The word "Pharisee" is rather common in modern speech. It usually means hypocrit, or self-righteous, or the like. We get this characterization from the Gospels, where the Pharisees seem to be the principal opponent of Jesus and his message. Turn to Matthew 23 and you will find all the vitriol that Jesus can muster against them. "You snakes, you brood of vipers! How can you escape being sentenced to hell?"
No such words for the Sadducees. The one time Jesus seems to interact with them at all, it is merely to respond to a riddle by which they hope to trip him up in his belief in the resurrection of the dead. All in all, they seem very minor characters. The Pharisees are the real bad guys.
And so I see many attacks on conservative Christians as "Pharisees." They maintain traditional beliefs about sexuality, marriage, and abortion. For such views they are branded as self-righteous bigots, the kind that Jesus most fiercely chastised.
Yet in the Bible, those closest to God get the fiercest treatment. The prophets speak judgment against Israel's neighbors, yes, but the harshest critiques are reserved for Israel, and even more so for Judah and Jerusalem. It is important not to get too close to God, for he is "a consuming fire," as the people learned from Mount Sinai. They were so afraid after having heard the words of God, they didn't want to hear any more, and God told Moses they were right to think that way. Those who are closest to God have the greatest responsibility. And so Moses, the man who spoke to God face to face, was kept out of the promised land for the slighest offense (he hit the rock instead of speaking to it).
It is not a coincidence, then, that Jesus ends up alone. The ones who hand him over to be crucified are the ones who are closest to him--that is, the Pharisees. But even his own disciples abandon him--and one of them is a traitor. Although it is the Romans who actually kill him, it is those who should have been with him from beginning to end who receive the condemnation of Scripture. That is because the Scriptures are written for them, both as an offer of reconciliation and as a warning. It is our heart's greatest desire to be close to God; but the closer we are, the more it hurts to have our sins purged from us.
The Romans receive no condemnation whatsoever in the Gospel narratives; there is no need, for they are very far from Jesus. (Pilate reveals just how far with his famous question, "What is truth?" The Pharisees would never have asked such a question.)
The Sadducees, too, are far from Jesus. No, he doesn't call them hypocrites, or blind guides, or whitewashed tombs, or snakes, or brood of vipers. But he says to them, "You know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God." What more is there to say?
Importantly, when Jesus responds this way to the Sadducees, the Pharisees gather together around him. They ask him what is the greatest commandment. And Jesus affirms exactly what they believe: Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself. The Pharisees do know the Scriptures and the power of God. They are not far from the kingdom.
It is their very proximity that earns them the greatest condemnation. "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you lock people out of the kingdom of heaven. For you do not go in yourselves, and when others are going in, you stop them." (Mt. 23:13) They are standing at the very gate, but they refuse to go in; worse, they refuse to let others go in.
So naturally this is a very serious warning for traditional Christians, who take righteousness seriously, as the Pharisees did. Those who are closest to God are closest to the fire of condemnation. If we wish to be pure in heart, so that we may see God, we must suffer the most. In some sense the Bible condemns the righteous even more than sinners.
But for those liberal Christians who think they are on the right side because they don't find Jesus condemning their position, I'm afraid they have it all backwards. To them Jesus simply says, "You know neither the Scripture nor the power of God." Of course Jesus is not offended by those who have completely abandoned the traditions of the church. He is only hurt by those close to him. He is hurt the most by his true disciples.
Showing posts with label the Bible. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the Bible. Show all posts
Saturday, January 21, 2017
Monday, November 14, 2016
Origen on the inspiration of Scripture
From On First Principles, Book IV, Chapter I:
Later on in Chapters II - III he explains that the Scriptures must be understood in a spiritual way. Passages have both a "soul" and a "body." The body is the physical, literal, or straightforward meaning, when there is one. But there isn't always a "bodily sense" that is acceptable! Origen gives a list of examples (Chapter III) in which the Bible cannot be taken literally, starting with (interestingly enough) the creation story:
To me, the most significant thing about these arguments is that they come from what is perhaps the first systematic theology ever written in the Christian tradition. Far from some modern liberal interpretation of the Bible, this comes from one of the oldest sources we have on Christian doctrine. And while I disagree with Origen about many things, this is one thing on which I agree totally, and I can't express quite enough how thankful I am for it. It makes the Bible readable. Everyone who has read the entirety of Scripture knows that there are passages and even whole themes (such as the divinely ordered destruction of the peoples of Canaan) that present impossible problems for Christians. But if we read every passage in a spiritual way, inspired not just by any thoughts that happen to arise in our heads but rather by the person of Jesus Christ found in the gospels, we rediscover the Bible as a source of power. We find in all of these stories of war and divine wrath a story about our own struggles with sin and evil and longing for redemption.
