Threads from Henry's Web

Tag: Uncategorized

  • Christian Carnival CXCVI

    Well, the Christian Carnival is back to this little corner of the blogosphere, and I’m going to take a theme from the church property and locate the posts somewhere on a church campus. There will obviously be some choices to make, and you might disagree, but remember that you can discuss theology in the parking lot, from the pulpit, or in a Sunday School room just as easily. I may move a post or so just to keep things even!

    There’s some good material. I trust you will be blessed reading it.

    Note: Because of some posts that may have been just too late for last week’s carnival, I allowed some posts that were one day outside the window, but no further. If your post was left out, please don’t hesitate to link in the comments section. I get e-mail notifications from there as quickly as I do by any other method.

    Sunday School Rooms

    Dana presents Western heritage without Christianity? posted at Principled Discovery.

    Tom Gilson presents Coming Soon To Your Child’s School: Hate for God and Church, Heavily Advertised posted at Thinking Christian.

    John presents Another View on Evangelicals Cracking Up posted at Brain Cramps for God. He looks at an article by Joe Carter that offers a principled way to examine the political currents in Evangelicalism.

    Jon Swift presents The Mean Girl Faces of Islamo-Fascism posted at Jon Swift. He says: Even though I am a former (that is, perfected) Jew, I don’t think that I will ever again be able to pass a headscarved Muslim girl in the street again without panicking that she might make a “mean girl face” at me.

    Jody Neufeld (my wife!) presents . . . despised and rejected by men . . . on her blog Jody Along the Path. She looks at the suffering of Jesus and its meaning to us.

    The Community Life Center

    Annette presents This made me laugh! posted at Fish and Cans. She says: Women are different than men….. hmmm…. go figure! 🙂 Sorry, whenever people make discoveries like that it makes me laugh, it seems so ordinary to me.

    Richard H. Anderson presents Waitng on tables, Part 4 posted at dokeo kago grapho soi kratistos Theophilos.

    ChrisB presents Another Halloween question posted at Homeward Bound.

    livinforhim316 presents Christian Dating Experiences » Practical Ways To Keep God In The Center posted at Christian Dating Experiences.

    Martin LaBar presents The Golden Compass, by Philip Pullman on Sun and Shield. It is his reaction to the current e-mail campaign against the upcoming movie, _The Golden Compass_, based on a book by Pullman. He states that Pullman does, indeed, seem to be a militant atheist. However, he thinks that there is a much larger danger from the media.

    Adam presents The Faughn Family of Four: A Shot at… posted at The Faughn Family of Four. Another reality show that appears to have some questionable features.

    David Balderston presents Helping Fire Victims | Life In San Diego posted at David Balderston.

    The Parking Lot

    Don Bosch of The Evangelical Ecologist gives us Life Lessons from Butterflies. He says: Christians often think of caterpillars and butterflies as nature’s “before” and “after” example of how God transformed our lives at Calvary. But God still has lots to teach people about living life like butterflies. This week the Evangelical Ecologist hosts a post called Life Lessons from Butterflies by Rives Duncan. I hope it’s a blessing to you!

    This week at Light Along the Journey, John explores a Biblical definition of love in his post Better Than Warm Squishies.

    Matthew Anderson presents Mere Orthodoxy » Principles, Pragmatics and the Vote: The Impotence of the Religious Right posted at Mere Orthodoxy.

    Kevin presents Desert Wisdom – On Prayer and Activism posted at Everyday Liturgy. He encourages the new movements in Evangelicalism to dig to the root of the problems in American Christianity—and change by recovering the spiritual traditions that (ancient) Christianity has to offer.

    For my own entry, I’m using one from Threads from Henry’s Web, which I rarely do. It is The Joys and Sorrows of being Ex-Seventh-day Adventist. I think it makes interesting parking lot conversation as we meet, greet, chat, and say good bye!

    The Sanctuary

    Jeremy Pierce presents Hate and Murder in Deuteronomy 19 posted at Parableman. Jesus declares hate to be subject to the same judgment as murder. This isn’t really a revision of the law, though, as some claim. Deuteronomy 19 connects punishment for murder with hatred in the heart.

    David presents The Serenity Prayer posted at Frozen Toothpaste.

    Doug presents Ostracization within the Church posted at Bounded Irrationality. Are churches becoming more cliquish? Could this be harming the Church’s outreach?

