Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Christianity

  • The Danger in Uncritical Thinking

    Three posts today called my attention to the problem of uncritical thinking amongst Christians. This is a topic I bring up frequently. It’s not that I believe those who think critically will automatically agree with me. I’ve had to revise some of my own opinions after thinking critically about them at a later date. But some people seem to be sailing through the intellectual seas without any rudder at all.

    How long, gullible people, will you love being gullible?
    You scorners delight in scorn?
    And fools hate knowledge? — Proverbs 1:22

    Test everything!
    Hold onto what is good.
    Keep away from every form of evil. — 1 Thessalonians 5:21-22
    (Translation by the author)

    It seems that many Christians change this latter verse into “Accept everything, as long as the authors make sufficiently pious pronouncements.” This morning the gullible seem to be out in force. Actually, they probably always are, but this morning they caught my attention, which gave me a chance to blog about two of my favorite Bible verses (the two I quoted above, in case you missed it).

    The first item I found via Dispatches from the Culture Wars via the post Catholic Art is Satanic. Ed Brayton’s post refers to an article over at WorldNetDaily titled ‘Satanic’ art in Catholic Church exposed: Documentary links clergy sex abuse with occult imagery. Sometimes “testing” doesn’t take very long. This one doesn’t pass the “snork test,” i.e. can you read it while drinking coffee and not have to clean your keyboard and monitor afterward. On the other hand, it illustrates a willingness amongst Christians to believe anything nasty about “those Catholics.” And just be aware that I did read the part about the authors being Catholic themselves, which is a good indication that often Catholics can be their own worst enemies. I bet this will be spread far and wide by non-Catholics looking for reasons why Catholics must not be real Christians.

    Then I browsed over to The Panda’s Thumb where Nick Matzke pointed to another really interesting case. Here Robert C. Newman, in an article titled Rumors of Angels: Using ID to Detect Malevolent Spiritual Agents has now proposed a way to discover the activities not just of angels, but also of demonic agents in the world. What he seems to have failed to accomplish is to find any way to define just what it is that these agents do, or how one would scientifically determine the difference between a world in which angels and demons repeatedly made adjustments to creatures, and a world in which random mutations were selected for naturally. I do think that the folks in the intelligent design movement shouldn’t laugh at Newman’s work, however, since he has as much of a solid basis for it as they do for an “intelligent” design agent of undefined capabilities.

    Finally, thanks to Nick Matzke’s entry, I followed a trackback to Uncommon Descent (Dr. Bill Dembski’s blog), where DaveScot demonstrates elitism for us. His original comment suggested that Nick Matzke had finally found an opponent that would make him look well-versed in science. That was a cheap, and inaccruate shot in itself. But then he tries the “we’re more elite than you” form of argument by posting an update to add that Newman has a PhD from “(Ivy League) Cornell” and thus he offers his ” . . . abject apologies to Dr. Newman for the comparison.” Yes, he really did add “(Ivy League)” in parentheses before the word “Cornell” for those of us to ignorant to understand the true importance of someone with a PhD from an Ivy League school. Hmmm . . . let’s see. While he was at it, he referred to Nick Matzke’s school as “unremarkable” and to his field of geography as much more lightweight than that of chemistry or biology.

    I would suggest that it’s pretty silly for the person in the minority to try to make an argument based on the weight of degrees and on elitism. I find that generally a sign of intellectual vacuity in any case, and when one knows that one’s opponents are more numerous, with more prestigious degrees, and a much more substantial research and publication record, then it’s vacuity compounded by stupidity. Of course, he would like to think he’s merely attacking Nick Matzke, and perhaps is enjoying his cheap shot when he thinks he can get by with it. I would suggest instead working on some of that scientific research. Perhaps he can show us sometime how any amount of mathematical formulas will make garbage-in not result in garbage out.

    I would not claim the prestigious degrees of the majority as proof that they are right. I know that minorities can become majorities if they have a good case.

    (Oh, by the way, let me save you some time. I’m not a mathematician. My degrees are not in the natural sciences, not even in “lightweight” geography. I have not attained a PhD. My schools were not Ivy League, nor are they spoken of together with the University of Chicago. But my nonsense detector is in good shape.)

  • A Personal and Biblical Relationship

    My ChristianityToday.com “Connection” e-mail brought me a link yesterday to their blog Out of Ur. The specific entry was an excerpt from an article by John Suk from an essay in Perspectives, A Personal Relationship with Jesus?. The Christianity Today discussion is at Your Own Personal Jesus: Is the language of “a personal relationship” biblical?, and the topic has generated some substantial discussion.

    I found myself quite annoyed while reading this article, and it took me a few minutes to understand why. After all, I prefer to read material with which I disagree, so I spend many unannoyed hours every day reading things that express a completely different viewpoint from mine. Here, however, I think the problem is simply the tone. This article carries exactly the tone of the older church member who comes to me to bemoan the deterioration of the modern church, and to inform me of how much more holy and righteous everyone was when he or she was young. But it also has another overtone: The expert whose views and processes have been bypassed by upstarts who just haven’t paid their dues. In the middle of all this, however, the author expresses a couple of quite appropriate theological and especially pastoral concerns.