And what could be more Christian? Christ is the center; the rest must be understood in terms of him.
"Now if we consider how in a ery few years, although those who professor Christianity are persecuted and some are put to death on account of it while others suffer the loss of their possessions, yet the word has been able, in spite of the fewness of its teachers, to be "preached everywhere in the world" (cf. Mt 24:14) so that the Greeks and barbarians, wise and foolish (cf. Rom 1:14) have adopted the religion of Jesus, we shall not hesitate to say that this achievement is more than human, remembering that Jesus taught with all authority and convincing power that his word should prevail (cf. Mk 13:31).
"Consequenctly we may reasonably regard as oracles those utterances of his such as...."Further on:
"Now when we thus briefly demonstrate the divine nature of Jesus and use the words spoken in prophecy about him, we demonstrate at the same time that the writings which prophesy about him are divinely inspired and that the words which announce his sojourning here and his teaching were spoken with all power and authority and that this is the reason why they have prevailed over the elect people taken from among the nations. And we must add that it was after the advent of Jesus that the inspiration of the prophetic words and the spiritual nature of Moses's law came to light."In other words, the Scriptures themselves do not attest independently of their own inspiration; they are wholly dependent on the coming of Jesus Christ.
Later on in Chapters II - III he explains that the Scriptures must be understood in a spiritual way. Passages have both a "soul" and a "body." The body is the physical, literal, or straightforward meaning, when there is one. But there isn't always a "bodily sense" that is acceptable! Origen gives a list of examples (Chapter III) in which the Bible cannot be taken literally, starting with (interestingly enough) the creation story:
"Now what man of intelligence will believe that the first and the second and the third day, and the evening and the morning existed without the sun and moon and stars? ... And when God is said to 'walk in the paradise in the cool of the day' and Adam to hide himself behind a tree, I do not think anyone will doubt that these are figurative expressions which indicate certain mysteries through a semblance of history and not through actual events."He gives many other examples of things from Scripture which he finds to be unlikely or even "impossible."
To me, the most significant thing about these arguments is that they come from what is perhaps the first systematic theology ever written in the Christian tradition. Far from some modern liberal interpretation of the Bible, this comes from one of the oldest sources we have on Christian doctrine. And while I disagree with Origen about many things, this is one thing on which I agree totally, and I can't express quite enough how thankful I am for it. It makes the Bible readable. Everyone who has read the entirety of Scripture knows that there are passages and even whole themes (such as the divinely ordered destruction of the peoples of Canaan) that present impossible problems for Christians. But if we read every passage in a spiritual way, inspired not just by any thoughts that happen to arise in our heads but rather by the person of Jesus Christ found in the gospels, we rediscover the Bible as a source of power. We find in all of these stories of war and divine wrath a story about our own struggles with sin and evil and longing for redemption.
And what could be more Christian? Christ is the center; the rest must be understood in terms of him.
Saturday, October 8, 2016
Elon the Zebulunite
After him Elon the Zebulunite judged Israel; and he judged Israel ten years. Then Elon the Zebulunite died, and was buried at Aijalon in the land of Zebulun. (Judges 12:11-12)There are certain passages of scripture, like this one, which stand out for being so...useless. There is no wisdom, no moral teaching, not even a story. Even Ibzan of Bethlehem and Abdon son of Hillel the Pirathonite, who came before and after Elon, had little tales attached to their name (Ibzan had thirty sons and thirty daughters, who all married people from outside the clan; Abdon "had forty sons and thirty grandsons, who rode on seventy donkeys"). Elon judged ten years; that's it.