    Ken Brown at C.Orthodoxy presents Divine Invisibility.” Though many atheists insist that if God exists, he should make it obvious by providing nearly constant miracles, this objection is called into question by their simultaneous claim that belief in God makes us unable to live and learn for ourselves. Constant miracles, while of only dubious value for proving the existence of God, would remove both our ability and motivation to learn for ourselves.

  • Book: J. Louis Martyn, Galatians

    If you read this blog at all regularly you will have seen a number of posts that reference J. Louis Martyn’s commentary on Galatians in the Anchor Bible Series. I have just completed a study through Galatians, using the Greek text and Martyn’s commentary. It’s very hard to rate commentaries, because there are so many possibilities for use, and if you describe a commentary as “good” you have to specify “good for what?”

    In this case I’m going to put this in my top five. Those are: Leviticus (3 vols, Anchor Bible) by Jacob Milgrom, 1 Corinthians (NICNT) by Gordon Fee, Isaiah (OTL) by Brevard Childs, Exodus (OTL) by Brevard Childs, and now Galatians by J. Louis Martyn. Fee’s 1 Corinthians I regard as the best commentary I’ve found that is usable for a teacher/preacher who teaches non-scholars. Milgrom’s remains far and away the best scholar’s commentary that I’ve read. To place Martyn’s commentary in this group I would say that it is not as overwhelmingly thorough as Milgrom’s. To manage that it would have to carefully cite the history of interpretation starting with the church fathers and moving to the present. Martyn takes the history into account, but doesn’t
    give you everything. To match Fee’s commentary, there would have to be more direct application. Martyn provides plenty of fodder for devotional use, but I found that when I tried to find a quote, I either couldn’t find any at all, or what I found had to be translated for a lay audience. That will make this commentary less useful for a working pastor or Sunday School teacher.

    Having said all of that, the key benefit of Martyn’s work is simply that he provides a good cross section of his excellent insights on Pauline theology throughout, fitting Galatians into a pattern of Pauline thought, and suggesting avenues of interpretation that are creative, and very often quite convincing. If you can translate some of his thinking into comprehensible terms that can be used in a sermon, you’ll find them quite useful and profound.

    Some of the key themes include:

    • The Jerusalem of today (Gal. 4:25) is the Jerusalem church in that it either supports or does not suppress the circumcision mission to the gentiles
    • Closely connected to that, Martyn refers to the teachers not as Judaizers, but as a circumcision based gentile mission
    • Paul sees the death and resurrection of Jesus in apocalyptic terms, an invasion of this world that invalidates old categories and creates new ones
    • Galatians is earlier in the sequence of Paul’s letters than often thought

    With 577 pages of solid commentary, a study of Galatians with this book is not for the faint of heart, but it is worth the effort. If you then write sermons or lessons from it, you will get valuable training in explaining profound but difficult theological concepts to lay audiences. You may regard that as a penalty, but perhaps it is a benefit, a good spiritual discipline.

    Those who accept inerrancy, and even those like me who don’t, may find the historical approach a little difficult to manage. Martyn espouses the idea that Paul’s letters are better sources for Paul’s life than Acts, relegating Acts to a supporting role (I discuss that here). My impression is that with a little bit more attention much of the Acts material can be reconciled plausibly and should be. I would accept that the Jerusalem conference as reported in Acts and as understood by Paul may be somewhat different. Paul’s discussion of the topic of food offered to idols in 1 Corinthians certainly makes it appear so, but I think that a good historical outline can be taken both from Paul’s letters and from Acts, and that those outlines are not too far apart. The “spin” is a bit different, but the bones match.

    Obviously, I enjoyed my study of Galatians, and I wrote a number of notes, both here and on my wife’s devotional list, for which I’ve been writing quite a lot lately. Just to provide the flavor, here are links to the posts over the last few weeks that were inspired by Martyn’s commentary:

  • Isaiah 27: Accomplishing Redemption

    I’ve been at this series on Isaiah 24-27 for some months now. It’s taken so long mostly because I’ve been working at it slowly as I have time, and not because my series is that in-depth. The thing that has struck me in studying the passages for this series is the richness of the material. The amount of material I find that ends up only as an entry in my notes or an underlined passage in one of my reference sources is quite astonishing. In this chapter I will cite a few translations that in themselves provide creative suggestions for translation difficulties in this passage.

