The Holy Huddle

Getting practical about doing right

2011-09-25T21:48:00.000-04:00

For those not in the Huddle, we are current studying Ron Sider's Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger and John R. Schneider's The Good of Affluence. Our second meeting last week saw some brainstorming about how we are better aid the needy and steward our resources. This post is meant to give us a convenient place to brainstorm further. Post ideas! Even if they occur to you half a year from now, post away. Here are some ideas to start with, from last Friday:

Write a letter to your congressperson, local store, etc.
Buy used clothing
Start with the basics, such as looking to buy minimally packaged goods.
Gradually get educated regarding fair trade companies
Check out Slavery Footprint
Do activities such as walk for homeless, raising money via 5k run, etc.
Donate items you don't use much to shops like Second Thought Resale Shop etc.

"...for your love is more delightful than wine "

2011-08-10T14:07:00.009-04:00

How did medieval Christians use the Bible differently from the way we do?

First, in the way they read Scripture, their hermeneutic. Given their focus on Scripture as written not just by human authors, but by the divine author, they were much more likely than us to interpret using allegory.

Second, in what they read. For instance, did you know that the Song of Songs [SoS] was “the most frequently interpreted book of medieval Christianity” [1]? Bernard of Clairvaux, in the 11th century, wrote no fewer than sixty-eight sermons on just the first two chapters and three verses. The Patrologia Latina, a collection of writings of the Fathers, “lists thirty-two Latin commentaries on the Song of Songs written from the time of Jerome and Ambrose to Peter Damián in the eleventh century. By comparison, …Galatians comes under study only six times, …Romans only nine.” [2] So popular was this book that the SoS was second only to the Psalms in the number of times it was set to music by Renaissance composers [3].

This book makes no mention of God, and by all appearances is simply erotic poetry. Yet the face-value meaning of the text, is certainly the minority one for pre-modern readers. It has been seen as an allegory for God and Israel (the traditional Jewish interpretation), God and the Church (the traditional Christian view), God and the believer (also popular historically) and even God and Mary.

Despite the difficulty SoS had making it into the Jewish canon, and further challenges to it by Christians in the 4th and 16th centuries, some have owned it proudly. As Rabbi Akiba said at the council of Jamnia in 90, “All the ages are not worth the day on which the Song of Songs was given to Israel. For all the writings are holy, but the Song of Songs is the Holy of Holies.” [3]

As you can imagine, the allegorical method can be nowhere as stretched as when applied to erotic poetry. So for Origen, the breasts, hair, lips, neck, etc. are the “powers” of the soul. According to Ambrose (4th cent. bishop of Milan), “What are the breasts of the church except the sacrament of baptism?” For Gregory the Great, the fawns feeding among the lilies are saints who “are unto God a sweet savor of Christ” (quoting 2 Cor 2:15). Again from Ambrose, on the SoS 7:2: “Small, too, are the navel and belly of the soul that ascends to Christ.” [4]

A medieval Jewish interpreter, Saadia, said the Song is like a book for which the key has been lost [5]. Indeed, it seems no interpretation is without its problems. The love-song reading appears to revel in loving but premarital sex. The poem is more a collection of poems, and the narrative at times unclear. At the same time, it has such detail that any allegory either ignores those details or contorts to fit them.

Still, similar allegory is not without precedent; both Hosea and in Ezek 16 draw a line between God’s love for his people and a suitor for his love. Even Jesus refers to himself as the “bridegroom.” But these passages are clearly figurative, whereas SoS gives no hint it wants to be read this way. Indeed, allegory limits what one can learn from the text. Where it agrees with the rest of Scripture, we affirm the allegory; where it doesn’t, we reject it. Thus, we cannot learn anything new from the SoS.

Well, not quite. Even if it says nothing new doctrinally, SoS may say it with greater depth and feeling. I had a friend in college, Amy, who was a very trusting and spiritual Christian. I remember very clearly her telling the rest of us in a prayer meeting of how she’d wandered Tappan Square in prayer, as if wandering with her boyfriend lost in conversation. You could see from her eyes that her passion for Jesus was deeper than many married couples have for one another.

Many of us will find it awkward thinking of Jesus as husband. But I have never forgotten Amy’s intense desire for intimacy with God.

So it is with curiosity that I have begun to explore some of the vast literature on the SoS. John of the Cross, for instance, while imprisoned for his support of Teresa of Avila, wrote his own Spiritual Canticle [6]. His poem is essentially a rewriting of SoS in a form more amenable to the allegory of the soul pursuing intimacy with God. Here is an excerpt:

We shall go at once
To the deep caverns of the rock
Which are all secret,
There we shall enter in
And taste of the new wine of the pomegranate.

There you will show me
That which my soul desired;
And there You will give at once,
O You, my life!
That which You gave me the other day.

The breathing of the air,
The song of the sweet nightingale,
The grove and its beauty
In the serene night,
With the flame that consumes, and gives no pains.

The nuns of John’s day prevailed upon him to write a commentary on his poem, but even without it we see a clear and eloquent description of the pursuit of a soul for and by God’s Spirit. John sharpens the God-soul allegory while retaining the eloquence of the Song.

Rabbi Shalom Carmy wrote, “Holiness is synonymous with intimacy; that is what the Song of Songs tells us, in a way unique among the books of Jewish Scripture” [7]. Perhaps it is hard to read SoS as pure allegory, and certainly it is a waste to disregard its beauty as romantic poetry. But it can be more than just advice to young lovers. Its history challenges us to set aside modern exegetical inhibitions, to read SoS with Christians through the centuries, and to learn of a passion for Christ which is as strong as death itself (8:6).

* * *

[1] E. Ann Matter, "The Voice of My Beloved: The Song of Songs in Western Medieval Christianity" (1990), 6; quoted in Thomas F. Ryan, “Sex, Spirituality and Pre-modern Readings of the Song of Songs,” Horizons, 28/1 (2001), 81-104.

[2] Endel Kallas, “Martin Luther as Expositor of the Song of Songs,” Lutheran Quarterly, 2 (1988), 323-341.

[3] http://www.npr.org/2011/07/13/137800097/stile-antico-asks-a-different-kind-of-love

[4] Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, OT vol. IX.

[5] J. Paul Tanner, “The history of interpretation of the Song of Songs,” Biblioteca Sacra 154 (1997), 23-46.

[6] You can read it online at http://www.ccel.org.

[7] “Perfect Harmony,” First Things, Dec 2010, p. 33.

Figures:

Figure 1: Bede, Super cantica canticorum, England, St Albans, first quarter of the twelfth century; from St Albans Abbey, where this copy of Bede’s commentary on the Song of Songs was made. Illuminated by an itinerant professional, the Alexis Master (act. c.1100-1130). The initial to the first book shows the intimate embrace of bride and groom, interpreted as the mystical union of the Church and Christ. [http://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/cambridgeilluminations/themes/2.html]

Figure 2: Capital from the Song of Solomon in Winchester Cathedral. Author unknown, date 1100s, source http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~jtreat/song/270.html

Divinity school

2011-08-02T16:55:00.020-04:00

One of the most breathtaking passages in the NT, and one which gets little air time, is 2 Peter 1:3-11, which begins

His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants in the divine nature.

Consider what the "promises" give us: participation in the "divine nature." The idea that this might be open to us seems incredible.

But what does it mean? The word "participants" is the Greek koinonoi, meaning companions, partners, sharers, so we are given the chance to be partners in God's nature. It's a tough concept to wrap one's head around for several reasons. First, there aren't many parallel concepts; one never speaks of sharing in the angelic nature, or even the canine nature, much less the divine. Second, sharing in the divine nature means that humans are somehow capable of achieving such a lofty height. Third, it also means that God is not altogether "other." Surely God is so great, dwelling in the inscrutable heights of heaven, that we cannot hope to pin down his nature, much less share in it? According to 2 Peter we can.

So what is God's nature--at least, the aspect of it we can participate in? When we think of the divine nature the "omnis" come to mind: omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. Yet none of these is promised to us, either in this life or the next.

It turns out that this phrase and concept were well known in ancient times. The dualistic Greek world view associated permanence and immortality with the divine nature and transience and mortality with the creation. And there were various theories of how the divine nature was achieved [1]; through ritual (the mystery religions); through philosophical contemplation and detachment (Platonism); through the secret knowledge (Hermetic literature), in the afterlife, or through mystical ecstasy (Philo).

For Peter, as in Hellenistic thinking, the divine nature allowed escape from corruption (v. 4). But for Peter, it comes first through knowledge (v. 3), not through any of the above avenues. And while in the culture of the day corruption was in the very nature of the physical world, for Christians and Jews alike, the corruption was due to sin, which entered the world through Adam. To escape sin is to escape the death that reigns in this fallen world. Believers will be granted new life in the resurrection of the dead, and freedom from sin.

But there is another related element of participation in the divine nature which happens now. As it says in Jn 1:18,

No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

Our understanding of the divine nature comes through Jesus. We believe that in living among us Jesus set aside his "omnis," but not his divine nature. This is described in Philippians 2:5-7:

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.

The central aspect of Jesus' ministry, the greatest way in which Jesus reflected the divine nature, was in his dying for us, his self-sacrificial love, a perfect reflection of his humility.

We may look forward to the next life, but not at the expense of this life. As Fred Craddock puts it,

...the conversion from this life to the next is not achieved simply by dying and therefore passing from mortality to immortality. Rather the change is moral and ethical. [2]

The divine nature is characterized by humble, Christ-like, self-giving love. Turning aside from the lusts of this corrupt world, fueled by knowledge of Christ's sacrifice, and following in Jesus' footsteps, we share in the very nature of the transcendent God.

* * *

Why the Pelican Art? In the middle ages, it was believed that pelicans pierced their own breasts in order to feed their young. This became a symbol for Christ's life-giving sacrifice: "O loving pelican, O Jesu Lord, unclean am I but cleanse me in thy blood" (Thomas Aquinas, Adoro Te Devote). The reference can also be found in Dante's Paradiso (25:113) and Act IV, scene V of Hamlet, where Laertes says to the king, "To his good friends thus wide I'll open my arms; and like the life-rendering pelican, repast them with my blood."

The first image is from: The Cloisters Collection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; John Stewart Kennedy Fund, 1922, reproduced in The Medieval Menagerie - Animals in the Art of the Middle Ages by Janetta Rebold Benton, Abbeville Press Publishers, New York, (1922), pg 22 [http://donna.hrynkiw.net/sca/pelican/index.html].

The second image is from The Hague, Museum Meermanno, MMW, 10 B 25, ca. 1450 [http://physiologus.proab.info/?re=524].

[1] Richard J. Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter, Word Biblical Commentary (1983), p. 180.