That's not to say there isn't a lot to be gleaned from a deep analysis of these two verses. A quick Google search yielded an article delving into the historical Israelite practices surrounding transfer of territory. Of course, even that topic is history mainly for history's sake. If Israel is itself sacred, then understanding its history is of religious value. Perhaps that is one of the main draws of this brief passage. We can imagine an historian dutifully recording Elon's brief appointment as judge, for no other reason than to faithfully reproduce the sequences of events that led Israel from the days of Joshua up to the time of the kings.
Still, what about Elon himself? We will never know anything about him other than his name, his title, and the fact that he bore that title for ten years. I often imagine all the saints meeting in the kingdom of heaven. Many of them will meet Elon and ask him what he did during his life on earth. Perhaps he will respond with many stories. Or maybe he will just smile and say, "I judged Israel ten years."
Following the teaching of Jesus, who said such things as "the last will be first and the first will be last," and, "whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave," one might say Elon is the greatest of all the judges. There are no stories glorifying him. It is enough for him to have served the nation of Israel, God's people. In this way, maybe a Christian can glean from this brief mention of Elon a model of heroism, after the manner that Christ taught us. But I suppose that's rather reaching. After all, Elon was judge. He was not slave of all; unlike Christ, he did not refuse to be put in a position of power (cf. John 6:15).
Implicit in my questions about this text is the notion that every text of scripture should be edifying, as in 2 Timothy 3:16, "All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness." One has to really reach in order to apply this principle to all scripture. For the Christian, it's not enough that a passage should faithfully record the history of Israel; some application to our lives, as we strive to become more like Christ, is necessary. And anyway, modern historical criticism casts so much doubt on the history recorded in scripture that taking these passages at their word is a leap of faith.
So what do we do with Elon the Zebulunite? What do we do with any of the judges? Even the great ones like Samson can hardly be considered models. But at least a story like that of Samson may or may not have an allegorical interpretation which is edifying. Elon is simply a footnote.
But there he is, eternally etched into the narrative of scripture, refusing to budge. I am tempted to think one simply has to have a sense of humor when approaching the Bible. It did not come together the way anyone would expect if one were imagining God speaking directly to us. Now that it has enjoyed its 2000 year status as canonical, there's no changing it. We can rest assured Elon the Zebulunite will remain there, challenging us to find a spiritual meaning behind his name and his ten years as judge.
I think there is something edifying about this, after all. We need continual reminders that the universe is the way it is because of events that preceded us, that we cannot change, and that defy any sort of theoretical explanation. We live in God's world, not a world which is "designed" according to human standards. Not everything has an immediately obvious purpose. And yet, if it had not been for all of these apparently meaningless events in the exact sequence they happened, I would not exist.
In other words, as much as I might naturally feel that my life would be totally unaffected if Elon the Zebulunite's name did not appear where it does in scripture, in fact it would change everything. Over two thousand years of history would be altered. If a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane...or however that's supposed to go,,.one can only imagine what it would mean if even a single character, however uninteresting, were removed from the Bible.
The more I read the Bible and reflect, the more I become less concerned with the abstract principles it teaches (though I have not lost sight of them), and the more I am aware of its very presence. Almost the very essence of the Bible's power is that it cannot be changed. Although it may have gone through many revisions to become what it is today, from now on no such revision is even conceivable. (Here I am not talking about translation and interpretation. I am mostly certainly aware that there will always be as many interpretations of scripture as there are human beings on the planet, but I think this can be safely distinguished from the content of the Bible.) That is the kind of presence in our world that can be felt, all the more so when one makes it a habit to read these now unchangeable document.
Paradoxically, this judge without a story has provoked in me more thought than any other, thus becoming the judge I would be least in favor of omitting from any reading of scripture. Of course, I doubt anyone would know who I'm talking about if I casually brought him up in conversation. The presence of scripture can be felt, but its contents remain a secret hidden in plain sight. I suppose that's natural. I don't mean to lament the lack of biblical literacy of our society based on the evidence that no one has ever heard of Elon the Zebulunite. This is simply a meditation, one that cannot possibly resolve all the mysteries surrounding this strange text.
Then again, it would be nice to know that the Christians who, in speaking about scripture practically deify it, actually knew its contents. Maybe then they would speak about it with much less certainty.