    I would suggest reading this chapter in several translations and trying to follow the logic through the chapter. Very often we don’t in Isaiah, because in many of these poetic passages it is hard to make sense of what’s going on in context. But I would suggest that there is a context, that the combination of the verses and passages is not accidental, but because of the literary style of the text, and the fact that so much is written in poetry it’s simply difficult to follow that logic.

    The basic logic that I see in this text is the move from a people who are not definitely on any side. They might be faithful to their God and then again they might not. We have almost a precursor to the concept of the remnant as presented in 2nd Isaiah (chapters 40-55), in which only a small portion of the people are faithful, and the whole is to be reduced to that remnant who then bring restoration.

    This theme occurs often in apocalyptic literature. The good guys and the bad guys have to be separated and clearly distinguished. As a result it is very, very right that God destroys the bad guys, and it is also imperative that God avenge the good guys. This theme has guided my translation in a couple of places. Theology should follow translation rather than precede it, but translation is impossible without sense, and if you compare several different translations of this chapter you will see quite a difference in the sense that is portrayed. A sparse Hebrew text leaves us to fill in the holes based on our understanding, and that is not an easy task.

    Places where this passage is quoted in the New Testament are indicated by red text and allusions are indicated in blue text with the reference in {braces}.

    (1) On that day —
    YHWH will take vengeance with his sword,
    harsh, great, powerful,
    On Leviathan the slithering snake,
    On Leviathan the slimy snake.
    He will kill the sea-dragon.

    The critical thing to note about this portion of the text is that its use of Leviathan and “sea-dragon” or “sea-serpent” indicates that we’re talking in the language of creation-myth, and thus also in the language of eschatology. In scripture God’s creative power is also his authority and power to destroy and to recreate. By starting out to state that the sea-dragon will be killed on that day, the writer tells us the setting is eschatological.

    I take this indication as definitive. I believe there is enough indication that the chapter is a unity. True, it is made up of individual elements from various sources, but they have been combined into a unified whole. By opening the next section with the same phrase “on that day” the writer tells us that the pleasant vineyard and the slaying of Leviathan are tied together. This means that the vineyard, the abandoned city, and YHWH’s actions as told in verses 12 & 13 should all also have an eschatological setting.

    (2) On that day —
    “There’s a pleasant vineyard,”
    Sing for it!
    (3) “I YHWH watch over it.
    I water it as needed.
    Lest harm come to it,
    I watch it day and night.
    (4) I have no anger.
    Oh that I had thistles and thorns,
    I would come against it in battle,
    And burn it all together.
    (5) Or instead it could seize my protection,
    It could make peace with me.
    It could make peace with me!
    (6) In coming days Jacob will put down roots,
    Israel will blossom and bloom,
    And will fill the face of the earth with fruit.

    There are several questions in this passage. Are the thistles and thorns a defensive wall? Are they part of the vineyard? Is YHWH attacking the enemies of the vineyard, or is he threatening to attack the vineyard?

    In my view, the eschatological sense, and also the parallels with the vineyard of Isaiah 5 indicate that the thistles and thorns are themselves part of the vineyard. YHWH wishes that his vineyard was either one thing or another. This calls to mind Revelation 3:15, and God wishing that the people of Laodicea were either hot or cold. In this case, he wishes that he either faced thistles and thorns, against which he could vent his wrath, or that on the other hand his vineyard would make peace with him. God’s anger is spent, but he still does not have the desired result.

    Notice, on the other hand, the NCV translation of this passage:

    I am not angry.
    If anyone builds a wall of thornbushes in war,
    I will march to it and burn it.
    But if anyone comes to me for safety
    and wants to make peace with me,
    he should come and make peace with me.”

    That is taking the thornbushes in quite a different sense than I have, and I have some difficulty comprehending how “I am not angry” fits in with the rest of the passage. This is simply one of many options. The NCV translation can certainly be justified linguistically. I’m just not certain it can be fitted properly into the context. On the other hand, some might accuse me of bending the evidence in order to fit a patter with my own translation.

    Again compare the JPS Tanakh:

    There is no anger in Me:
    If one offers Me thorns and thistles,
    I will march to battle against him,
    And set all of them on fire. –Isaiah 27:4

    That’s a third option, and there are more. I’m not going to try to exhaust the options either here or in the abandoned city. There are simply too many.