    The elements of this condescending tone are illustrated by the following:

    Ultimately, the phrase “a personal relationship with Jesus,” is not found in the Bible. Thus, there is no sustained systematic theological reflection on what the phrase must or most likely means. In fact, people experience the personal presence of God–if that is what they are really experiencing–in a wide variety of idiosyncratic and highly personal ways.

    Heaven help us if we come close to God without “sustained systematic theological reflection!” The fact is that most people who do have a relationship with God are going to live their lives without what the average evangelical theologian would call “sustained systematic theological reflection.” I’m not really against such reflection, but as a criticism it reflects more elitism than either a Biblical sense of conversion and putting one’s trust in Jesus, or of serious discipleship. Some of the strongest statements of commitment and discipleship I have ever heard have come from children who have spent little or no time in reflection about God, and certainly done nothing that could be regarded as “systematic theological reflection.”

    I have never managed to improve on the statement of God’s grace and the call to discipleship that I made to my mother when I was eight years old. My mother tells the story in her book Directed Paths (one risks such stories when encouraging one’s mother to write!):

    At the time, Henry was only eight but he begged for permission to go help. I knew he could be useful in helping to carry food, water and run errands, but he had never had the measles.

    He kept saying, “Mama, please let me go. Patty is helping and I want to help, too.

  • Applying Divine-Human Scriptures

    I’ve used the term phrase “divine-human combination” or something quite close to it several times over the last few days. It’s easy to make it appear that this concept of inspiration, sometimes called “incarnational” is largely a tool to deal with the difficult parts of scripture. When I read “love your neighbor as yourself” I don’t have to apply such an interpretation, but when I read “go kill all the ____” then I must resort to a special understanding of inspiration. The feeling might be that Biblical inerrancy is fine, except for a few annoying passages. But this is not my approach.

    An incarnational understanding of scripture places the burden on the community and on the individual, who make decisions in their faith, practice, and in their daily lives. There is a certain truth to the accusation that this more liberal approach to scripture is more people-centered than God-centered. This should be seen as a good thing. I take some of my warrant for this view from 1 John 4:20, which reads: “If anyone says ‘I love God,’ but hates his brother, he is a liar. For how can one who doesn’t love his brother, whom he has seen, love God, whom he has not seen?” The focus of our actions is to be people, even though those people-oriented actions are accepted by God as service to him.

    This is not, however, solely a characteristic of the incarnational model. It’s openly acknowledged and celebrated by those who use an incaranational model of inspiration, but for everyone, the word of God as it comes to your own mind, is mixed with the human element. Even if you believe that the Bible in its current written form is perfect, your understanding of that word will always be imperfect. There is simply no way to get perfect knowledge into an imperfect mind. In this sense, the incarnational model puts more of the emphasis on God, because God is seen as active throughout the process. The Holy Spirit is present inspiring the prophets and remains active inspiring listeners, writers, copyists, and finally even modern exegetes, of Bible students known by less pretentious titles.

    The question becomes simply “How does God’s message get to me?” or “How does God’s message get to my community?” In answer to these questions we have a model in scripture as we have it in canonical form.

    1. We hear from God in the events of history, and specifically in God’s involvement, or even uninvolvement in them. This is represented in scripture by the strong historical element of the faith. Whatever you may believe about the historicity of the various details, if you are a Christian you must believe that at some point and in some way God has inserted himself into human history.
    2. We hear from God through the common pool of community wisdom. This is represented by the wisdom literature. The easier part to read is Proverbs, where we have pithy sayings that sound like common sense. But there is another approach in Ecclesiastes which looks at the personal struggle of a teacher and lets us come along side his experience. I think those who reinterpret Ecclesiastes into some God of triumphant affirmation of God, as is required for some people’s view of inspiration, lose its primary value as an experience that skeptics and cynics can relate to.
    3. We hear from God through direct inspiration. This is the one that many modern Christians want the most, and they want it to be the primary and overarching form of revelation. It’s most comfortable when we can say, “God told me ____.” We feel much less secure saying, “Experience teaches me ____” or “After due consideration of historical precendent _____.” But direct affirmations are only part of God’s revelation.

    I think we lose part of that pattern with the more modern understanding of special and general revelation. Those categories are not without some merit, but I think they lose some of the “many portions and many ways” (Hebrews 1:1) in which God has spoken and continues to speak. In modern times I would add simply that God speaks through the natural world. I think this is simply an extension of point #1, God speaking through is action in history.

    What this means in my daily life, however, is that I must make decisions. I bring all these elements to bear on the issue. I ask what is the appropriate principle to apply, and then in the end I take responsibility for what I have done. And this applies whether you are a charismatic believer receiving a “word from the Lord” via a modern day prophet, or someone searching the Bible for wisdom. You have to ask what all of these elements of God’s revelation are telling you, and then you combine them using your human reasoning, enlightend by the Spirit of Truth.

    No, it’s not “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it.” You don’t have that one-to-one correspondence, but then you never did. Everyone has a scheme for determining what part of the Bible applies. The question is really not whether you are responsible for making the decision. It is whether you will acknowledge your responsibility and exercise it appropriately.

  • Book: Holy Smoke! Unholy Fire!