Sunday, September 4, 2016
Peter denies Jesus
The woman said to Peter, "You are not also one of this man's disciples, are you?" He said, "I am not."
He surprised himself with how quickly he answered. Was it fear? Was he lying just to avoid suffering?
When he first heard Jesus talk about his own suffering and death, he took him aside and rebuked him. But he turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things."
It had taken a while to get over that. Slowly he had come to understand what Jesus meant. The power of God is not like the power of man. Throughout all the history of Israel, was it not through human weakness that God's power was seen the most? Did not the prophet Isaiah say that the servant of God would be despised and rejected by others, a man of sorrows and acquainted with infirmity?
By the time it came to Peter's last meal with Jesus, he was ready to say, "Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you." If the Lord himself had to suffer, then he would suffer with him. But Jesus answered, "Will you lay down your life for me? Very truly, I tell you, before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times."
Three times. Was that a prediction, or a command? Peter couldn't tell the difference. Everything Jesus said would happen was happening, no matter how bizarre. Why did he now deny his master? Was it in fact out of loyalty to him? Was he trying to fulfill his words? Or were Peter's own words beyond his control? Had destiny caught up with him?
"You are not also one of his disciples, are you?" He denied it and said, "I am not."
An exact repeat of the first instance, only this time he was surrounded, whereas at first it had only been a single woman.
Perhaps he had really meant it this time. Why should he follow the one who had pushed him away? It was Jesus who had told him not to follow him. He had offered to lay down his life for him, and instead he had insisted, "Where I am going, you cannot come." Why did Jesus think that he must suffer alone? He had taught all along that all of his disciples should take up their cross and follow him. It had taken Peter so long to understand that teaching, and just at the moment when he could at least put it into practice, he was met with rejection.
One of the slaves of the high priest, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, asked, "Did I not see you in the garden with him?" Again Peter denied it, and at that moment the cock crowed.
Well, then, the prophecy is fulfilled, Peter thought. Have I not done my duty? Have I not done God's will? Have I not, indeed, done exactly what my master told me? I have been a faithful disciple by denying my master. I have followed him by falling away. What else would he have me do? Where he is going, I cannot come.
The Lord turned and looked at Peter.
And he went out and wept bitterly.
He surprised himself with how quickly he answered. Was it fear? Was he lying just to avoid suffering?
When he first heard Jesus talk about his own suffering and death, he took him aside and rebuked him. But he turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things."
It had taken a while to get over that. Slowly he had come to understand what Jesus meant. The power of God is not like the power of man. Throughout all the history of Israel, was it not through human weakness that God's power was seen the most? Did not the prophet Isaiah say that the servant of God would be despised and rejected by others, a man of sorrows and acquainted with infirmity?
By the time it came to Peter's last meal with Jesus, he was ready to say, "Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you." If the Lord himself had to suffer, then he would suffer with him. But Jesus answered, "Will you lay down your life for me? Very truly, I tell you, before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times."
Three times. Was that a prediction, or a command? Peter couldn't tell the difference. Everything Jesus said would happen was happening, no matter how bizarre. Why did he now deny his master? Was it in fact out of loyalty to him? Was he trying to fulfill his words? Or were Peter's own words beyond his control? Had destiny caught up with him?
"You are not also one of his disciples, are you?" He denied it and said, "I am not."
An exact repeat of the first instance, only this time he was surrounded, whereas at first it had only been a single woman.
Perhaps he had really meant it this time. Why should he follow the one who had pushed him away? It was Jesus who had told him not to follow him. He had offered to lay down his life for him, and instead he had insisted, "Where I am going, you cannot come." Why did Jesus think that he must suffer alone? He had taught all along that all of his disciples should take up their cross and follow him. It had taken Peter so long to understand that teaching, and just at the moment when he could at least put it into practice, he was met with rejection.
One of the slaves of the high priest, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, asked, "Did I not see you in the garden with him?" Again Peter denied it, and at that moment the cock crowed.
Well, then, the prophecy is fulfilled, Peter thought. Have I not done my duty? Have I not done God's will? Have I not, indeed, done exactly what my master told me? I have been a faithful disciple by denying my master. I have followed him by falling away. What else would he have me do? Where he is going, I cannot come.