    (7) Has he been struck with the same blows
    as the one who struck him?
    Has he been slain in the same way
    as the one who slew him?
    (8) With measured acts you contended as you sent her away,
    Speaking harshly like the east wind.
    (9) So in this way only will Jacob’s guilt be purged,
    In this will all the results of his sin be turned aside. {Romans 11:27b, LXX}
    When all the stones of the altar are shattered like limestone,
    When sacred poles and incense altars no longer stand.

    Reformation is the only way in which things in Judah can be made right. Forgiveness is tied to repentance, and repentance means changing one’s life. God has exercised judgment on his people. He has now exercised judgment against those who oppressed Israel. But after all has been said and done, the only thing that will result in a new people is for them to turn from their idols and to become totally God’s possession.

    (10) For the fortified city stands alone,
    An emptied pasture,
    Abandoned like the wilderness.
    Oxen graze there.
    They lie down and eat her branches.
    (11) When her cuttings are dry and break off,
    Women come and light them on fire.
    Because it is not an understanding people,
    So their maker will not have compassion,
    The one who formed them will show no mercy.

    The key issue in this passage is whether this is Jerusalem or the “other city” that stands against it, Babylon in apocalyptic imagery. I believe this is the opposing city. The dominant expression about Israel in this entire chapter is hope, though there is the desire for repentance and for them to become fully reconciled to their God. The other city is the one that will be completely destroyed. In later apocalyptic, of course, that “other” city would be portrayed receiving a much more explicit judgment.

    (12) It will happen on that day —
    YHWH will beat out the people like grain, {Matthew 3:12}
    from the Euphrates to the brook of Egypt.
    And you will be gleaned one by one, Israelites!
    (13) It will happen on that day —
    The great shofar will be blown,
    and those who are lost in the land of Asshur,
    and those who are scattered in the land of Egypt
    will come and worship YHWH,
    on the Holy Mountain in Jerusalem. {Matthew 24:31}

    Verses 12 and 13 to me confirm the remainder of my interpretation of the chapter. Compare verse 12 to the preaching of John the Baptist in Matthew 3:12, separating wheat from chaff, so that the wheat can be saved and the chaff burned. Besides the scattering, however, there is an ingathering, as people are brought from all corners of the earth to return to God’s people in their home.

    As I see it, and as I have translated it, Isaiah 27 serves as a “little apocalypse” portraying the world at its end, when God is stepping in to do judgment.

  • Just What the Bible Says

    More than a year ago I wrote a post titled Just Your Interpretation. In it I challenge the idea that just any interpretation will do, and suggested that there are right and wrong interpretations, and we should aim for right interpretations. I know this goes contrary to the post-modern trend.

    But I also mentioned another side to the issue. There are those who regularly claim that they are not presenting an interpretation, but rather are presenting “just what the Bible says.” They despise and reject any appeal to resources other than the scriptures, and urge all correspondents to support everything with specific texts.

    (more…)

  • Mission and Prosperity

    In God’s economy, there is never prosperity without mission.

    I’ve been thinking about this in the last few days in connection with a number of issues, and I think it is a scriptural principle. I think you can replace “prosperity” with other terms of blessing, such as peace, joy, and fulfilment. This is where, in my opinion, modern prosperity preachers are missing the point. It’s not that they don’t mention mission, it’s that they put prosperity in the first place, and then mission follows after. I believe God puts mission first.

    Is this Biblical? Let’s look at a few examples.

    Many of my friends frequently remind me to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” (Psalm 122:6). Now I don’t want to diminish in any way the need to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. But there is some baggage that comes along here. Read the rest of Psalm 122. You will find there a call for worship, a call for obedience, a call to carry out justice, and the call for prayer itself is aimed directly at the house of God and the presence of God. Mission is implicit throughout the passage. This is not an either/or situation. The peace of Jerusalem does not occur in scripture without justice and righteousness in Jerusalem.

    But as gentile Christians, we need to look just a little further out. This Psalm calls upon us to preserve centers of worship, to be glad to go into the presence of God, and to aim our prayers in that direction. Don’t miss the physical Jerusalem over in Israel, but don’t miss the presence of God here and now either.

    A friend once told me that praying for Jerusalem was a way to get a cheap blessing. But I don’t think there is such a thing as cheap blessing. The blessing has to go with commitment. A friend of mine passed a way a couple of years ago. She was a friend of Israel, and definitely prayed for the peace of Jerusalem. One time when she returned from Israel she came back with a new understanding and sympathy for the Palestinians as well. Her love of Israel was undiminished, but God had made a place in her heart for someone more. I could sense the blessing and the anointing that resulted from that growth. Her prayers were not cheap prayers, nor were they a means to an end. She not only prayed for the peace of Jerusalem, she invested heart and soul, time and money in it.