[2] First and Second Peter and Jude, Westminster Bible Companion (1995), p. 98.

it's all about the data

2011-08-02T10:13:00.005-04:00

When discussing science & religion, there are two types of people: those for whom historical and anecdotal data can be relevant, and those for whom scientific data are the only data.

Perusing old issues of the American Journal of Physics I ran across some letters to the editor concerning a book review of Ian Barbour's Religion in an Age of Science. First, one physicist complains,

...it seems to me that the basic underpinning of most modern religions is unquestioning acceptance of life-after-death as an absolute truth. But this is in direct conflict with the scientific fact that there is no life after death. (One such proof: human memory is stored in the circuitry of the brain and after death this circuitry completed decomposes.) I fault the reviewer for not telling us how Barbour resolves this fundamental conflict between science and Religion.

Another physicist replies,

Professor [so-and-so] makes a number of mistaken claims. The proposition that the human soul is immortal has been subject to rational demonstration since the time of the ancient Greeks--hardly unquestioning acceptance! Instead, he presents his unquestioning acceptance that human memory is limited to the brain, as a fact. How does he know this? It is his materialistic belief that excludes the possibility of a soul. He eliminates a priori any possibility that his assertions can be tested and so renders any claim to the mantle of "scientific" for his position empty.

One test for his assertion would be: have people come back to life from death? The scriptures contain numerous accounts, even of one after being 4 days dead. Of course these depend on the evidence of witnesses, but so much in life depends on such evidence, even the credibility of physicists themselves.

(The Greeks subjected resurrection to rational demonstration? How did they do that?)

These letters point to two fundamental roadblocks:

First, the materialist discounts anecdotal and historical evidence (i.e., Scriptures) as unscientific and certainly not strong enough to support the existence of resurrection. (Note the common, Bayseyan assumption that the grander the claim, the greater the evidence needed.) Here the second writer shoots himself in the foot by allowing in all anecdotal evidence. Now he's carrying around Joseph Smith's golden tablets. Yet somewhere in there is a valid point: Not all data are scientific data, nor are historical and anecdotal evidence without merit. Those in the humanities can be just as interested in truth and evidence. In fact, the historian of science must sift evidence and is capable of drawing conclusions just as the scientist is.

A good example is the discovery of solitons by naval engineer John Scott Russel in 1834. He observed a wave travel at high speed down a channel for well over a mile without diminishing. This didn't fit the current theories of wave motion, and giants of the day such as George Stokes denied its very existence. Now solitons are established in theory and experiment and may be found many places in nature and engineering, but for long time their basis was only anecdotal. Not all things which exist fit our current theories, or readily admit to observation and measurement.

Second, the materialist would likely reject the idea that he had made any assumption at all in his materialist beliefs, appealing to that great obfuscator, Occam's Razor, by which one counts (weighs?) assumptions when deciding propositions. The materialist might well reply, "I suppose I did make the assumption that the soul doesn't exist. I also assume fairy dust doesn't exist, but you don't fault me for that."

Yet we need not, and should not, feel compelled to throw out scriptural evidence. Rather we have the harder task of sorting and weighing it. The fairy-dust response is only valid if there exists no evidence for God, the resurrection, etc. There does, just not scientific evidence. (See the first point.)

The debate continues for a few years past those letters. A conservative Christian quotes Ezekiel's dry bones passage as if it were God announcing by megaphone that he does engage in resurrection. (Exillic literary context and imagery be damned!) A setback for the non-materialists, unfortunately. The ensuing discussion includes many old saws, the persecution of Galileo by the Catholic Church and the non-overlapping magisteria. And quite a number of letters cheering for materialist reductionism.

Is it possible for these sides to talk to, and not past, one another?

Prophetic ecstasy

2011-07-22T15:38:00.005-04:00

We are being treated to sermons about the Song of Songs this summer at RCRC.

The SoS has long been interpreted allegorically, first by Jewish, then by Christian readers.

Which may seem like a stretch. After all, it's one of the two books of the Bible which doesn't even mention God. In fact, there's nothing in it to suggest it is more than an intimate love song.

The problem with allegorizing is that, while you may illuminate a point of doctrine, you can't create new doctrine. After all, Scripture is inspired--not necessarily your allegory.

A good friend pointed out that the

re has long been a parallel drawn between experience of physical love and interaction with the divine, hence the connotations in "prophetic ecstasy".

This friend also pointed out a prime visualization of this, namely Bernini's statue The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, shown here.

This sculpture--or group of sculptures--is based on this following passage from St. Teresa's Autobiography:

I saw in his hand a long spear of gold, and at the iron's point there seemed to be a little fire. He appeared to me to be thrusting it at times into my heart, and to pierce my very entrails; when he drew it out, he seemed to draw them out also, and to leave me all on fire with a great love of God. The pain was so great, that it made me moan; and yet so surpassing was the sweetness of this excessive pain, that I could not wish to be rid of it. The soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God. The pain is not bodily, but spiritual; though the body has its share in it. It is a caressing of love so sweet which now takes place between the soul and God, that I pray God of His goodness to make him experience it who may think that I am lying.

It is hard not to be entranced by this--and perhaps it makes the allegory of SoS a little more credible.

Broken symmetry

2011-02-19T10:31:00.015-05:00

The most famous goal of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland is detection of the Higgs boson. This particle's existence is wrapped up in a theory called spontaneous symmetry breaking. This concept, first elucidated in the context of condensed matter physics, won Philip Anderson the 1977 Nobel Prize.

Outside the esoteric realm of high-energy physics, it's a surprisingly simple idea. Imagine a round pencil standing on its tip. If the pencil is symmetric, and the table smooth, and there is no breeze, the pencil won't fall. This is a consequence of symmetry: since there is no preferred direction for the pencil to fall in, it can't fall without breaking that symmetry. The symmetry is a reflection of the perfectly balanced forces acting on the pencil--and if they are balanced, the pencil can't fall.

Pencils do fall. Some slight movement of the air, some accretion of microscopic collisions of air molecules with the pencil will be enough to nudge it one direction or another, and the pencil will fall. The original symmetry, demoted, is not completely violated, though. If you stand up a vast number of pencils and measure their directions of fall, all directions will be equally represented. In the parlance of physics, this is now a hidden symmetry. For each pencil it is spontaneously broken by the smallest of imbalances--only to be revealed again en masse.

There are many other examples of spontaneous symmetry breaking in the world around us. Appropriate to the season is the growth of ice crystals on a window pane. The glass may initially seem symmetric, each point on its surface being like any other. Yet the crystals crawl slowly across the glass as if following a topographical map we can't see. Only when 50 or 100 or 1,000 windows are compared does the symmetry, the uniformity, reappear.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus' first sign is to turn gallon upon gallon of water into wine. We know nothing of who was being wed or their circumstances, only that Jesus, who apparently didn't start the day intending to transmute any liquid elements, put on the spot by his mother, gave one of the best wedding gifts ever.

Why Cana? Why this wedding? This was surely a life-changing event for those who witnessed it. John says the purpose of the sign was to reveal Jesus' glory and bring about greater belief on the part of the disciples. But nothing about the couple or Cana or even the date of the event was apparently special. In that sense, there was a symmetry: there was nothing about the date and location of this wedding which would allow you to pick it from another. This symmetry was broken when Mary directed the servants to do what Jesus commanded. Like the falling pencil or the ice crystals, seemingly minor or arbitrary factors changed history.

In theology this is a form of what's called the scandal of particularity. The most common version of this is the question: If God were to save humanity, why through a single man, this man, why in the first century, why Palestine, and so on. Why was Jesus born when and where he was, to Mary and Joseph, and not some other couple? (Or, if you prefer, why were Mary and Joseph living where they were and not somewhere else?) To answer that this fulfills prophecy postpones the question without answering it.

This apparent paradox can undermine belief in a more general way. Why would God hear my prayers when so many others seem to have their prayers unanswered? We are tempted to conclude: my prayers are no different, and God doesn't play favorites, so when it appears a prayer is answered, it must just be coincidence.

When the pencil falls, there's a reason, though it may be submerged at a scale we can't perceive.

Why does God hear my prayers, and not those of someone else? God's varied responses to our pleas apparently break symmetry. What hidden symmetry awaits those with eyes to see?

2011-01-24T13:31:00.032-05:00

The Gregory Peck adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird begins with a childhood song playing while the camera pans a collection of old items--a pen knife, a pocket watch, etc. (if memory serves). Any collection like this calls to mind the scent of your father's shirt while sitting on his lap as a child, or the feel of your mother's hand around your much smaller one.

Each of us received from our parents a box full of things, some precious, some just things we haven't gotten around to throwing out. As we go through life, many of us discard items when we decide they are irrelevant or are tired of carrying them around. An old marble here, a campaign button there.

The box is metaphorical, and more precious to us than any collection of real items. It's our collection of beliefs. For someone raised in the church, it may include things from "Jesus is the Son of God," to "our elders are trustworthy," to "Republicans/Democrats aren't trustworthy."

Most of us start tossing things before we hit our teens. "Santa Claus" gets ejected pretty early. Many a non-discriminating teen-age hand has grabbed all of these, along with God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit, and only kept things like "If you work hard, things work out for you" or "Beautiful people are happier."

Tossing things can be a sad, lonely, even agonizing thing. It can get us kicked out of churches and put a gulf between us and our families. But sometimes it can be a relief.

If you go to seminary, you are likely to ditch quite a number. A good seminary will help you remove things like "Jesus knew everything" and will get you to ask, "Did Jesus feed the 5,000 and the 4,000?" And maybe you'll toss some things out of your box at that point.

Sadly, some seminarians, even some who become professors, throw away little objects labeled "inspiration" or "predictive prophecy" or "reliability of Scripture", leaving "divinity of Christ" feeling somewhat lonely and vulnerable. Peter Enns wrote a book a few years ago in which he systematically catalogs some of the things he's jettisoned (though not in those terms), and encourages other to do the same. He does the community a service by getting them to look at their boxes, though doesn't offer much help keeping these central beliefs. You can imagine him wandering around showing his mostly-empty box to any who will look, all the while chiding them for the things they are still holding onto.

That Jesus did a tremendous amount of box-auditing for his listeners, Pharisees and Sadducees especially, goes without saying. Jesus removed from boxes many beliefs regarding the Sabbath. First-century beliefs about the Messiah? Needed some sifting to say the least.

It also goes without saying that the things in our boxes can become sacred enough to demand their own allegiance. The longer something's in there, the harder it is to distinguish it from the things which must be believed. Caution argues for a minimalist approach. How central to the gospel are all our beliefs? If you can't say with certainty that a belief is biblical, is entailed by the core of the gospel, it should be held lightly.

It also makes you think again about creeds, confessions and ordinances.

What do you keep in your box, and what have you reluctantly, or eagerly, tossed?