    Some may be aware that I’m a publisher as well as a writer, and so every so often I want to talk about one of the books I publish. My intention in starting a publishing company in the first place was simple: I wanted to produce materials for which I saw an unfilled need in religious education. In general, these materials address what I call the broad Christian center, mainline Christians, moderates, and liberals who are not well represented in the available literature. In addition, I wanted to keep these in conversation with more conservative Christians who were nonetheless willing to be part of, and in dialogue with, that broader stream. The key element is positive presentation of a viewpoint and inclusion, rather than exclusion. Please note that this is not a review of the book. As editor and publisher I am in no sense qualified to present a review. I’m just presenting the reasons why I chose this book to publish and also the role I see it filling.

    In presenting this book, which has actually been in our Energion Publications catalog since November 2005, I want to give some background.

    In 1995 I was a member of Pine Forest United Methodist Church in Pensacola, Florida when the Brownsville Revival, also known as the Pensacola Outpouring broke out. People from all over the country came to Pensacola to experience what was going on at Brownsville Assembly of God. Many members of Pine Forest became involved as well, and Rev. Perry Dalton, the pastor, was involved in baptizing people on some occasions at Brownsville. There was considerable controversy at the church, and some members left over what they saw as “bringing Brownsville” back to “their” church. In 1999, Perry was moved to Springfield UMC near Panama City, Florida, and Dr. Bob McKibben became pastor at Pine Forest. One of his tasks was to deal with continued disunity in the church as the ministry moved forward. I have had the privelege of working with and providing support to both of these pastors in their ministry.

    For some years during the Brownsville Revival groups of people from out of town would come, often by the bus load, and stay in the Family Life Center at the church, where they would sleep in sleeping bags on the floor. Many also spent time with folks from Pine Forest in discussions and times of prayer ministry in the sanctuary. I also met occasionally with groups as they returned from the revival. One key element of controversy in these meetings was the nature and importance of “manifestations of the Spirit” that occurred, such as being “slain in the Spirit,” shaking, or other physical signs. The prayer time at Brownsville could become quite confusing, with people on the floor as dead, shaking in the aisles, weeping, or merely crowding around speakers or prayer team members to receive prayer. Key questions that came up were simply whether any of this was of God, whether these manifestations were essential or even indicative of the Holy Spirit’s presence, and whether God’s presence might be manifested in different ways. Some groups who had experienced both Brownsville and the Toronto blessing commented on the organized, peaceful nature of the prayer time at Toronto, as opposed to the chaotic, crowded, and noisy prayer time at Brownsville. In addition there were questions about the repentance emphasis of Brownsville as opposed to the emphasis at Toronto on receiving blessing. (Note that I have never been to the Toronto Airport Vineyard, and am only reporting here what I was told. On the other hand, I have been to Brownsville Assembly of God on more than one occasion.)

    I felt that in dealing with this issue both at Pine Forest UMC, and also amongst groups that came from out of town, the major problem was that people did not understand the work of the Holy Spirit, and thus had no basis for making a decision for themselves. Because of this, when Bob McKibben mentioned that he had a manuscript on the subject, I was very interested in seeing it published, and eventually this desire to see it made available led to my editing and publishing it.

    Bob takes a much more pastoral approach than I would, which reflects our respective calling. He’s a pastor (and teacher); I’m a teacher. I tend to be very glad to let pastors deal with the practical details! In fact, he subtitled the book “A Pastoral Letter to the Church.” He is very concerned about the potential for injuring new Christians and those who might come into the church through intemperate physical displays. At the same time, he is also concerned that we will shut out the Holy Spirit for various reasons, including a fear of dealing with the topic. Thus he invites you to study with him and think these things through from a Biblical perspective, and carries through in each case to practical application.

    This results in a logical progression of topics:

    Chapter 1: Let Me Introduce You
    Chapter 2: Who Is the Holy Spirit
    Chapter 3: Baptism of the Holy Spirit
    Chapter 4: Grace and the Holy Spirit
    Chapter 5: Fire Power
    Chapter 6: Manifestations
    Chapter 7: Testing the Spirits
    Chapter 8: On Fire Without Getting Burned

    Each chapter includes some study exercises and some thought questions for you to discuss. Those who have read my own approach to Biblical interpretation will find Bob’s a bit more conservative. You will also find a conservative and cautious approach to the activities that may take place in a congregation. He’s most concerned with God’s gracious gift of salvation and with the fruit of the Spirit than he is with the gifts, though he is very anxious that we all understand that as Christians we are gifted. He’s more interested in all of those than in physical manifestations.

    Charismatic and Pentecostal believers will probably want to criticize some of the material, especially in chapter 6, Manifestations. At the same time some of our more conservative brethren will be concerned with his openness to the possibility of physical manifestations. Some may also be concerned with his acknowledge of the operation of all of the gifts of the Spirit. These chapters present a challenge to all of these different streams to carefully think through their position and to make sure that what they are doing is building the body and not simply operating according to their own whims or their fears. Carefully examining our position on these issues is critical if we are to effectively live out the power of the Spirit in the church today. One weakness in many churches is a resistance to thinking.

