she does. The things I might ignore, like precisely which position the oven shelves occupy, she encourages me to get right.

    So here we are in the church. Let me just list some things we might need to work toward in our churches so we can truly help one another change.

    1. We need to know one another better, whatever that takes. If that means more home churches, great! If you can find a way in a large church to get some sort of accountability as a group, great!
    2. We need to understand forgiveness. I hear someone saying that we’re talking about correcting, not letting people off the hook for their misdeeds. That attitude is precisely the problem. Correction that comes with condemnation isn’t generally going to be mutual. We are all sinners together looking to Jesus. We abuse this in two ways. First, we decide we’re all sinners, so we can just forget about trying to change. Second, we can decide that some sinners are more equal than others. I think the call of Jesus is to mutuality. We are all sinners. We all press toward the mark.
    3. We need to ditch our pride. Ouch! Just about anything we do, even what is normally good, will be spoiled by pride.
    4. We need to know the difference between essentials and non-essentials. Too often when we correct others, we are asking them to follow our traditions instead of theirs. If you want to successfully show someone a better way, it helps if the way you’re showing them actually is better.
    5. We need to let love reign in us. All of 1 John is filled with excellent material, but 1 John 4 is particularly important on this point. Note that there is some help here defining love as well as applying it.

    We definitely need to get past the point where the only encouragement or exhortation in our churches comes from the pulpit, and is therefore easily ignored by those in the pews.

    Let us pay attention to each other, so as to stir up of love and good works … (Hebrews 10:24).

    12Therefore restore the weakened hands and the disabled knees, 13and prepare straight paths for your feet so that the lame might not stumble but rather might be healed (Hebrews 12:12-13).

  • Being Subject to the Authorities

    The Forum - from Rome.info
    The Forum – from Rome.info

    While I haven’t written anything on it myself, I’ve published quite a number of books regarding how Christians should relate to authority. These include Christian Archy and The Jesus Paradigm (David Alan Black), Ultimate Allegiance and Faith in the Public Square (Bob Cornwall), Rendering unto Caesar (Chris Surber), and Preserving Democracy (Elgin L. Hushbeck, Jr.). The last one isn’t primarily about the Christian’s relationship to authority, but it does deal with what the author believes are the legitimate functions of government, and ways in which the authorities can definitely be illegitimate.

    As I was reading from Luke 12 this morning, and realized that Jesus was speaking to people who were likely facing persecution, sometimes from those very authorities, I started to think a bit about why we tend always to start with the “rendering unto Caesar” passage, and much less from Romans 13:1-7, 1 Peter 2:13-17, or Acts 5:29. The first of those passages is quite frequently abused by those who believe that one must obey the government no matter what.

    I’m not going to write an extremely long post on this today. I just wanted to bring the subject up. The one line I appreciated most in the commentary I read on these passages came from The New Interpreter’s Study Bible, p. 2029, commenting on Romans 13:3-5.

    Governing authorities derive legitimacy and serve God by punishing bad and approving good—that is, by implementing justice. The just purposes of government evoke submission by the ascent of conscience (v. 5) rather than by fear of punishment. An unjust tyrrany, by implication, would not qualify as an authority instituted by God.…

    There are a couple of points in that passage that I believe are overstated, but I think the main point is correct. Paul here speaks of the government carrying out it’s legitimate functions, functions which the Roman government often did quite well. When, at other times, the authorities turned against the good, then one must obey God rather than human authority (Acts 5:29). A Christian would obey the legitimate authority even of an unjust government, where that is possible (often it is not), and would reject only the unjust actions. I think 1 Peter 2:13-17 implies this. Christians were to be model citizens wherever they could thus blunting accusations brought against them. When the state ordered them to do something they could not do in good conscience, then the authorities would be unable to say, “These people just ordinary lawbreakers.” Rather, they would only have the matter of conscience at hand.

    Having government ordained by God cuts both ways. First, it gives authority and order a divine imprint, and becoming simply a rebel or an anarchist is precluded short of a complete loss of legitimacy. Second, however, it places human government under the divine authority. Note that I don’t mean by this anything at all like theocracy. I do not think theocracy is desirable, nor is it called for in this passage. Rather, what this means in practice is that one’s conscience controls. It should make me subordinate to all legitimate authority and limit when I can stand against that authority to cases when I would be required to perform an act that was evil or unethical.

    The “government no matter what” spin that some have put on this passage tends to make Paul into somewhat of an idiot. Perhaps we need another rule of interpretation: If the way you interpret a passage makes the author look like an idiot, reconsider. Sometimes the God’s wisdom may look like foolishness to us, but so does actual foolishness.

    I know I’ve left a huge number of holes in this discussion, but I’ll leave those for later discussion. It’s a blog post, and sometimes I have to write one that is less than 1000 words!