How about

Inerrancy of biblical authors in statements not central to the point they are trying to make (i.e., when Jesus teaches in Mt 19 that God created humans male and female, he is making a statement about divorce; can inferences also be made from that passage about same-sex marriage?)
Limited atonement (Christ's sacrifice applies only to the elect)--people keep trying to put this one into my box!
Jesus was sinless but that doesn't mean he never got halfway to work and realized he'd left his keys at home (...and what does "perfect" mean in Mt 5:48, Col 1:28 and Hebrews, anyway?)
God has one path in mind for each of us in this life...
...and it's possible to walk off this path when we sin, as the younger brother did in the Prodigal Son
God, who loves to give us good gifts, would be happier if more of us were speaking in tongues, prophesying, etc., so long as we did it in the spirit of love and service to the Body
There was a literal Adam (Wheaton grads cheer or wince!)
You can't do right before God--but you can be a conduit for his righteousness

This doesn't even get into worship styles or beliefs about creation.

I'm not saying which of these is in my box, and I've purposely made these a little imprecise. You'll also note that the things in this list--as in most of our boxes--ranges from minor to foundational. All sorts of things end up in there.

What would you add? What have you removed from your box that you wish others would too?

‘Pay attention to what you hear; the measure you give will be the measure you get, and still more will be given you. ²⁵For to those who have, more will be given; and from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.’
(Mk 4:24-25)

is salvation hard? (is grace easy?)

2011-01-03T15:07:00.019-05:00

"Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able." [Luke 13:24]

In this is the passage Jesus warns those he lived and worked among that they weren't saved by proximity. Many take it to mean salvation shouldn't be taken for granted, and in some sense isn't easy. This passage isn't unique. As we read in 1 Peter 4:15,

If it is hard for the righteous to be saved,
what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?

Or 1 Tim 4:16,

Watch both your life and doctrine closely. Persevere in them, because if you do, you will save both yourself and your hearers.

The idea that salvation is difficult (which we work out with fear and trembling--Php 2:12) is a central, often unspoken tenet in much of the church. Which middle-class American can read of the camel and the eye of the needle in Luke 18 without feeling ill at ease?

Following Jesus is difficult. But what aspect is difficult? Belief? Forsaking money? Purity and holiness? Self-denial? Not compromising under pressure or persecution? All of the above?

In the subconscious of many Christians this logic occurs:

1) Salvation is difficult
2) Following Christ requires [insert requirement here]
3) Therefore [requirement] must be hard

Jesus said salvation is difficult; he didn't say that all aspects of the Christian life must be difficult. Our expectation can lead the any requirement in (2) and (3) to become difficult. Belief? Must be hard, or we've substituted a false, easier gospel. Not compromising? If it's not tough, we must be blending in. Forsaking money and possessions? If you've gotten used to tithing, then you are clearing not giving enough--not giving your "widow's mite." Self denial? If you ever become comfortable you clearly are in danger of stagnating. [*]

What do you find hardest in the Christian life? This may be your personal cross to bear. Just maybe, though, this is what you've decided discipleship entails, and therefore must be difficult. In other words, your point of greatest discomfort may reveal your answer to the question, What must I do to be saved?

Let's not forget, though, that Jesus tempered his warning with consolation. Gary DeLashmutt writes about the parable of the Good Samaritan,

[Jesus’ main point] is not that we should help people who break down on the freeway, but that the lawyer does not keep God’s Law, and therefore he does not qualify for inheriting eternal life.

This is why Jesus taught two ways to go to heaven. Sometimes, he taught that eternal life was a free gift from God to be received by simple faith (Jn 3:16; 6:29; etc.). Sometimes, he taught that you have to earn your way to heaven by doing good works. He didn’t embrace two contradictory soteriologies—he spoke to two different kinds of people.

Whenever Jesus teaches the “earn your way” approach, it’s always to people who think they can (Mt 5:17-48; Mk 10:17-22; this lawyer). And it’s always so they’ll realize they can’t earn it and humble themselves to receive it as a free gift…

Whenever he teaches the “free gift” approach, it’s always to people who realize they can’t earn it (Samaritan woman; etc.). There is no need to convince them of this, so he goes straight to the good news.

We disregard Jesus' warnings at our own peril--but we also carry many more burdens than necessary. Next time we head to church, we should ask whether we truly feel that his yoke is easy and burden is light. Do we forever feel behind the curve, forever longing for rest for our souls? Maybe the Holy Spirit is convicting us of a sin we need to address, or trying to purge us of legalism. Or maybe we need to hear again one of the most serene benedictions ever to grace parchment:

May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it. (1 Thess 5:23-24 )

* * *

Photograph: Amy Collins; The church of Simon of Cyrene, along the Via Dolorosa

[*] This attitude can also infect our reading of Scripture: We read a passage, and look for the interpretation which makes life hardest.

Shame, shame, shame

2010-12-10T12:12:00.014-05:00

On April 12, 1865, the Confederate army under General Lee surrendered to the union forces at Appomattox courthouse. Only days before the armies had been in pitched battle, and were exhausted and dirty. As Michael Schuck puts it, "The potential for humiliation was almost intolerable for the Confederates, and the opportunity for venting pent-up rage and ridicule was almost irresistible for the union."

Union Commander Joshua Chamberlain (above) was given the task of receiving the surrendering army. It was in this tense moment that Chamberlain gave the order for his troops to salute their enemies, a salute returned by the Confederate soldiers. As Chamberlain later recalled, his salute was

one for which I sought no authority nor asked forgiveness... Before us in proud humiliation... stood the embodiment of manhood... Men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now thin, worn, famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond.[1]

It is impossible to read this without feeling keenly the honor and shame which hung thick in the air--shame at the Confederate defeat, and honor bestowed in the salute to enemies who had fought valiantly.

The concepts of honor and shame do not play a large role in our culture. They are most visible in the military context, but elsewhere feel foreign. Sociologists have long noted that cultures tend to fall into two categories: those with an emphasis on honor and shame, and those with emphasis on guilt and innocence. In guilt-innocence cultures, conscience plays an important role in determining individual action. In honor-shame cultures a high value is placed on retention of one's good reputation, and that of one's family (city, country, etc.). Guilt tends to be a more internal motivation than shame, and shame more dependent on the actions and attitudes of the group. "Shame cultures" differ from "guilt cultures" in that their members are group-oriented and governed in their attitudes and actions primarily by the opinion and appraisals of significant others.

Of course, there is really a continuum of emphasis between these two extremes, with the West lying far in the guilt-innocence direction, and Eastern and near-Eastern cultures generally occupying the shame-honor end of the spectrum. In the first century, both Roman and Jewish cultures placed a very high priority on honor, shame and status.

Rising out of Jewish culture and, for the NT, surrounded by Greco-Roman culture, the Bible also has a central theme of honor and shame. This is a topic introduced beautifully in a chapter of Timothy Tennent's book, Theology in the Context of World Christianity (320 pp., $11.99, Zondervan, 2007): In the OT, in the Garden of Eden Adam and Eve feel shame at their disobedience; the Psalmists regularly call on God to shame their enemies (40:14-15; 78:66); God shames pagan deities (e.g. 1 Sam 5:3-4); Zion's future glory is described in the language of honor and shame ("Do not be afraid; you will not suffer shame…", Isa 54:5); the shame associated with nakedness (Gen 37:3).

In the Gospels, the dishonest manager is too ashamed to beg; Jesus instructs his disciples not to take places of honor lest they be demoted and suffer shame; etc. Both father and younger son suffer shame in the Prodigal Son and yet the father's forgiveness restores the son's honor. In fact, the wording does not indicate the older son is angered by the father's forgiveness, but because the younger brother is shown honor despite having brought shame on the family. Another passage in which the honor-shame dynamic is central is Jesus' parable of the two sons asked by their father to work in the vineyard, one of whom refused, but then worked anyway. Westerners tend to overlook the tension added by the refusal, which publicly shames the father. In the culture of Jesus' day, it was better not to shame the father, even at the cost of not doing the work.

Paul's letters also show the importance of honor and shame. In 1 Cor, for instance, Paul describes God's use of the foolish things of this world in order to shame the strong. An awareness of this theme sheds light on Col 2:15, which describes how, "At the very hour of Jesus' public shame on the cross, he was actually in the process of shaming his enemies, disarming the powers and authorities and making 'a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.'" Paul reverses the shame of the cross, both in Jesus' life and his followers, declaring that "before God we are actually being 'led in triumphal procession in Christ' (2 Cor 2:14), and what appears to be the 'smell of death' is actually the 'fragrance of life' (2 Cor 2:16)." The NT demonstrates in various places that the resurrection is not just about guilt and innocence. Jesus "endured the cross, scorning its shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God" (Heb 12:2). Satan was publicly shamed by Christ when Jesus "disarmed the powers and authorities" and "made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross" (Col 2:15). "Through the resurrection, we who were the bearers of guilt and shame are now declared to be the recipients of justification and honor" (Tennent, 91). The honor-shame dynamic adds a crucial dimension to Christ's public, shameful atoning death: Not only does the crucifixion relieve us of guilt, it removes our shame.

Tennent points out that since the honor-shame perspective of first-century Palestine resonates much more with modern Eastern culture than it does with ours, we are in a position to learn from Christians in Eastern and near-Eastern cultures. I am sure that for many readers of the Bible the honor-shame perspective is old-hat. Kenneth Bailey opened that door for us many years ago. Yet Tennent's chapter does a good job of not only pointing out where these concepts can inform our exegesis but how they influence our theology. I don't typically review books--and I am really just reviewing a single chapter--but I can heartily recommend it. Just the discussion of the influence on the atonement is enough to stimulate thought for a long time.

Just as interesting is Jesus' view of the honor-centricity of his own culture. He condemns the Pharisees for their love of honor (e.g. Lk 11:43). And he tells the parable of the friend at midnight to drive home an attitude of shamelessness (anaideia) in prayer. To embrace Jesus' teaching is not merely to put on the mindset of near-eastern shame and honor, but to think about where our honor ought to come from, and to seek not our own honor, but that of our Lord.

Western culture is certainly a long way from the honor-shame end of the spectrum. Yet, though we don't always think in those terms, these concepts are present and active in our lives. How much pride do you have in your employer, or church or country? The less pride we have in these, the worse we feel about ourselves and the more we are in need of a reminder that Christ's death on the cross takes away our shame, by making us part of a new organization, imbued with the honor of our savior.

Also, in our culture, there is an attrition of status and honor as one moves past middle age into retirement. We shed vocational responsibilities. We are tapped less often to participate at church. Our networks of acquaintances shrink, and with them the honor we associate with our social group. We may not think in terms of honor and shame, but we feel acutely the loss of status and respect, often without a real understanding of why. Many of us will die the death of a thousand tiny insults, leaving us carrying a shame we can't even name.