    Whether you agree or not, this book is going to get you thinking and studying. In fact, I could give no better recommendation for this book than the one I’ve heard my wife, Jody, give repeatedly when we are showing this book to someone. Someone asks, “Is this a good book?” She replies: “Yes. It will challenge you to think through what you believe about the Holy Spirit.”

    Today we see much less activity around Brownsville Assembly of God. The team that led the Brownsville revival is scattered to many other places. I would suggest it is likely that if more people had thought through what they believed about the Holy Spirit, and had shifted their emphasis from the obvious physical manifestations to sanctification, discipleship, and mission, we would have seen much more good fruit from the revival. Too many people were not challenged to think through what they believed. I don’t particularly blame Brownsville for this, though there were many things they might have done. I blame us all, myself included, for not studying, thinking, and teaching enough on the Holy Spirit, and leaving church members unable to “. . . test the Spirits, hold fast what is good, and keep away from every form of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:21-22).

  • Slavery and the Bible Condensed

    I’d like to condense the major arguments with regard to the Bible and slavery, as it appears that at least a couple of people have missed the point at which I’m hooking into this debate. (Please resist the idea that because I use lists when summarizing that I’m actually trying to reduce this to formal logic.)

    First, the starting point argument could be summarized as follows:

    1. Slavery is immoral
    2. The Bible condones slavery
    3. God or God’s word cannot condone something immoral
    4. The Bible therefore cannot be God’s word.

    I originally entered this debate after reading posts and comments on Ed Brayton’s site. His Slavery and the Bible – Take 2, was particularly clear. I want to reference Mark Olson as well, whose Slavery and the Word of God illustrates some of the approaches I’m discussing here.

    Now one can attack the position expressed in my little list at several points. For example, one might believe that slavery is not immoral. One might believe that God’s word does not condone slavery. We have seen the following:

    1. A response using both points #1 and #2, i.e. that the Bible does condone some sorts of slavery, but what it condones is not the sort of thing we condemn.
    2. A response based simply on God’s authority–God gets to do whatever he wants, which really deals with point three. In this response God indeed cannot condone something immoral, because apparently what he commands is transformed into something moral. (Theologically this is possible, but in practice there is the simple question of how one tells when God is commanding something if God can command anything. Why not child sacrifice, for example?)
    3. My own response which deals with the relationship of the Bible to the concept of God’s word. There’s an unstated assumption almost everywhere in this discussion that the Bible and God’s word are either equal or unrelated. My argument comes in here and is simply this: The Bible is a human-divine cooperation, and therefore shares imperfections of the human element. There will be things in the Bible that we do not want to implement today.

    My approach allows me to take several options with some of the nasty points in the Bible. I used the example of the commanded genocide of the Midianites in Numbers 31, and I’m going to continue to use that.

    1. It’s quite possible that the incident never happened. We’re still left with the fact that the slaughter is forcefully commanded. I would note that at a minimum, I would say that the numbers killed and enslaved are almost certainly exaggerated. Again, I don’t view this as a real solution to the moral dilemna for a Bible student. “Slaughtered” is bad. “Slaughtered a few less people” remains bad.
    2. The people wanted revenge, and conveniently became convinced that God had commanded it. This would be an all too human situation. I could use the story as a moral story with precisely that moral. In fact, I see this very human side throughout the stories of the conquest.
    3. God gave a command adapted to circumstances. This one disturbs me to some extent. I do believe that God gives commands adapted to circumstances, and this is in fact the type of approach that Alden Thompson uses in chapter 6 (The worst story in the Old Testament — Judges 19-21) of his book Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God?. I’m uncomfortable with that option here simply because I cannot see the moral justification for the additional slaughter. I do think that was common to the culture, and it seems more likely to me that people simply exercised their desires and justified it by appeal to God’s command.

    Since I said “condensed” let me just say one thing in response to Mark Olson (post linked above). I do believe that one can find good in the Bible, and that one can even find the ideal to pursue. I believe, however, that in order to find that ideal one does have to recognize the human-divine combination in scripture which means that not everything can be fitted into the divine ideal. Paul certainly embraces the equality of slave and free (Galatians 3:28) but he doesn’t do anything public about it. Rather, he gives instructions for slaves to be subject to their masters. I think he’s walking a very difficult line here with the Roman Empire, and Romans 13 is part of that. I cannot, however, see where Romans 13 is simply a softening of the rest of the letter, but then I often find that N. T. Wright presents arguments that are thoroughly researched and brilliantly argued, but that I think are wrong. In this case, I will certainly make the effort to acquire Wright’s comments on this text and see if he can change my mind.

    [Note: In the interests of full disclosure, let me note that I am the publisher of Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God?.]

  • Case Dismissed against Afghan Christian Convert

    Good news!  The case against Abdul Rahman has been dismissed, according to a news story on MSNBC,
    Afghan Christian convert’s case to be reviewed. If this is true, this is wonderful news.

    The downside may be the reaction of conservatives in Afghanistan where the new government of Hamid Karzai may find itself under increasing pressure from some in its own ranks. This is a chance for moderate Muslims to show their true intentions to be peaceful, to break the stranglehold of Islamic fundamentalism on their faith and country, and take a giant step forward. Doubtless this will be a difficult thing, especially in Afghanistan, but it is a necessary thing.