    Some may think the mission in Psalm 122, as clearly as I see it, is not so clear. Let’s look at a couple more passages from the time of the exile. Isaiah announced:

    ?6? I am the Lord, I have called you in righteousness,
    I have taken you by the hand and kept you;
    I have given you as a covenant to the people,?a?
    a light to the nations,
    ?7? to open the eyes that are blind,
    to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
    from the prison those who sit in darkness.
    ?8? I am the Lord, that is my name;
    my glory I give to no other,
    nor my praise to idols.
    ?9? See, the former things have come to pass,
    and new things I now declare;
    before they spring forth,
    I tell you of them.

    Isaiah 42:6 (NRSV)

    Note the call and the covenant are brought in a context of mission. God affirmed the same thing through Ezekiel when he said:

    Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. — Ezekiel 36:22

    I commend all of Ezekiel 36 to you to read.

    But why should this be at all surprising? The concept goes back to Abraham who is told that God will bless him and that he will be a blessing. From that first call, blessing came with mission, and mission was the focus of blessing.

    Jesus expressed the same concept when he said:

    First look for God’s kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. — Matthew 6:33

    Notice the focus! Mission is at the center, and “all these things” follow from mission.

    If you are praying for peace, prosperity, joy, or any blessing, and feel that you are not receiving it, perhaps you need to consider two possibilities. First, God may be working on you, preparing you for mission. With him, the kingdom comes first. But second, it may be possible that you haven’t gotten the mission, you haven’t gotten the vision, and thus the blessings can’t follow. God isn’t going to give you the blessings of a great and powerful mission for you to hoard.

    Get the mission, catch the vision, the blessings follow.

  • Isaiah 24-27: Basics of Criticism

    Now that we’ve looked over the text and found a set of transitions in it, we can start looking at how critical methologies will apply to this material. Will they help us interpret and apply the passage?

    This is a moment to look at some of the reasons I’ve been writing this series. Frequently, Bible students are confronted with the results of critical scholarship, but with very little support, documentation, and reasonsing provided to help them determine whether they should accept a particular critical position or not. On the other hand, they will often see denials of the results of criticism with equally little background provided. One can’t avoid the types of questions that Biblical criticism asks, even though one can have widely varying positions on the answers. Whatever commentary or study Bible you choose, there will be statements about the date of writing, the authorship, and the historical and cultural circumstances of the book.

    What do you do when one set of notes tells you that the gospel of Mark was written around 45 CE, while another says it was written between 70 and 80 CE? In relation to our particular exercise, what do you do when one source tells you that Isaiah was written by a single author in the 7th century BCE, while another says it has at least three authors dating from the 7th century to the 4th century BCE? Again narrowing in on Isaiah 24-27, how do you respond when one source says this is a scattered collection of unrelated sayings that has obviously suffered in editing and transmission, while another tells you that this passage is a coherent whole with a single theme carefully presented?

    You can, as some people do, take the word of the scholar who is most similar to your theological viewpoint, you could throw up your hands and say, “Nobody knows!” or you can dig in and ask a simple question: How do each of these scholars know what they claim to know? That is the purpose of delving into critical methology. How does someone come to any of these conclusions?

    Let’s think briefly about the gospel of Mark. There are two major areas of disagreement that alter the way scholars date Mark. The first is their solution to the synoptic problem. If someone believes that Mark is one of the sources for Matthew and Luke, he will clearly have to date it before Matthew and Luke. The second major issue is found in the relationship of the text to the destruction of Jerusalem. This is not only an issue of whether predictive prophecy is possible, but also whether the text of Mark reflects a situation in which the temple has been destroyed or not. Based on these criteria, you’ll find that more conservative scholars who believe that Mark was written first tend to date Mark very early. More liberal scholars tend to date Mark a bit later, even if they believe Mark was written first. Conservative scholars who believe Matthew wrote first tend to date Mark a bit later, though often still before the destruction of Jerusalem. (This can get tricky depending on how one dates Matthew.) Some scholars who are moderate or liberal believe Matthew was written first, and this results in a very late date for Mark, since in general the same scholars would date Matthew shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem. If you look carefully in each introduction to Mark, you will probably find the reasons even though they may not be clearly set out for you.