How important to recognize this aspect of cross. And what truly good news that our honor is in the Lord!

* * *

[1] This introduction follows that used by John H. Elliot in his paper, "Disgraced Yet Graced: 1 Peter in the Key of Honor and Shame," Biblical Theology Bulletin, 24 (1995), 166-178.

Religous mysteries

2010-09-08T15:28:00.006-04:00

Tim Crane has written a very insightful essay on the differences between science and religion for the NYT.

Which isn't to say it's right. Let me amend that: Phenomenologically, he's probably right about the appeal of religion to the majority of believers.

One gets the impression he has yet to speak to someone who has made an intelligent case for the historical claims of the faith. It would likely change his view to read N. T. Wright's excellent essay "Can a Scientist Believe in the Resurrection?"

This should be our mission: To model a belief in which faith is based on evidence, and which provides a coherent framework for understanding the body of evidence around us (to adapt a phrase from Deb Haarsma). A faith in which hypotheses are not, as Crane puts it,

...ad hoc, ...arbitrary, [and] ...rarely make predictions and when they do they almost never come true.

We need to model and speak of a faith which does a *better* job of explaining the universe than atheism.

If we fail, we are consigned forever to hear this appalling conclusion: "The religious attitude... does not seek to minimize mystery. Mysteries are accepted as a consequence of what, for the religious, makes the world meaningful."

Paul uses the Greek mysterion to mean something now revealed. Christianity distinguished itself from the mystery religions of its day by eschewing secret knowledge. The Father of Jesus is not the inscrutable God of Islam--He reveals himself in his Son by design, and wants all to know Him and his truth.

The Christian knows there are times when one must simply trust. But the goal of our faith is not eternally blind, ignorant trust, but complete knowledge of the Father (cf. Jn 14, and in fact the theme of knowledge, light and darkness running through Jn).

I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master's business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. (Jn 15:15)

In our culture, ironically, this is the secret knowledge--that ours is a faith of reason and truth, not mystery. This is the gospel we must spread: that our belief in Jesus as Lord isn't our accepting or even embracing mystery in order to enjoy what Crane calls the "meaning or significance in things,... the mystery of God’s presence." We are Christians first and foremost because we believe the Gospel is true.

Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.

C. S. Lewis

a rose by blah blah blah

2010-07-28T09:55:00.012-04:00

I have realized that, since no one reads this blog (sorry! if you are reading this you must not exist), we have a tremendous amount of freedom in what we post.

("We" because I am not the only one who's posted here. Fun Quiz! See if you can find the other contributor!)

And having just posted someone else's humor (but don't miss the serious post that preceded it on science and faith!), I might as well include a quick note certain to stimulate comments among you nonexistent readers.

It's an established psychological phenomenon that people tend to choose professions that match their names, at least when the names have natural associations.

So, for instance, my wife once visited a hand specialist named Dr. Mitten. And my friend the psychology professor says one of the better researchers in his field is Sam Gosling, who does work on animal personalities.

Today I ran across a good one: The plenary speaker at a stewardship conference my sister's attending this summer, The Rev. Bob Honeychurch.

Gotta love it! His fate was sealed. Sad only that he's an Episcalopian rather than a televangelist.

He looks like a pastor, too.

I need to rename my son "Christopher Christian Faithful Collins." Might ensure his continued belief.

What are the best name-profession pairings you've found? Discuss.

[Btw, the photo's not Honeychurch, but rather the Rev. Dudley Tyng.]

I Spy in Hell

2010-07-24T21:59:00.004-04:00

We don't usually indulge in humor in this blog. However: The following is from McSweeney's, a quirky, experimental literary web site...

"I Spy" in Hell.

BY ADRIAN CHEN

(First published March 18, 2008)

- - - -

BEAST: I spy with my little eye, something ... red.

FALSE PROPHET: Let's see ... is it the lake of fire and brimstone?

BEAST: Yes.

- - - -

BEAST: I spy with my little eye, something ... red.

FALSE PROPHET: Is it the lake of fire?

BEAST: No.

FALSE PROPHET: Is it my shirt?

BEAST: No.

FALSE PROPHET: Wow, this one's hard.

BEAST: Oh, wait. It actually was the lake of fire.

- - - -

BEAST: I spy with my little eye, something ... red.

FALSE PROPHET: The lake of fire!

BEAST: No.

FALSE PROPHET: The fire in your hair?

BEAST: No.

FALSE PROPHET: The fire burning your eyeballs?

BEAST: No.

FALSE PROPHET: The fire burning my eyeballs?

BEAST: No.

FALSE PROPHET: Jeez, I give up.

BEAST: It's fire.

FALSE PROPHET: Like fire in general?

BEAST: Yeah. Just ... all the fire, everywhere.

FALSE PROPHET: Oh. Good one.

- - - -

BEAST: I spy with my little eye, something ... orange.

FALSE PROPHET: Orange?

BEAST: Yes, orange.

FALSE PROPHET: Is it an orange?

BEAST: No.

FALSE PROPHET: The lake of fire?

BEAST: Close, but no.

FALSE PROPHET: Is it just the orange part of the lake of fire?

BEAST: Yes.

FALSE PROPHET: !!!

The helplessness of discovery

2010-07-23T15:54:00.015-04:00

This week I spent several days in California at one of the nation's largest laboratories, home to many of the nation's finest scientists. Among them is Marty, who, despite his youth, is well known in the field as co-author and keeper of a hydrodynamics code which defines the state of the art. While having lunch together the conversation moved to avocations, and I mentioned my love of Bible study. It turns out Marty is a believer (a Catholic), and we had a pleasant chat about the reactions many have to believing scientists.

As Marty put it, he sees his work and his faith as orthogonal--working in different dimensions--so there isn't really a question of one contradicting the other. By this, I think he means in part that the question of his faith doesn't impact his work directly, nor does his scientific work either undermine or support his belief in the God of the Bible.

Variants of this point of view go back as far as Francis Bacon, who lived around the time of Newton and is credited as the father of the philosophy of science. His was the "two-book" theory in which we seek revelation from "both the book of nature" (science) and the "book of God" (the Bible and revelation).

At this, throngs of reasonable intelligent thinkers have nodded sagely. Compromise! What could be better? Sadly, down this road is a trap: During the Enlightenment the two-book view evolved into what has come to be called pejoratively the God of the Gaps--that we look to the book of God only to explain that which the book of nature can't. This has the unfortunate effect of relegating God to living on our islands of ignorance. To this Bonhoeffer responded,

We are to find God in what we know, not in what we don't know; God wants us to realize his presence, not in unsolved problems but in those that are solved.

Rather than being content by science and nature in the same room, not talking, let's consider their commonalities. While there are many differences, there is much to be learned by seeing both as ways to learn about the universe, using different data and different tools. This naturally brings us to epistemology, the study of how we come to learn and know things.

Two of the greatest minds of physics, Newton and Einstein, had much to say about epistemology science. Newton envisioned the scientist as impassively observing the world, gathering data with a blank slate, and from these data objectively deducing natural laws. But even as he put forth this paradigm, Newton was aware that it left out the role of the scientist. Newton may have deduced the laws of motion, but to do so he brought the concepts of space and time. (However, due to the success of his physical theories, no one noticed his reservations about his own epistemology of science.) Kant developed this objection further, arguing strongly that scientific theory can't be separated from the influence of the observer.

Now jump forward to Einstein. He realized, and articulated, that in a real sense, the scientist does not merely deduce physical theory from data. He or she may like to think of it like that, but the practice is very different: When tackling a problem of any substance, a scientist will study the data, and then wait for inspiration to strike. As E. M. Colyer put it, quoting Einstein,

While actively engaged in the process of inquiry, the knower in another sense is, in Einstein’s own words, ‘helpless… until principles he can make the basis of deductive reasoning have revealed themselves to him’ [1]

This is precisely what I have observed in the laboratory where I do research. Imagine a brainstorming session of half a dozen scientists trying to make sense of some data. They toss around ideas, turning them over and examining them, describing them to one another. At some point, all fall silent. Each is mulling, concentrating, hoping and trying to be the one who has the flash of insight which makes sense of the data. If all goes well, one of them does have a problem-solving insight, and the work is done.

Fascinatingly, the person who has the insight typically behaves as if it were the result of hard work, sweat of the brow and so forth--when in fact, just as Einstein observed, the hard work was all in preparing the soil; the actual moment of inspiration was a moment not of deduction but of helpless waiting. And Einstein, who spent years waiting for crucial insights never new to the mind of mankind, knew better than most what that helplessness was like.

Scientific learning--really, all learning--is much better characterized by inspiration than deduction. As Einstein also observed, it is usually after the inspiration that we work backwards to construct a deductive chain supporting our insight, covering our epistemological tracks, so to speak. Psychologists have spent a great deal of time examining this process. They refer to the waiting for inspiration as the "incubation" period, and it's experienced not just by Newtons and Einsteins, but by all people, scientist and non-scientist alike.

There is much more to be said here; these are deep waters. To the scientist it cautions humility. We may fail to realize it, but we are dependent on inspiration rather than brute-force reasoning for the insights we crave.

For the believing non-scientist, there are also lessons. Though we typically recognize the role of inspiration in spirituality, we often short-change the period of immersing ourselves in our subjects. In praying for someone, think long and hard about that person first--and then see what inspiration comes. When studying the Bible, avoid the verse-a-day-for-inspiration method like the plague; incubation follows most reliably when we live in the context and world of the passage. Reformed theologian T. F. Torrance, who developed what he called scientific theology, took this a step further and emphasized reading Scripture within the sweep of the narrative of salvation history. To read the Bible atomistically would be like formulating a scientific theory while only considering some of the facts.

This way of reading Scripture finds itself most at home with Jesus' favorite method of teaching: the parable. Parables step aside from deduction and invite immersion in the story, however long or short. It is in this immersion that we open ourselves most fully to the work of the Holy Spirit.

[1] How to Read T. F. Torrance (IVP: Downers Grove), 2001.
[The cartoon is Copyright 2006 by Sidney Harris.]

Desert Fathers Pt. 1

2010-03-15T11:33:00.011-04:00

A Christian History article listing the author's favorite top-five books on desert spirituality pointed towards a really fun two-volume set called Barsanuphius and John of Gaza: Letters. The desert Fathers were monks in the 3rd+ cent. who sought God and holiness through separation from the world and asceticism. Their struggles were against demons, against their own pride, worldliness and temptation. They gained a reputation in part due to the biography of one of their greatest monks, St. Anthony, written by none other than Athanasius, the man whose tireless struggle in the fourth century preserved orthodox belief about the divinity and humanity of Christ.