    As Christians, we also need to watch carefully for those who would use force for spiritual goals. We need to be open and ready for dialogue with our neighbors. In other words, we need to make sure that we exemplify the kind of behavior we are asking for from others.

  • Biblical Decision Making

    My previous post, Does the Bible Condone Slavery?, has produced some interesting responses, and one very valid question is just how I think the Bible should be used in making decisions. I’m going to try to keep this brief, but I’m not very good at that, so bear with me!

    The most common analogy I’ve encountered for the Bible is that it is like a boy scout manual. The problem is that as far as I can see the Bible is almost totally unlike a boy scout manual. The Bible is a book containing a large number of stories, and materials from a variety of documents, often ones written from a different perspective. By assuming the kind of unity that would be expected of a scout manual, we often miss what the Bible is actually saying. For example, which attitude toward foreigners is more appropriate, that of Jonah, in which God saves them even though that makes his prophet angry, or that of Nehemiah who runs all foreigners out?

    I often use the analogy of a toolkit, though this is only one of many. My basis for this starts with Proverbs 26:4-5: “4Do not answer fools according to their folly, or you will be a fool yourself. 5Answer fools according to their folly, or they will be wise in their own eyes” (NRSV). OK, so which is it? Should one continue to forgive over and over again (Matthew 18:22), or should one take the matter to one’s congregation (Matthew 18:15-17)? It would depend on the specific circumstances. I know that I have often encountered cases in which a fool required answering (and what do I do about the command of Jesus not to call anyone a fool?), and many other cases in which the best choice was silence. I take the tool from my toolkit that seems to work best, and I hope I have wisdom to use the right one.

    Further, nobody actually keeps all the Biblical commands, especially those who are the loudest in claiming that they do. Consider the ten commandments case in neighboring Alabama. We had the odd image of Christians bowing down in front of the monument to the ten commandments (I know, they weren’t worshipping it, they were praying about it), and protesting its removal. Removing the monument was supposed to be a major blow to moral values. But the vast majority of the people who were protesting do not keep the command written on that monument to keep the seventh day of the week as the Sabbath. I’m sure they have good reason to ignore or alter that command–I don’t keep Saturday as the Sabbath either–but nonetheless isn’t it interesting to place a monument to a command that most seem to agree was altered? Or how many of those people do you suppose have pictures of Jesus on their walls at home or at church? Does the word “image” come to mind? Now I really have no problem with pictures of Jesus, other than that I’ve rarely seen one that has even a prayer of looking anything like the real thing, but certainly at least the Jewish interpretation of one of those commands forbids all images.

    In the area of selective commands, what about Leviticus 18:22, “You will not lie with a man as with a woman.” Now I’ve heard this one proclaimed many times with firm tones or pulpit pounding as appropriate. But I frequently then point these individuals to Leviticus 19:33-34, which says, “33When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. 34The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God” (NRSV). When I quote the second verse, I am always presented with plenty of reasons why this is not applicable in modern America, because the foreigners will overrun us and bankrupt the treasury when they all go on welfare. But why is one applicable and not the other?

    I present these illustrations to show that generally those who claim to follow the Bible do, in fact, pick and choose according to circumstances. The difference is that I openly acknowledge that I do it, and I think it is the right way to do things. In fact I’m frightened by people who thing they can and should keep all the commands, because they might actually try to do it! In Deuteronomy 21:18-21, we have the instructions for arranging for one’s rebellious son to be stoned. Is that applicable or not? Both the Jewish and the Christian traditions have dealt with such commands in such a way as to make them more humane, if they apply them at all. Those Christians who are about to complain about my use of references from the Hebrew scriptures should consider Acts 5 and the story of Ananias and Sapphira.

    My approach is to look at all the tools available, and make the best choice for my particular circumstances. This means that in many cases my tools may come from something other than scripture. The Bible provides me with input, but it is not the only source of input that I have. In each case, I have to consider the source of my material, and its cultural background. But the key to my approach in the Bible is simply that I use the scriptures more to teach me about listening to God than I do to discover specific principles. I think that if you can discover where God is headed in a passage, that will be a good principle to work from, but it is often very hard to discover that principle. I have a number of approaches that I use in applying scripture, but the key one is what I call the hanging principle (Hanging Your Interpretation). This simply suggests that since Jesus said that all the law and prophets could hang on two laws–love God and love your neighbor–if your application of a scripture won’t hang there, perhaps you should look elsewhere. Those two laws are widely attested in scripture and in tradition. Because the Bible contains both the ideal and the real, that approach keeps one looking to the ideal.

    But the bottom line is that I simply don’t expect the Bible to make my decisions for me. In other words, I don’t expect to find a specific command for my time and circumstances. I have to make decisions and live with the consequences. One thing that I can see happening in the Bible, in the scriptures of many other faiths, and in a broad range of human literature is that people wind up living with the consequences of their actions. One of the things we accomplish in literature is to examine potential situations, the principles by which one might live in those circumstances, and the consequences of those decisions. Note that I do not limit my study to the Bible, although it is important to me. I also don’t limit my study to literary works. The products of natural science are as likely to produce valuable information to me in my decision making process.