    In the case of Isaiah, we don’t have an issue of copying, except in a small number of cases. We have two categories of issues: 1) That some portions of Isaiah are written presuming Assyria to be the main enemy, 2) that some portions are written assuming Babylon to be the main enemy, 3) that Cyrus is specifically named as a deliverer (which even some who like a 7th century date in general find a little hard to accept), and 4) that there are also passages that appear to apply to a time of rebuilding. This is not the time to evaluate all those issues in detail, but you should be aware of them. The deutero- and trito-Isaiah theories are based on an analysis of the text itself, along with a small number of external references. You need to consider the details about the text in order to express a valid and convincing opinion on the topic.

    As we start on Isaiah 24-27, I want to call your attention to a couple of my own experiences in studying other books. I did a full quarter independent study in college on Ezekiel’s call vision (Ezekiel 1). One commentary guts the call vision of repetitions and things that seem not to fit into a coherent description of the vision. As I read this commentary (see the paper for more details), I began to ask myself whether the original report of the call vision would, in fact, have had the characteristics of brevity, organization, and clarity that this commentator supposed it would have? I decided that this was unlikely. A vision, after all, is not an ordinary experience. One might be slightly incoherent in describing the vision. By making the chapter more organized, that commentator was, in fact, losing the feeling of excitement and awe, along with the difficulty of describing a vision of this nature. I encountered the same thing using R. H. Charles’s commentary on Revelation in the ICC series. Charles rearranges the last chapters of Revelation because he thinks they are so horribly disarranged. He even suggests the following:

    . . . John died either as a martyr or by a natural death, when he had completed i.-xx. 3 of his work, and that the materials for its completion, which were for the most part ready in a series of independent documents, were put together by a faithful but unintelligent disciple in the order which he thought right. (Charles, Revelation Vol II, p. 147)

    Again we have to ask whether the order that the modern student thought right is the order that would have appeared right to the original author.

    The assumption behind the interpretation of the passages I cited (Ezekiel 1, Rev. 20:4-22) is simply that a description of an end time vision should be clear, orderly, and in perfect sequence. The problem I have with this assumption is that there don’t seem to be any examples in scripture of such a clean, orderly work that would allow us to conclude that this was the “normal” form for such a vision report. The apocalyptic speeches of Jesus are more orderly, though not much more forthcoming with the data, than these, but it isn’t the report of a vision. A similar assumption has been made about Isaiah 24-27.

    If you did your own outline of these four chapters, showing transition points, take a look at it again. If not, use the one I did earlier in this series, and then read the passage again. What kind of feeling do these chapters give you? Is it necessarily true that in a time of crisis, however resolved, we would feel a clean sequence of events, or would we have a slower transition?

    Each of the “forms” we identified (though I used ad hoc names, rather than those you will find in many commentaries) contributes to the feeling of these chapters. We can use form criticism, identifying a passage as a hymn or a prayer, for example, to help us understand the pieces, but they form a portion of the word picture that the author is painting. They come from different places and situations, but they are combined into one theme.

    In my next entry I’ll look a bit more at the theme and how it is brought together, and we’ll use a little bit of methodology from redaction criticism. While some scholars do try some source criticism on this passage, generally theories that combine some of the elements into sources prior to the final composition generally rely on extremely thin evidence, and I am unconvinced that such sources can be identified. The best picture of authorship, in my view, is that a single author takes elements from worship, devotional life, existing literature, and his own visions and compositions, and combines them into a passage heralding God’s final victory. The elements may look scattered to us, but that is largely because we come with the wrong questions, asking what historical events are in view, what is the sequence of age-ending events pictured, and so forth, when the author is answering the question of what it will be like when YHWH makes his final intervention in human history.

  • A Step for Abiogenesis?

    In a short article, ScienceNOW Daily news discusses some new research that may shed light on how life first emerged on this planet. I want to call attention to the article for a couple of reasons, but primarily because this, in my view, is how real science is done, and how it sounds when announced. No, they don’t know that this is an element of the formation of life, no, they don’t have the rest of the process, even the next step, figured out. What they have done is provide one more option, and filled in one more blank in the unknown.

    Michael Behe, in his book Darwin’s Black Box describes structure after structure and process after process, recounting how we have discovered new complexity as we continue to learn more about how the function. What is a black box at one point in the history of science will not necessarily remain so. Unfortunately, Behe uses all this skillful writing to produce an ode to ignorance, and complains that evolutionary pathways have not been found. He believes they never will be. But as things get more complex, one simply has to work harder to learn the details that are part of the complexity of nature. In this case, there is now a new reaction that opens up possibilities for study. Does it resolve the problem? No! But it suggests new research and provides more options for continuing the search. That’s how science works.