These are people whose spirituality, completely foreign to Westerners, captures the imagination. A favorite account shared with me by my friend Dean Johnson reads,

Abba Lot came to Abba Joseph and said: Father, according as I am able, I keep my little rule, and my little fast, my prayer, meditation and contemplative silence; and, according as I am able, I strive to cleanse my heart of thoughts: now what more should I do? The elder rose up in reply and stretched out his hands to heaven, and his fingers became like ten lamps of fire. He said: Why not be changed into fire? [1]

Ah. So helpful! Another favorite example is Simeon Stylites, who is famous for living for 39 years on a platform on top of a pillar.

Simeon and Lot both show a characteristic problem with reading the desert fathers: The direction of their spirituality was so foreign to ours that their accomplishments, while at times amazing, tend to feel irrelevant.

Which is why the books of letters from Barsanuphius and John are so interesting. These two were monks in the desert of Gaza in the 6th century. They were regarded as holy men and spiritual authorities, and many people sought advice from them. Their responses are a sort of Frequently Asked Questions list on desert spirituality and asceticism. Here you see more than their cryptic advice and sayings—you get practical advice to an array of every-day questions.

For instance, one young brother asked the "Great Old Man" (as Barsanuphius was called) to guide him in talking to a fellow monk. The monk had asked the young brother about his thoughts, and he had responded in riddles, later wondering if he had acted correctly. The Great Old Man's reply was,

As for questioning in riddles, it is self-serving, lacking in discernment, and this person needs many prayers.

Score one for the riddled monk, and for common sense!

In a response to a monk who is discouraged because he can't stop thinking about sex, and wonders if maybe he just doesn't have what it takes to be a monk, Barsanuphius writes,

We hear that 'our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against rulers and against the authorities.' Until now, you have not struggled against sin tot he point of blood. Does the spirit of listlessness, then, already paralyze you? ...Ah, sleepy monk! Show the devil that you live for God, taking refuge in him, moving with hands and feet, swimming in the onslaught of the intellectual waves, which rise to the heavens and drop to the abyss. God is my witness, that my heart has been unfolded with you...

The compassion in this response is palpable. It also shows the spiritual context in which these monks lived: If you strip away the trappings of life--books, clothes, job advancement, (probably) good food, home--then maybe it makes it all the easier to see the demonic beings which resist our drawing nearer to God. Another letter to Barsanuphius has the request, "Please teach me how to reach abstinence [from food] and how to distinguish between natural and demonic weakness." He replies,

...if your body can accept daily food and is still slack, then this comes from demons; otherwise it is from the [fasting] itself.

Again, practical! (Though I might add "depressed about living in the desert" or even "common cold" to the list of possible explanations.) While I am not ready quite yet to yield to such a demon-crowded world view, I am open to the idea that the desert fathers knew something I don't about the spiritual world, and that their very different perspective allowed them to see things invisible to me.

From a Western perspective we wonder why they would pursue asceticism, and give up God's good gifts? Why they would separate themselves from the world, and thus cut themselves off from all the good they can do, the witness they can provide. Why they would spend so much energy scrutinizing each thought and emotion, when sometimes it's better to serve than to think. Why spend so much time looking for demons, rather than Jesus?

For their part they would ask us, Why are we holding so tightly to our worldly goods and pursuits, and trying to climb through the needle's eye? Doesn't it say in 1 Jn 2:15, "Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him"? And didn't Paul tell us to "take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ" (2 Cor 10:15)? And didn't he also tell us that "our struggle is not against flesh and blood" (Eph 6:15)?

It helps me remember than two hundred years from now, my career, my house, my accomplishments, will be forgotten, and to admire the courage it must have taken for them to give away all of these things to draw closer to Jesus.

My reading has also taken me into perhaps one enduring gift of the desert communities, the Jesus Prayer. Frederica Matthewes-Green has written a brief and highly accessible introduction to the Prayer half of which is a list of frequently asked questions. What better way to connect with the desert fathers than with this ancient meditation? 'Tis the season.

And now, it's time for me to discern whether my hunger and slackness are due to demons, or impending lunchtime...

* * *

[Image: Michelangelo's The Torment of Saint Anthony, c. 1487-88.]
[1] The Wisdom of the Desert: Sayings from the Desert Fathers of the Fourth Century, Thomas Merton, New Directions Books, Norfolk, CT, 1960, p. 50.

Groupthink

2010-02-08T16:15:00.022-05:00

I put a lot of mental energy into spiritual growth, and not nearly as much actual time and effort. In any day when I don't spent time studying Scripture, I at least feel guilty about it.

This is the sort of admission that would make the spiritual greats of history wince. I don't think I am unusual in this.

What do you do for spiritual growth? If a younger Christian asked you for thirty seconds of advice on spiritual growth, what would you say?

Get into a church, and get involved. Read your Bible and pray every day.

After that, it may start to sound a like a Lenten vow or a retreat at a local monastery: Meditate. Journal. Maybe do Compline every night, or practice the Jesus Prayer? Or get into a prayer partnership, or join a small group?

John Stott answered this question in an article where he was talking about "sowing to the Spirit" (in reference to Gal 6:8):

"...daily prayer, and meditation on the Scriptures, ... reading Christian books, making Christian friends, and getting engaged in Christian service."

Richard Foster, in Celebration of Discipline, lists meditation, prayer, fasting and study ("inward disciplines"), simplicity, solitude, submission and service ("outward disciplines"), and confession, worship, guidance and celebration ("corporate disciplines"). Dallas Willard, in his Spirit of the Disciplines has an even longer list: solitude, silence, fasting, frugality, chastity, secrecy, sacrifice ("disciplines of abstinence") and study, worship, celebration, service, prayer, fellowship, confession, submission ("disciplines of engagement").

Do you also find these lists a little daunting? Like it would take all your free time just to maintain a spreadsheet of which disciplines you haven't gotten around to recently?

A very different approach can be found in Ephesians 4. Ephesians is all about God's bringing all things into unity under his Son, the primary example of this in Ephesians is the nascent unity between Jew and Gentile. Knowing the history of conflict and enmity between the two groups, Paul finds this oneness of purpose and faith nothing short of miraculous, a harbinger of the downfall of Satan himself (3:10). Think of a church where Israeli and Palestinians converts worship side by side in love and affection, and you get the idea.

In this treatise on the supernatural unity of the Holy Spirit, we read:

I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, ²with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, ³making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace... 7 But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift... ¹¹The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, ¹²to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, ¹³until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. ¹⁴We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. ¹⁵But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, ¹⁶from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love. [4:1-3,7,11-16]

Right in the center of a passage urging unity of spirit and purpose we find an unlikely reference to sanctification. Paul promises nothing less than "the full stature of Christ", and such discernment as to give stability in the midst of subtly deceptive teaching. And the road to maturity--in a sense, Paul's list like those of Stott, Willard and Foster above--is to work together in ministry. How do you grow spiritually? Find a way to use your gifts in community, and preferably in a community which represents the diversity we expect to see in the next life, and work towards in this one. Paul warns this will take love and patience and truth, and genuine effort, enough so that he begs the Ephesians to put everything into this pursuit.

Two observations:

This is ultimately a process done in community.[1] This is not to say that Foster or Willard are wrong to recommend solitary practices; but if we are serious about spiritual growth, we must do it with other Christians. In our culture, where it is much more acceptable to be "spiritual" rather than "religious," attaching yourself to a church is about as popular as being a single adult living with your parents. Paul doesn't give you the luxury of waiting until you find a church you can really show off to your friends. If you want to grow spiritually, you do it by striving with other believers, with all their faults and foibles.
Paul tells the recipients of this letter to use their gifts "for the work of ministry." Spiritual growth is a byproduct here of pursuing God's kingdom. Spiritual "muscles" aren't like those a bodybuilder gets in the gym; they are like the muscles you get working in the fields with the other laborers.

These are difficult truths. It can be hard for us to imagine ourselves being more Christ-like in a year or ten. How much harder, then, to envision to the sanctification of the whole community? When I think of the people in my church, I get the feeling sanctification isn't necessarily high on their list for some. What do I do with them? Do I just engage in ministry and grow alongside those others who do the same, forgetting about those who stayed home? It's not so tough to imagine and pray for the sanctification of the type-A members of the church, but Paul doesn't make such a distinction.

Maybe this is what the forty years in the desert were like. If Moses or Joshua could have mustered their crack team of the highly motivated, they could have stormed Canaan, cutting the trip by half. But God's people had to travel together, both the Calebs and the less motivated stragglers. They were dependent on God for their survival and salvation, but also were forced to work together. In a sense, they even had it easier than we do: The signs of God's presence were very physical, including the pillars of smoke and fire and manna from heaven. Also, it wasn't an option for them to stay put and go to sleep in the desert, or shuffle at a snail's pace, pretending it counted as travel. Happily, there were no Sunday-morning soccer matches in the desert to compete for their attention.

This is where we point out the many benefits of new-covenant life. They had a pillar of fire; we have the indwelling Spirit of the Living God, the Ancient of Days, who desires to conform us to the image of Jesus Christ. The wandering people of God would have glad to hear Paul say,

But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers loved by the Lord, because from the beginning God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth. (2 Thess 2:13)

For all that, though, we also have bills to pay, kids to raise, and a roiling sea of distractions. The sad truth is that there will always be those among us who are indifferent to God's will for us and even some who choose, out of plain stubbornness, to quench the Spirit. Jesus' parable of the sower is fair warning of this. It's as if some in the desert had just wanted to sit down and give up, or pitch tents in the hot sun and forsake Canaan. The hard job of the family of believers is to love and cajole and encourage them. It's an exhausting thought, but as Jesus is patient with us, we must be the same.

On the bright side, this time around the earth generally doesn't open its mouth and swallow any of us up. That's some comfort, at least.

* * *

[1] This isn't of course the only passage on sanctification or spiritual growth. If by contrast you read only Jn 8:23-32, for instance, you will come away believing spiritual growth is all about immersion in Jesus' teachings. Given the themes of the letter, it's no surprise that Ephesians presents the communal aspect of sanctification. But that fact shouldn't lead us to de-emphasize this passage, as if the author were over-stating his case. Western believers are so inclined towards individualism that this is precisely the emphasis we need to hear.

Addendum:

Q: Do adult Christians need to put energy into pursuit of spiritual growth, or is that just for the overachievers of the church? I went through a dozen years of Sunday school growing up, I attend church, and a few years ago I was in that Bible study--you remember. Isn't that enough?