    In this process, I am responsible for what I choose. I reject the excuse that I’m just doing what God commanded. Even if I am doing so, I’m basing the claim on what I believe God commanded. Unless God caught you with a burning bush and told you that I’m right, I have no reason to expect you to believe my claim. When I’m making a decision in the public sphere I should be able to support it with reasoning. I think it’s important to be able to defend claims about public policy to people who disagree completely. I know a number of atheists and agnostics who are unafraid to tell me to my face that they find my belief in God somewhere between silly and incomprehensible. At the same time, I can work together with these people because we often agree on public policy goals–separation of church and state, sound science education including evolution, equal protection of the law, environmental issues, public education, and so forth. We may have come to those views from different directions, but we have learned to dialogue about them.

    So let’s make it simple. I am responsible for my decisions. I look for every form of input I can find, which in my case includes the Bible, I listen to God, I make a decision. Once I make a decision, I take responsibility for the decision.

    In this process the Bible functions in two ways: 1) It provides me with extended illustrations of how others interacted with God, and 2) Because I believe that these people interacted with God, I commonly find that if I remove cultural and time factors from the experience, I may find the ideal principle to which God is leading and thus pursue that.

  • Tradition Criticism

    Tradition criticism is an overview method that encompasses all four of the critical tools I have discussed previously, textual, form, source, and redaction criticism. Tradition criticism differs in that it is an overview process of studying the entire history of the text, looking for ways in which the expressed tradition has changed, and the circumstances that were involved in that change. It assumes an oral stage of the text, and is again not very effective in studying something that was originated in written form without a prehistory.

    In order to put tradition criticism into action, one normally begins with textual criticism, in order to have a good text from which to start the process. In some cases, such as the oracles against the nations in the book of Jeremiah that I referenced previously in my post on form criticism, textual criticism can give us some insights into the history of the tradition as well as helping us accurately discover the final text. Form, source, and redaction criticism each deal with an aspect of the history of the text, but they tend to rather arbitrarily divide the process into discrete stages, each of which is studied by a different method. Tradition criticism tries to bring these stages together, and ask questions such as what was important to the people who told these stories, why did they tell these stories and not others, and how this reflects on their culture and their understanding of history.

    In doing so, tradition critics identify motifs, such as the successful foreign courtier in the Joseph story, the threatened ancestral figure, such Sarah barren or taken by a foreign ruler, or particular types of prophetic oracles. These often combine into themes, such as the overall protection God gives to the ancestral line.

    In understanding how the culture saw its own history, we can come to understand the final product better. For example, in modern eyes, the story of the flight into Egypt (Matthew 2:13-15) is either predicted by Hosea 11:1, or Matthew made an error. Now it is clear from context that Hosea 11:1 is not Messianic, and in no way intends to predict anything about the Messiah. But by understanding how traditions were shaped in telling and retelling, such as the exodus from Egypt and the exile to Babylon and return, we can add the option that Christians, in developing this tradition about Jesus, were tying their story into the continuing story of Israel’s experience. Notice here that tradition history is not concerned with determining historicity; it is only concerned with the way in which the story is told and passed on.

    Thus tradition criticism is one of those “forest” types of tools that looks at a broader picture. There is a danger in tradition criticism, just as with form, source, and redaction criticism, that one builds too much on too little evidence. A few conjectures are necessary in historical study, but when conjecture is built on conjecture, the final result can be improbable indeed! Tradition critics must be careful to admit they don’t know when they don’t know.

  • Does the Bible Condone Slavery?

    Ed Brayton, on his blog Dispatches from the Culture Wars, started a bit of an exchange over slavery and the Bible with his post Slavery and the Bible, which was answered over on In The Agora by Eric Seymour in his post Does the Bible condone slavery?. Just so you have the whole story, Ed then responded in Slavery and the Bible, Take 2.

    It seems in this exchange that Ed, who states that he “can no longer accept the Bible as the word of God,” seems to be able to read it with refreshing clarity, while its defenders seem to need to work around what the Bible actually says in order to get it to mean what they would prefer it to. The comments from those giving an “Amen” to Eric Seymour’s response are even more revealing than the original article. I hope you will read the comments as well as the article itself. One poster, John R., states: “I don’t expect, however, this Ed’s unbelief will be alleviated by the truth. When one has put his own moral authority above God’s, there’s not much room left convincing.” But assuming that what John R. has found in the Bible is God’s moral authority, John R. should realize that one can as easily put one’s own authority over that of the written message by weasel-worded interpretations as by simply rejecting a particular concept outright.

    Though my intention is not to deal with the specific interpretation in detail, I’m concerned that this particular defense of the Bible could lead to immoral behavior in itself. It distinguishes between the 19th century American variety of slavery and the Biblical variety as a reason why the Bible might not condemn slavery. That, of course, ignores the difference between slavery as practiced between Israelites (the rules they cite, as Ed correctly notes), and the practice of slavery in the Roman empire which is what Paul failed to condemn. But would Israelite style slavery, i.e. indenture for indebtedness, be a moral option today? Is this really what Christians should feel comfortable arguing? Should we be able to have a debtor sold into slavery, and provide rules to allow how much he or she can be beaten? Is this a moral position we really want to take?