    Some may be wondering how I, a “theistic evolutionist” got onto the topic of abiogenesis. After all, the expected method of argument for theistic evolutionists is to distinguish evolution of life from abiogenesis. I do believe they should be regarded as distinct. But I also believe that abiogenesis will be solved, and an pathway for the origination of life will be formed. How then can I relate this to my belief that God is the creator of life? Actually, I believe God is the creator of everything. I believe God created the universe as a system, a system that works.

    Let me use the analogy of my car. I don’t regard periodic maintenance requirements for my vehicle as a sign of the wisdom of the engineers. Sure, they did well to warn me of those requirements, but I would be happier if they were less frequent, and if it were practical to produce a vehicle that never required maintenance, that would be even better. I also don’t look at the simple parts of my car and determine that they did not require an engineer, while the more complex parts must have been designed. I know that each element was put there as a part of the design strategy of the car. That they work together (mostly) seamlessly, and that I cannot find parts that are “more designed” than others is not a defect.

    Now as all analogies, this one has it’s limitations. My car is very little like a universe. But I think it does illustrate my point. If God designed the universe correctly, then it should work. If it requires periodic maintenance, like my car, it gives evidence of manufacture by a less-than-perfect creator.

    I don’t like the idea of tinkering, whether it comes at the time of speciation or when life first came into existence. I creidt life to God whether intervention was required or not, but I suspect a competent God of getting it right the first time (A “fully gifted universe” to borrow Howard Van Till’s phrase).

    So folks, I think this one will be solved in the next few years, and if you hooked your faith in God to the impossibility of life being formed from non-living matter without special miraculous intervention, you will be disappointed.

    But make no mistake, no matter how thick the gloves are on God’s hands, no matter how many processes supposedly separate him from his handiwork, it is still God that does it. An omnipresent God is not less present when working through process (and consistent processes at that), than he is working directly. The evidence suggests that he prefers working through consistent processes.

  • Cute Bunny Rabbits, Eggs, and Resurrection

    Is there a resurrection in your future? In your near future?

    Often concerned Christians complain about the pagan background of Easter, and such practices as Easter eggs, bunny rabbits, and all the signs of spring. Pagan religions in many countries have celebrated spring and the new life that it represents. Fall and spring festivals celebrate the cycle of life as we know it. I believe there is something very appropriate in placing the Christian celebration of the resurrection at the time of the spring, and I am even pretty happy with some of the pagan connections.

    Christian easter both reaffirms and transforms the idea generally behind spring festivals. (I’m not trying to make a connection with any particular festival here; I’m just looking at spring festivals in general.) We celebrate on the one hand that God does renew things on a regular basis. There may be valleys in our lives, but there are also mountaintops, and if we’re traveling with God, we know that the mountaintops will follow the valleys without fail. For every trial there’s a potential victory. We live in a world of death, but at the same time a world of life.

    As Christians we often look down on those pagan religions that emphasize fertility. Stories of sexual orgies and perversions help foster that attitude. But the elements of excess and perversion are just that–a perversion of something that God made and that God said was good. Human sexuality and reproduction are to be celebrated. Why? Because they provide us with the best example of God’s life giving power placed in our own hands. The passion of a husband for his wife, or a wife for her husband and the response of one to the other provide the greatest metaphor of God’s passion for his people and our response to him. It is not that sex is dirty without the metaphor; it is God’s gift of life and of passion. Try reading Song of Solomon as a love story. Don’t worry about any spirituality; just read it as passionate poetry and enjoy it. It is that passion that represents God’s desire to commune with you, to be intimate with you, and to renew your life.

    At the same time the resurrection transforms the whole idea of a spring festival. In many ancient religions there was an endless cycle of celebrations or commemorations of the changing of the seasons with no expectation that humanity was going anywhere. The resurrection transforms that. We are not in an endless cycle; God has a plan! We’re going somewhere. That’s the central message of Easter. We cannot have Easter without first going through Good Friday. The trial came first. But the cross would be a symbol of death if it was not followed by Easter. The resurrection breaks the cycle and brings life.

    So enjoy the cute fluffy bunnies, and eat the chocolate easter eggs. There’s a resurrection in your future!