A: Several passages in the NT indicate that spiritual growth is meant to be central for believers. 2 Peter 2:18 commands the reader to "grow in the grace and knowledge of the Lord"; in Col 1:10 the author prays for the readers to "grow in the knowledge of God," leading to patience and joy and "bearing fruit in every good work." In Hebrews we read that "anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil"--and the author goes on "leave behind the elementary teachings about Christ..." (5:13-6:2). Almost every one of Paul's letters includes a healthy dose of paraenesis, or teaching about holy living. Is this just for the young Christians of the early church? Two reasons not to think so: (1) The second-generation church addressed by the pastorals is cut from the same cloth; and (2) Paul's famous autobiographical passage in Romans 7-8 describing his struggle with sanctification assumes as a backdrop that an apostle whom all would consider a "mature" believer nevertheless grapples with spiritual growth.

Faith to save but not to change?

2010-01-07T09:10:00.009-05:00

Hank is 18, a senior in college, and hoping to move east and enter the Maine Maritime Academy. Years of reading about the sea make him want to follow in the footsteps of his merchant-marine grandfather, but there's one problem: Hank needs to pass the lifesaving test. He knows how to swim, but Hank's always focused more on the elements of sailing which are above the water level and doesn't have the experience he needs.

So you can imagine how excited Hank is when he hears about Mr. Wilkins, who advertises that in six weeks he could guarantee Hank (or anyone else) would pass the test. Hank meets with him, and expresses his reservations:

"Are you sure after six weeks I'll pass the test?" asks Hank.

"Just show up each day for half an hour, and I guarantee you'll be a first-class life guard and swimmer. Put some effort in, and you'll feel at home even in rough waters," says Mr. Wilkins.

At Hank's dubious look, Mr. Wilkins adds, "The goal isn't just passing the test--you'll go way beyond that if you just show up each day for instruction. Most of my students become outstanding swimmers, and many are now in the Coast Guard."

"But you're sure I'll pass the test?" asks a worried Hank.

"Of course--just show up and do what I say," comes the exasperated reply.

Most of us have dark moments when we fear death. No matter what we believe, there are times when we lie awake and wonder if it's all true. How will it end? And once we breath our last, will we meet God, or will our thoughts and feelings come to an end forever?

Similarly, no matter how much we believe in grace, most of us get a chill when we read the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25:31-46. This is the passage where Jesus says to the goats, "I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, a stranger and you did not invite me in", etc. Barbara Brown Taylor's experience is common to many of us:

So when I hear a story like this one I review my list. First I read it over very carefully and note that I need at least one hungry person, one thirsty one, one stranger, one naked person, one sick person, and one prisoner so that I can supply—in that order—food, drink, a warm welcome, some clothes, a hospital visit, and a prison visit. Then, presumably, I will have satisfied all the requirements for ending up with the sheep instead of the goats. Now isn't that absurd?

As Keith Green helpfully pointed out, "the only difference between the sheep and the goats, according to this scripture, is what they did, and didn't do." This passage could not be more blunt. It teaches many things, but at its core, it tells us that Jesus will judge on the basis of actions.

At this point it would be easy to go down the path of faith v. works, but we've been down this road before. Paul and James agree:

"The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love" (Gal 5:6b)

and

"In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead" (James 2:17).

Generally at this point we nod and acknowledge that any true faith will by necessity entail good works of the sort Jesus mentions. As Paul also says,

"Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life." (Gal 6:7)

Well, then, this is the consistent message of the NT: when we stand before the throne of judgment, the test of true faith will be seen in whether we truly chose to follow Jesus. We need not draw a line to determine how many righteous works will save us; they won't. But true saving faith will produce those actions as sure as day follows from night.

It's no wonder we don't always sleep well. Many of us have frown creases on our foreheads due specifically to holding "there is therefore no condemnation" (Rom 8:1) in our minds along with the Sheep and the Goats.

There is a tonic for this.

A casual look at the grand sweep of Old Testament history shows us that God demanded righteousness from his people, and they managed it about as well as the peacetime Ulysses Grant stayed away from the bottle. From this standpoint Israel's story looks much like the Garden: given God's abundance and told to do what was right, time and again they chose evil. Finally God sends his Son, as if he's tried every other method and in frustration is forced to do what he didn't want to in the first place.

What OT history also tells us is that God always intended to create for himself a people bearing his righteousness. It may not have been the method we would have chosen, but it's God's goal, and he will accomplish it in his time. As Isaiah says (45:23-25),

By myself I have sworn,
my mouth has uttered in all integrity
a word that will not be revoked:
Before me every knee will bow;
by me every tongue will swear.

They will say of me, `In the LORD alone
are righteousness and strength.' "
All who have raged against him
will come to him and be put to shame.

But in the LORD all the descendants of Israel
will be found righteous and will exult.

Or even more strongly in 60:20-21,

Your sun will never set again,
and your moon will wane no more;
the LORD will be your everlasting light,
and your days of sorrow will end.

Then will all your people be righteous
and they will possess the land forever.
They are the shoot I have planted,
the work of my hands,
for the display of my splendor.

Is this just for the next life? In Ezekiel (11:19-20), when talking about return from exile, God says

I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them; I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. Then they will follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

He speaks here of his new covenant, when God says,

I will put my law in their minds
and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
and they will be my people. (Jer 31:33)

This is the covenant we celebrate every time we share the Lord's Supper.

Now look to the New Testament. John writes in 1:12-13,

Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God--children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.

Unlike in modern Western culture, in ancient times the son most often did what the father did, and the daughter the mother. So the son of a cobbler made shoes; and the child of God does what God does--and bears his righteousness. We don't often read this as a statement of sanctification, but that's just what it is. So Paul writes in 1 Thess 4:2a, "It is God's will that you should be sanctified"--and later adds

May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it. (1 Thess 5:23-24)

Despite this--despite Paul's assertions that we are "being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory" (2 Cor 3:18), we often forget that we are part of God's plan from the beginning to make a righteous people for himself, a plan he intends to succeed. Ever wonder why Jesus, the man best acquainted with God's amazing grace, can speak so easily of the angels separating "the wicked from the righteous" (Mt 13:49--in many ways parallel to the Sheep and the Goats)? Not because in the end it all comes down to God sparing those who somehow manage to have a good enough Sunday-school attendance record and give enough to the poor. But because if we sow to the Spirit, God will bring about his righteousness in us.

As a community of faith, we can be a lot like Hank. We concentrate on passing the test, and fail to notice the wonderful things God will teach us and do in us. Like a husband who forever obsesses about the glorious moment when his wife agreed to marry him, we don't enjoy what the Spirit is working in us even now. Our righteousness is not merely some imputed thing which appears in God's ledger and saves us from eternal suffering as if by mere legal action. As much as we are willing to bathe ourselves in God's Word and little by little give him our time and priorities, we will find him creating in us a righteousness which transforms our very character.

That's the tonic for Sheep-and-Goats heartburn. God is even now making a righteous people for himself, and to the degree that we are willing to show up and let him, he will happily include us. Don't be surprised that the sheep do good works in Jesus' parable: That was God's plan for each of us from the very start.

[Artwork: The central panel of Hans Memling's Last Judgment Triptych. Taylor: "Knowing Glances" from The Preaching Life.]

The Widow's Might

2009-12-21T11:20:00.017-05:00

The story of the Widow's Mite (Mk 12:41-55 and Lk 21:1-4) has received little attention in general. Scholarly articles on the passage tend to focus on the coins in the story or extra-biblical parallels, or how Jesus was able to know her financial situation from afar. The main point of the text gets relatively attention in the journals, perhaps because it's thought to be obvious.

When you turn to commentaries, you find a vast range of restatements of two main theories: (a) What counts isn't how much you give, but how much you have left (e.g. Marshall); or (b) What counts is the attitude of the heart--a non-trite version of "it's the thought that counts" (e.g. Calvin).

Both of these are surely true statements, though it's hard to support the second from the text since we can't read the widow's mind. Certainly, though, Jesus applauds her willingness to give all.

The more you think about her sacrifice, though, the less well it sits. Women in first-century Palestine got the short end of the stick in almost every way: They were restricted in their roles because they were seen to be inferior physically and mentally, and even to be responsible for most sin. One daily prayer regimen had men thanking God each day for not being born women. In addition, this woman is poor, and widowed. A woman's legal status depended on her relatives, so being without a husband left her in an unprotected state, to say the least.

So if she's giving money to the collection, who is it for? Can there be anyone who needs those two coins more than she?

Jesus takes great pains elsewhere to point out, as Lord of the Sabbath, that the Sabbath was made for people, not the other way around. Similarly, in Mark 7:10-13 he condemns a practice called "Corban," wherein you could abandon obligations to your parents so long as the money went instead to the temple coffers. The widow's gift is a very close parallel to that--her very living is being given away when she can ill spare it.

The key to this paradox comes from the context (Wright, 1982). This story appears in both Mark and Luke, and in both cases it comes after a condemnation of the Scribes--who love ostentation and take advantage of the poor--and before a prediction of the destruction of the temple and the religious authorities it represents.

The widow's sacrifice is said to be superior to all others in magnitude--"this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others"--but Jesus isn't lauding the sacrifice itself. In fact, it is an object lesson. Having just condemned the Scribes for "devouring widow's houses" (Mk 12:40), he points to where this is happening in front of their very eyes. As Addison Wright points out,

Jesus' saying is not a penetrating insight on the measuring of gifts; it is a lament, "Amen, I tell you, she gave more than all the others." Or, as we would say: "One could easily fail to notice it, but there is the tragedy of the day-she put in her whole living." She had been taught and encouraged by religious leaders to donate as she does, and Jesus condemns the value system that motivates her action, and he condemns the people who conditioned her to do it.

We shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. We learn both from what the widow is doing and what is being done to her. Any religious system which can consume its weakest and most vulnerable for fuel deserves to meet with the same fate as the temple did in AD 70.

It is tempting to bring up Father Arturo Uribe, who in seminary fathered a child, and later as a priest successfully argued in court that he shouldn't have to pay child support because of his vow of poverty. Or to learn from the mixed feelings of a father whose two daughters decided to give their careers to take holy orders.

We need to look a little closer to home. This passage warns us that not all judgment waits for the end of time. In AD 70 the temple met its fate, and later in Rev 2:5 Jesus warned the Ephesian church, "If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place."

If Jesus hadn't pointed her out, the disciples would never have noticed the widow. How are the marginalized in our church, the people we barely see, faring?

[Refs: The image is The Widow's Mite (Le denier de la veuve) by James Tissout, from the Brooklyn Museum; On women in the first century: Green, Joel B., McKnight, Scot; Marshall, I. Howard: Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (IVP, 1992) p. 880; Addison Wright, "The Widow's Mites: Praise or Lament?-A Matter of Context," Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 44, 256 (1982); Calvin: Commentary on Matthew, Mark, Luke - Volume 3.]

Fun Fact:

The widow's "mite" of Mk 12:42 is, in the Greek, the lepton, the smallest of the Roman coins. The term "lepton" is also used for a class of elementary particles containing some of the smallest particles, including the nearly massless neutrino. Neutrinos, while numerous, are so nearly "invisible"-interacting weakly with the universe around them-that it's been estimated more than 50 trillion neutrinos generated by our sun pass quietly through the human body every second.