    But back to the subject. If we take the basic approach to scripture that both of these arguments are taking, and accept that if something is condoned in the Bible, then the Bible condones it, then the answer is clear and obvious–the Bible condones slavery. There really is no way around this. People who are convinced that it must not be so will continue to believe that they have somehow chopped up the evidence, but it is still there. Ed can see it. Apparently some of my fellow Christians cannot.

    But let’s take another step down this path. Does the Bible condone or command things that we would consider immoral? I could go through a list of laws from the Torah that would make most modern people shudder. (There are those who think they should apply, which makes me shudder!) But there’s a pretty clear case in Numbers 31. Here the Israelites have attacked an enemy, one that they consider grossly immoral and deserving of extreme treatment. Let’s leave aside any debate about the level of guilt of the opposing party, and simply accept that the Israelites had a right to be angry at their opponents. Assuming this, let’s look at the treatment commanded, and then accorded to the enemy:

    Let’s look at the characteristics of this war (all verses from Numbers 31):

    1. They did battle to execute YHWH’s vengeance (v. 3)
    2. They killed every male (v. 7)
    3. They took the women captive (v. 9)
    4. Well, not quite all the males; they took the little ones captive (v. 9)
    5. They burned everything left (v. 10)
    6. They took the spoil and the captives to their camp (v. 12)

    If any of you are acquainted with ancient near eastern records, this is not an atypical battle. This sort of thing happened all the time. The Israelites are behaving much like their neighbors, with the exception that they seem to have killed a few more people and taken less captive, but even that difference is marginal. There is even an attribution of the authority behind the attack to their god, just as would be fairly common in other ancient near eastern inscriptions.

    Before we go on, let me ask you: Is there any enemy of the United States that you believe should morally be accorded this treatment? To be precise, an enemy whose country we could destroy completely, killing every adult male, irrespective of their specific, personal guilt or innocence and taking all the women and children captive? In modern terms, is this a moral act?

    Well, let’s see what the reaction is to the return of the warriors. Moses is indeed angry at them (v. 14), but his anger is not at how many they killed, but rather at who they left alive. They left alive all the adult women. Here comes the command of Moses:

    17Now kill every boy among the children, and every woman who has known a man by having sexual relations {sleeping with} him. 18But every girl who has not known a man by having sexual relations with him, keep alive for yourselves.

    In the end, it turned out that there was quite a number of female slaves left for the people to have “for themselves.” Continue to read to the end of the chapter to get the story.

    May I ask again, would there be an enemy group or nation against whom you would consider this a moral action, even assuming that nation to be thoroughly despicable?

    So if we ask the question, “Does the Bible condone slaughtering your enemies?” the answer must be “Yes.” Again, this is based on the same type of interpretation that has been used in defending the Bible from the charge of condoning slavery.

    At this point, many of those who are still reading will be thinking I’m about to declare that the Bible is not God’s word, and that I’m going to have nothing to do with it. But in fact I’m a Christian and a Bible teacher, and I love the Bible. What I think is going on here is that we have entirely the wrong set of expectations of the Bible and of divine revelation.

    How do we determine what it is that the Bible is supposed to be? I find that people have quite an assortment of expectations for the Bible, or for any book claiming to contain “God’s word.” Then, based often on those very expectations, they produce interpretations that cause the Bible to say what it is that they want it to say. Clearer thinkers see what the Bible is actually saying and start questioning the foundation, and then either reject the Bible because it does not fulfill expectations, or change the expectations. It’s pretty easy for the latter two groups to condemn one another. Those who reject the Bible claim that those who change the expectations are moving the goalposts, or something similar, while those who change the expectations accuse those who reject the Bible of accepting the fundamentalists’ standard.

    It’s not my intent to condemn anyone here. I think it’s easy to rationally disagree on the point. The problem is that we really don’t have any external standard by which to decide just what God’s word should contain and what it should accomplish. We make assumptions, or create lists, but these are either derived from our own hopes and dreams, or are extracted from something we already regard as scripture. An earnest, well-educated Muslim friend of mine tried to convince me that the Qur’an is God’s word. It was clear that it made him joyful. “It provides an answer for every detail of my life,” he said. I answered that I didn’t find that an attractive feature in a book of scripture. It was really very difficult to discuss from that point, because the question became just what I should want in my holy book. Without a holy book telling you that, just how do you determine what you want?

    (I’ve discussed inspiration in general quite extensively elsewhere. I’d suggest my primary essay Inspiration, Biblical Authority, and Inerrancy, and my inspiration series, which is listed in my Post Series page. This also lists series of posts on Biblical Criticism and on origins. I have found that most people who wander by to condemn me for my views don’t bother to read them in any detail, but I at least have not provided an excuse!)

    So how do I see the word of God? First, I don’t regard the Bible as the equivalent of the word of God. While it conveys the God’s messages, and is an expression of the word of God, the actual word of God is much more than that. The Biblical view is that everything is the product of God’s word.

    6By the word of YHWH the heavens were made,
    And all their host by the breath of his mouth.