There is a time, though, when neutrinos take center stage: during the collapse of a star in a supernova, a cataclysmic event where a single star can outshine an entire galaxy. A flood of neutrinos out of the dying star bears away most of the energy of this collapse, an effect which provides an early warning system; the neutrinos from Supernova 1987A, for instance, were detected three hours before the photons.

A litmus test of grace

2009-12-14T11:26:00.011-05:00

Like most Christians, the story of the rich young ruler (RYR) has always made me squirm. He wants to know how to inherit eternal life and is told to give everything away and follow Jesus. The disciples are then scared, since for them the RYR's riches are a sure demonstration of his righteousness and God's favor. If he can't have eternal life, they surely are out of luck.

Jesus comfort for his disciples is that God can do what's impossible for us. Which is a comfort only if you know God is planning to show you that mercy!

In history there's been enough squirming about this passage that by the 4th century Cyril of Alexandria insists that instead of kamelon (camel) the correct Greek word is the similar-sounding kamilon (rope, or cable), which he says is “not entirely pointless (as a camel would be)” but is just next to impossible. An even more heroic effort to blunt this saying came with the myth of a small gate into Jerusalem called the "Eye of the Needle"--which would make entrance into the kingdom hard, but possible. There was no such gate, though! In fact, in Jewish rabbinical literature from Babylonia, where the largest land animal was the elephant, not the camel, an elephant passing through the eye of a needle is a figure of speech for sheer impossibility.

Well, maybe if we can just avoid reading this passage more than once a year, we can cut down on our squirming. No such luck: Jesus' words about counting the cost of discipleship and surrendering all to him appear in various places, notably The Parable of the Rich Fool (who builds storehouses for his crops rather than treasures in heaven), and the conclusion to the Lilies of the Field: "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

Well--then it is about priorities, right, and not specifically money? Barbara Brown Taylor says it well:

It seems to me that Christians mangle this story in at least two ways. First, by acting as if it were not about money, and second, by acting as if it were only about money.

R. H. Gundry adds, pointedly,

That Jesus did not command all his followers to sell all their possessions gives comfort only to the kind of people to whom he would give that command.

Well, if it's about money, let's be practical. If I give up all I own, then I am just placing the burden of my support on others--and I am abandoning and dependents I might have. Nor does Jesus ask all his disciples to give up all they own. True. And in fact, Luke tells us of well-to-do women in the early church who "were helping to support them out of their own means" (Lk 8:3). Still, for most of us there's a pretty large gulf between what we currently give, and giving all. Even knowing that Jesus' message is about priorities and idolatry, his warning is dire. How sure am I that I can be the one who makes it through the eye of the needle, even though I share the RYR's reluctance to part with all my possessions?

This wall is just what Jesus wanted the RYR to run into. John Calvin, with an eye toward the book of Romans, sees the rich young ruler as pursuing the righteousness of the law (Rom 10:5), rather than the saving righteousness of faith (Rom 10:6) and believes Jesus answers to suit the question:

Hence we infer, that this reply of Christ is legal, because it was proper that the young man who inquired about the righteousness of works should first be taught that no man is accounted righteous before God unless he has fulfilled the law (which is impossible) that, convinced of his weakness, he might betake himself to the assistance of faith.

In other words, Jesus, hearing the RYR ask what he could do to inherit eternal life, wanted to drive home that there's nothing you can do. And for those who missed it, he drives home the message of grace: we are totally dependent on God's mercy because what is impossible for us is possible only for God.

There can be, though, a key difference between the RYR and us. If you are a baptized member of the Body of Christ, and your love for God and neighbor (however humble) bears witness to Christ's living within you, you have eternal life. The author of 1 John, having emphasized love for neighbor, comforts his flock, says just this: "I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life." As Paul says in Romans 8:1, "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." No final condemnation from God; and even none from this passage.

Seen rightly, this passage is a litmus test for our understanding of grace. To set our knees knocking when reading this passage is to believe that Christ's sacrifice isn't quite sufficient, and that we have to make up the deficiency with our own monetary sacrifice.

What, then, do we make of this passage? Writing in the fourth century, John Chrysostom says,

And so after Jesus had made eye contact with them, he said, "With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." So with a pleasant and gentle look, he soothed those whose hearts were terrorized and relieved their anguish… Then he uplifted them with his words as he focused on the power of God, and thus gave them faith.

If you also want to learn the way and how the impossible becomes possible, listen. He did not make this statement that what is impossible for man is possible for God merely so you could relax and do nothing and leave it all to God. No, he said this so you could understand the importance of calling upon God to give you help in this rigorous contest and that you might more readily approach his grace.

Jesus teaching isn't meant to make us afraid or guilty, except as way to warn us of the difficulties of leaning on him when we have first-world resources at our command; and it's meant to reassure is that God will take care of us with or without those resources. In fact, ultimately, Jesus calls us in compassion to stop thinking about our needs, and focus on the needs of others. We read this passage and focus on just on the RYR, and ignore the poor standing behind him, whose need he ignores when he turns from Jesus. To read this passage with God's grace in mind, we set aside the fear, the guilt, and focus instead on those in need--what better way to show our love for Jesus? Then we will find joy and peace.

[References: Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life (sermon "The Opposite of Rich"); Chrysostom: Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture, Matthew Vol 2, and Homilies on the Gospel of St. Matthew; Gundry: Walter Kaiser, Hard Sayings of the Bible; Calvin: Commentary on Matthew, Mark, Luke, Vol. 2. Image: Stained Glass Window in First Reformed United Church of Christ, Burlington, NC.]

Spiritual Forces and Sanctification

2009-12-10T10:43:00.005-05:00

Here is a great quote from a paper from Bruce Longenecker, which (for me) casts a new light on Romans 8 and Paul's discussion of sanctification:

“Widespread in the Greco-Roman culture of Paul’s day was the belief that the world is populated by a multitude of suprahuman powers in constant conflict with each other. Human beings could become pawns and players in the rivalry and struggles that marked out the otherworldly realm. The spirit world could envelop the concrete world, as demonic spirits, and spiritual forces were thought to be alive and well, influencing human circumstances and destiny.

The Letter to the Galatians demonstrates that Paul could envisage the world in similar ways. So, for instance, he speaks of the Galatians having been ‘enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods’ prior to their Christian commitment (4:8). Moreover, Paul, having been transformed by God, claims to that ‘Christ lives in me’ (2:20), and hopes that his efforts among the Christians in Galatia will result in Christ being ‘formed in you’ (4:19). Paul expects the formation of Christ to be evident within the social relations of Galatian Christians, and this, for Paul, is first and foremost a matter of moral character; that is, Christian transformation is to be enacted in the giving of oneself for the benefit of others (5:13; 6:2) after the manner of Christ’s own selfless giving (1:4; 2:20). As Paul envisages the situation in Galatia, however, he perceives other spiritual realities to be at work, suprahuman forces that foster forms of moral character contrary to that of Christ and his people.”

Let's imagine sort of a straw-man "modern view." (Take these numbers with a grain of salt--the exact numbers aren't the point.) In a modern view, 90% of people are "free agents"--they are spiritually autonomous. 9% (maybe) are Christians, who are under the influence of the Holy Spirit, if all is going well, and the Spirit's role is to very very gradually make them a little more like Jesus. (And the remaining 1% are, say, shamans who are under a darker spiritual influence?)

In Paul's world, the 98% were under the influence of whatever deities or spiritual forces had jurisdiction where they were. Those 98% were constantly trying to appease the evil spirits/gods while pleasing the more benign entities. And 2% (or whatever) were Christians who'd put themselves under the aegis of the Holy Spirit.

It puts a different spin on Romans and Galatians to realize this: The effect of the Spirit seems much more immediate and powerful in this world view. Paul didn't have to explain that the Spirit would work to change your character--it was assumed if the Spirit of the creator of the universe were indwelling you, you'd notice. And just as importantly, you'd be free from other spiritual influences.

The $1,000 question, then, is how well Paul's understanding of his spiritual context translates to our modern context. The traditional conservative reading says that we should follow Paul's view of the spiritual world, which appears consistent with Jesus'. And this is based on the thought that even if Jesus, having emptied himself of his divine "omnis", didn't know everything (Mt 24:36; Philip 2:5-8), surely the Spirit ensured he was not captive to lies which would poison his teachings. I.e., he might not have known germ theory of diseases, but that didn't affect his presentation of the Gospel.

Is it possible that Paul's view of the spiritual world was correct for 1st-century Rome but not the 21st-century West? Hard to imagine.

But if we enter Paul's world, we have to acknowledge that a saving grace of the Gospel is to free us from influences most of us never see or credit.

The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. (2 Cor 4:4)

Praise God that he has opened our eyes!

[Refs: Bruce W. Longenecker, “Until Christ is Formed in You: Suprahuman Forces and Moral Character in Galatians,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 61, 92 (1999); The Rival Sacrifices of Elijah and the Priests of Baal, 1545, by Lucas The Younger Cranach (b. 1515, Wittenberg, d. 1586, Weimar)]

2009-03-05T22:51:00.004-05:00

I have been reading Ron Sider's Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, first published almost 35 years ago. With about a half-million copies in print, I'm sure many or most of you have already read it. I have found it to be insightfully written, chock full of thoroughly-referenced information, and very convicting. I'm only about halfway through.

Sider's chapter 3, God and the Poor, is a pretty thorough-going and balanced assessment of God's historical defense of those who are poor, weak, and defenseless. One area in which his treatment seems balanced is in its consideration of Christians' responsibility to the poor in general as well as to poor and downtrodden brothers and sisters in Christ. In view of our discussion some time ago of the sheep and the goats (Mt 25), I thought his comments were interesting:

"We have seen how God declared that the people of Israel were really Sodom and Gomorrah rather than the people of God (Is 1:10). God could not tolerate their exploitation of the poor and disadvantaged any longer. Hosea solemnly announced that, because of their sins, Israel was no longer God's pepeple and he was no longer their God (1:8-9). In fact, God destroyed them.

Jesus expressed it even more pointedly. To those who do not feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit the prisoners, he will speak a terrifying word at the final judgment: 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels' (Mt 25:41). The meaning is clear. Jesus intends that his disciples imitate his own concern for the poor and needy. Those who disobey will experience eternal damnation.

But perhaps we have misinterpreted Matthew 25. Some people think that 'the least of these' (v. 45) and 'the least of these who are members of my family' (v. 40) refer only to Christians. This exegesis is not certain. But even if the primary reference of these words is to poor believers, other aspects of Jesus’ teaching not only permit but require us to extend the meaning of Matthew 25 to both believers and unbelievers who are poor and oppressed. The story of the good Samaritan teaches that anybody in need is our neighbor (Luke 10:29-37). Matthew 5:43-45 is even more explicit: 'You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love you neighbor and hate your enemy'. But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sum rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.'