    Thus the scientist doing field work is also studying God’s word, specifically a product of it. That is why I am extremely distressed to see Christians doing shoddy science and making poorly thought out claims in the name of science in order to defend some theological preconception. A Christian doing science should do the work with the awareness that he is playing with the product of God’s word. This doesn’t mean that he will discover God by the scientific method. Rather, it means that he will examine an expression of God by that means. (Intelligent design fails theologically, in my view, on precisely this point. All nature is equally the product of God. The idea of detecting God more in one place than another using the scientific method certainly is certainly not a search for the God I know.)

    In the scripture, I believe we have a record, not of God’s pronouncements on all things, though there are some pronouncements, but rather, of God’s interaction with people. There is a human/divine combination in scripture. The people are not perfect. They are not even close. Some are despicable. But God works with them, and we have the record of the interaction. We should not expect to go back to the beginning of our relationship with God and find the same moral standards that we have at a later point. More importantly, we should expect every expression in scripture to occur in a cultural matrix, and to apply to a particular situation. When Romans 13 says that the authorities are given their authority by God so we should be subject to them, we can rightly ask just what were the circumstances that brought for that declaration. In fact, this was Paul’s practical, pastoral advice to the church in Rome at a time when Christians saw Rome more as a defender than as a persecutor. Their fear, at that time, was of persecution by Jews. Later, the fear became changed.

    I use an illustration in my essay (Inspiration, Biblical Authority, and Inerrancy that I think helps to understand what I’m trying to say.

    How the Bible impacts our understanding

    The point here is that the primary method of extracting data from the Bible in modern, conservative Christianity is the picture on the right. The Bible stands between the person and God, mediating what God has said. I’m advocating the approach on the left in which one listens to God directly, as well as through all available avenues, while the experience of scripture enlightens one’s own process of doing God’s will. Dr. Alden Thompson discusses some similar ideas (though he’s somewhat more conservative than I am) in his essay God’s Word: Casebook or Codebook. He also discusses some of these same issues in his book Who’s Afraid of the Old Testament God?.

    Now some are still going to ask how I handle the really nasty material I pointed out from Numbers 31, which is certainly not the only nasty occasion in the Bible. I have no problem there. The actions described are morally wrong. I think our expectations can change over time, and that we need to avoid judging something from the 2nd millenium BCE from our 21st century CE standards. But if you’re looking to the Bible to contain a codebook of good things to do and bad things to avoid, then Numbers 31 is a problem for you, because it involves a command to do a bad thing. For me this says that the Israelites acted in accordance with their culture and time, and that God led them in some ways, while in others they were not ready to be led.

    And to be blunt, I see Paul’s advice on slaves as a practical matter. I certainly don’t expect Paul to advocate a slave revolt. For revolution, you need the possibility of success. A slave revolt in the 1st century would have been a bad idea. The underground railroad in the 19th century was a good idea. Unfortunately when we nitpick through the Biblical commands in order to make them fit a pattern, things don’t work so well. What the folks who started and maintained the underground railroad had to do was discover a moral imperative in their own time and place, using their own minds, and carry it out.

    Again, does the Bible condone slavery? By my view and method of interpretation, “The Bible” doesn’t do anything of the sort. It provides examples of someone condoning slavery. But the Bible is not a substitute for the human mind reading it, or the Spirit of Truth guiding that mind. The Bible can provide light. It doesn’t make moral decisions. Pretending it does will only bring trouble.

  • Redaction Criticism

    After discussing Form Criticism and Source Criticism, Redaction Criticism is really quite easy to deal with. Redaction is simply another term for editing. It is the study of how an editor works the sources he has into a final document, the document that we would commonly refer to as the autograph. Again, it is important to remember that there is no necessity to assume that the final copy of a document as we have it in scripture went through a stage of redaction. The epistles of the New Testament are good examples of documents that would require either no redaction, or would only involve minimal redaction.

    In the Parable of the Sower, elements introduced by the redactor–in this case the gospel writer–include the setting of the parable, the place where Jesus is said to have related the parable, and possibly the interpretation. It is commonly thought that Jesus did not include interpretations with his parables. I would suggest that the form of the parables gives some support to this theory. They are best suited to use in stimulating thinking, without long explanations. But in my opinion that doesn’t mean that Jesus and his disciples never discussed the meaning. Thus multiple applications of a parable could legitimately have arisen during the lifetime of Jesus. The placement of all the interpretations, and some of the interpretations themselves then would be redactional elements. It is unlikely that Jesus immediately followed parable with interpretation in his normal style of teaching.

    Another example comes from Matthew 5:3 and Luke 6:20. Luke 6 reads “Blessed are the poor . . . ” but Matthew reads “Blessed are the poor in spirit . . .” Because of the form of this saying in the Gospel of Thomas, v. 54, which also reads just “poor” it is likely that Luke’s is the more common, and possibly more original form of the saying. Thus the addition of “in spirit” by Matthew (as redactor) indicates something about his theology and his intention in writing his gospel. (Note that use of the Gospel of Thomas is controversial here, because there is some debate on its date and whether it constitutes an independent witness to the sayings of Jesus.)

    To look at an example of sources and redaction, see my essays The Two Flood Stories and Genesis Creation Stories – Form, Structure, and Relationship.