The ideal in the Qumran community was indeed to "'ove all the sons of light' and 'hate all the sons of darkness' (1 QS 1:9-10, the Essenes' Community Rule). Even in the Old Testament, Israelites were commanded to love the neighbor who was the child of their own people and ordered not to seek the prosperity of Ammonites and Moabites (Lev 19:17-18; Deut 23:36). But Jesus forbids his followers to limit their concern to the neighbors who are members of their own ethnic or religious group. On the other hand, he commands his followers to imitate God, who does good for all people everywhere.

In light of the parable of the Good Samaritan and the clear teaching of Mt 4:43-48, one is compelled to say that part of the full meaning of Matthew 25 is that those who fail to aid the poor and oppressed (whether they are believers or not) are simply not the people of God."

Sider does not do away with the special responsibility of Chritians to one another. In fact, elsewhere in the book, he claims that we fail to take advantage of one of the most effective evangelistic tools available to us: caring for the worldwide church. Sider argues that, if we only cared for our brothers and sisters in Christ throughout the world as we ought, God would use our love for one another to call many to faith.

Some of the chapter is contained in this newsletter article, published around the time of the first edition of the book:

http://morrie.typepad.com/exploring_the_connections/files/the_bible_and_wealth.pdf.

From Isaiah to Mephistopheles

2009-01-19T09:35:00.009-05:00

Fun fact: Isa 34:15 has an ancient equivalent of the threat “He’ll knock you back into the dark ages”: “wildcats shall meet with hyenas, goat-demons shall call to each other; there too Lilith shall repose and find a place to rest” (NRSV). This verse refers to two varieties of demons thought to inhabit abandoned ruins (NRSV Harper-Collins Study Bible).

The second, Lilith, was the Mesopotamian female night demon (IVP Bible Background Commentary). The NIV translates the name as “night creatures”, the NASB as “night monster” and the KJV as “screech owl.” In Rabbinic tradition, Lilith was Adam’s first wife. In Assyrian lore Lilith demons not only preyed on women and children, but were also believed to seduce men in their sleep (wikipedia alert!).

In Babylonian texts, Lilith was the prostitute of the goddess Ishtar. Lilith has appeared in literature and art, including Michelangelo’s The Temptation of Adam and Eve and Goethe’s Faust, in which Mephistopheles describes her as follows:

Adam’s wife, his first. Beware of her. Her beauty’s one boast is her dangerous hair. When Lilith winds it tight around young men she doesn’t soon let go of them again.

Isaiah was describing creatures which hang around ruins, not succubi who seduce Adam and work their way into misogynist mythology. Definitely a tribute to the amount of time and energy which can go into complaining about the opposite sex if one doesn't have anything better to do.

[The study can be found here. The image, lifted from Wikipedia, is by Michelangelo.]

Matrimonial Canopies of the End Times

2008-10-18T13:49:00.006-04:00

Isaiah 4:2-6 is a vision of the redeemed and renewed Israel. V. 5, in particular, is very evocative:

Then the Lord will create over the whole site of Mount Zion and over its places of assembly a cloud by day and smoke and the shining of a flaming fire by night. Indeed over all the glory there will be a canopy. It will serve as a pavilion, a shade by day from the heat, and a refuge and a shelter from the storm and rain. (NRSV)

Mary brought up an excellent question: In Jewish wedding tradition the matrimonial couple are covered by a canopy. Is Isaiah using the same word? Alec Motyer's exhaustive commentary on Isaiah provides the answer:

There is also [in this passage] a consummation of the covenant: over all the glory will be a canopy. Canopy (huppa) always denotes the 'marriage chamber' (Ps 19:6; Joel 2:16). The glory here is either the Messiah (see v. 2) lovingly joined to his bride-people or the whole glorious Zion with its holy people (3) joined in the consummation of love with the Lord under the overshadowing tokens of his presence. (For the covenant of marriage cf. 49:17-18; 54:1-13; Jer 2:2-3; 31:31-34; Hos 2:14-20.)

We discussed whether 4:2-5, which is clearly anticipating an eschatological fulfillment, has a second, prior fulfillment in the new covenant and the Church. The return of YHWH to Zion was partially fulfilled in the inauguration of the kingdom of God by Jesus' ministry, but we know that kingdom waits for consummation at the second coming. (Just as Jesus healed many, but even more await restoration.)

Similarly, the wedding language here called to mind that used by Jesus, suggesting that we see now only a shadow of the future joy the church will experience with the bridegroom. A far more glorious future awaits.

Will the Real Isaiah Please Stand Up?

2008-10-06T23:42:00.011-04:00

The second Holy Huddle of Fall 2008 was the start of our Isaiah studies. We did a survey of Isaiah, including authorship issues, and then discussed chapter one--which got us onto the topic of how confession can transform a vague sense of guilt into a life-giving warning from God.

A word about the authorship issue. Since the 1800's interpreters have wrestled with the question of why chs. 1-39 differ in style and context from 40+ (often 40-55 and 56-66, actually). And the canonical answer these days is that there was more than one writer of Isaiah, with an editor who gathered the material under one name. (Canonical, I should say, at mainline seminaries. Since IVP's books all argue for a single author, it's possible that's the evangelical theory of choice.)

While this may be the canonical theory, it has some difficulties. The greatest of these may be that chs. 40-55, which contain the prophecy of Cyrus, also speak in great detail about how predictive prophecy shows God's sovereignty. Surely an ex-post-facto prophecy dressed up like the real thing would never have been attached by any editor to the great scroll of Isaiah?

So here's a theory which never gets any air time: Let's say there are two Isaiahs, one who wrote 1-39 and the other 45-66. (You may choose to add on another Isaiahs if 56-66 bothers you.) But now imagine that Isaiah #2 lived during the exile, knew about Cyrus, but prophesied before 535 and the return from exile. Now 40-55 is coherent, predictive prophecy isn't abandoned a priori, yet you don't have Isaiah prophesying to Hezekiah's subjects about the Babylonian exile. (Not to say this is impossible, but it's unusual--why send a prophet to talk to a people in crisis about another crisis more than a century away?) And there's no problem with inspiration of Scripture--after all, two Isaiahs can be just as inspired as one.

This theory isn't invulnerable. As Barry Webb points out in his IVP commentary, it would be odd for (arguably) the greatest OT prophet, the author of Isaiah 40-55 (which includes the Servant Songs), to remain anonymous.(*) And, frankly, this theory will please neither camp: Those who deny predictive prophecy will dismiss it, while those more conservative will be hungry for the whole enchilada of single authorship. Still, I think it offers a solution which makes more sense than either the standard source-critical theory, or the single-Isaiah thesis.

By the way, if you think the title of this post refers to Slim Shady, I'm going to guess you weren't alive when Jimmy Carter was president!

(*) I am setting aside my second-favorite theory, that like the skit from Monty Python in which everyone's named Bruce, perhaps this scroll is a collection of prophecies by people named Isaiah.

[The image is The Tree of Jesse, a Flemish painting (ink on parchment) from the 16th century, referring to Isaiah's prophecy about the root of Jesse. In the tree's branches are OT kings, with the Messiah and Mary at the apex. Thank goodness for that sheet.]

A crackpot theory about the soul

2008-05-19T14:47:00.005-04:00

(The following has no bearing on any Holy Huddle discussions present or future. I am posting it because I would enjoy hearing thoughts and opinions. -Tim)

We think of the soul as some spiritual entity associated with each person. I wonder if the soul really is just God's memory of us. When we die, God remembers us precisely as we are, down to the location of each atom, each thought, each scar, each hope, and when the day of resurrection comes it's not like God dumps out his Big Box of Souls who have been waiting since the first person ever died--rather, God, in his total knowledge of us, recalls our image and endows it with a new body of his creation.

Theologians talk about the problem of the "intermediate state"--i.e., where folks go after death but before the final day. In this paradigm, we all wait in God's memory our recreation. And if that seems fleeting or transitory, it is after all, a divine memory.

The benefit of this theory is that it does away with the conundrums associated with brain death--like, in a brain-dead individual, has the soul left the body? Well, if the soul is really God's knowledge of us, then the state of the body becomes less important.

It also addresses a another problem: We know that our minds/souls change as our bodies change. For instance, the injuries and changes of middle age can have an effect: The disappointment, anger, or even hope associated with them leave a mark not just on our physical bodies, but our souls as well.

If the soul is some strange spiritual entity which hovers inside our bodies but in another dimension, then we have to ask how they interact. But if the soul is really just God's knowledge of us, the problem vanishes.

From this standpoint, the idea that damnation is God's saying "I never knew you" is particularly apt.

(The accompanying image is snagged from a google image search.)

Election, the Humanity of Jesus, and Possible Worlds

2008-05-14T13:43:00.005-04:00

In 1986 (as I was graduating from high school) Prof. Robert Hann published one of the most lucid discussions of election you will ever read. This paper delves into the Reformed understanding of election, but using the machinery of Alvin Plantinga's many-worlds formalism. He does this using, as a sort of test case, Jesus' own election.

I had never thought of Jesus' election as a test bed for understanding the doctrine of election, and found it a very interesting discussion. And I think the many-worlds interpretation does a nice job of retaining the free will both of God and of humanity. What do you think? Add your thoughts ideas--any at all--as comments to this post!

Heresies, Adversaries and Biblical Priorities

2008-05-03T09:38:00.000-04:00

Hello and welcome to the inaugural post of The Holy Huddle blog!

The purpose of the blog is to give members of The Holy Huddle small group a venue for ongoing discussion. Each discussion will have a post; simply add your comments to the latest post to join in.

The first post concerns the discussion based on Craig Blomberg's article The New Testament Definition of Heresy (Or When Do Jesus and the Apostles Really Get Mad?). In our discussion we first looked at the parables to get a feel for what sorts of issues/actions were most roundly condemned or warned against by Jesus. (Mary rightly pointed out that separating beliefs from actions may be artificial, as one leads to another.) Then we considered a summary of NT heresies from the article, as well as a list of the things which currently get the American church "het-up". Finally, we tried to assemble our own lists, and think about the criteria we might use to order them--in an effort to reflect Biblical priorities.

We covered various possible additions to our lists. It helped to ask the question: If you were choosing a church, what criteria would rule a church our? Besides the obvious Trinitarian issues, we added:

they must have a high view of scripture
do they walk the walk? I.e., to what degree does this church resemble the culture?
do they show mercy to the needy, both in and out of church?

We considered ranking items on the list by whether they impacted salvation.

What would you add? How would you prioritize your list?