The Lord turned and looked at Peter.
And he went out and wept bitterly.
Sunday, August 14, 2016
No king in Israel
"In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes." -- Judges 17:6
"And the Lord said to Samuel, “Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them." -- 1 Samuel 8:7One of the central tensions throughout the Bible is a lingering question: should Israel have a king? Deuteronomy law permits Israel to have a king and provides some guidelines for how a king should behave. When David finally does become king, he is considered a man after God's own heart, and a consistent theme in the prophets is that Israel's future hope will be found in his royal line. Judges 17:6, which is repeated in 21:25 (the very last verse), becomes a haunting theme framing the latter section of the book, which recounts one of the most disturbing stories I've read anywhere. So that seems like pretty strong evidence that Israel needs a king; it is dysfunctional without one, but under good king David, life is good.
On the other hand, we have the famous passage in 1 Samuel 8, where the people ask Samuel to give them a king, much to his disliking. In response, God explains that the people have not rejected Samuel, but rather God: "According to all the deeds that they have done, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt even to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so they are also doing to you." Indeed, the whole story of the exodus is not merely a story about God saving his people, but about him coming to be king. (This explains why the whole second half of Exodus gives instructions, not only concerning God's moral code, but also on how to prepare the tabernacle for his dwelling place. The Sunday school version of Exodus most often fails to get this point across very well!) It is not hard to imagine that, especially in ancient times, when a strong warrior came and liberated a people, they were inclined to make him king. In the story of the Exodus, that warrior was God. The fact that the God of the universe was not a good enough king for the people of Israel, according to Scripture, says something rather unflattering about them.
This tension is resolved in Jesus Christ. The Son of David does show up to be king and liberate Israel from its oppressors. But who is he really? The answer is that he is the God of Israel. The one who led them out of Egypt has now returned to finish the job--now he will lead them out from the bondage of sins.
And what kind of king does he intend to be? "And [Jesus] said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For who is the greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at table? But I am among you as the one who serves." (Luke 22:25-27) This is a unique kind of king. On the other hand, it is important not to miss the continuity between Jesus in the gospels and God in the book of Exodus. Jesus gives the law and expects his people to follow it: "Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?" (Luke 6:46)
All of this seems essential for thinking like a Christian about the concept of liberty. The point of freedom is to be free from human kings. But the divine king does not use force. He comes to us as a servant. He expects us to obey his commandments because his words have power, not because he has weapons to enforce them.
I've noticed that a lot of Christians talking about politics try to propose the question, "What would Jesus do?" This question seems to betray a lack of faith. The proper question would seem to be, "What does Jesus do?" Do we believe him to be alive or not?
Because as far as I can see, Jesus is the most libertarian king who ever existed. I have never known him to come down and enforce his will by physical threats or punishments. And yet he is seated on high, at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. Or does he rule us by his words? Just as he commanded the wind and waves, perhaps he also punishes us by merely speaking.
Yet I have never known the world to abide by a simple view of justice. Jesus himself did not deserve to suffer, yet he suffered a most gruesome death. Not only that, but he called us to follow him in suffering.
I am not saying Jesus Christ is a libertarian, certainly not with all the connotations that word carries in modern American politics. But what I would guess is that he is not very impressed with all of our political reflections and ideas to make government better. Maybe, just maybe, we should start taking him seriously as our true king.
Saturday, July 30, 2016
The Bible is a book of war
The Bible is a book about war. Most of its stories are about a nation whose only known way of survival was to take up arms against surrounding nations, and almost every generation knew war.
The New Testament is quite different, of course. Jesus did not lead an army in a rebellion, but rather willingly handed himself over to be crucified. "My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here." (John 18:36)
War imagery reappears mainly in Revelation, where Jesus is depicted as having a sword coming out of his mouth, destroying Satan, and judging the nations. There are of course many references to judgment throughout the New Testament, but rarely are there explicit images of weapons and violence.
It seems there are many formulas for how to tie all this together. Some say that God is a God of wrath, and that both the Old Testament calls to holy war and the war imagery of Revelation are both consistent with his character. Rather than fret over these images, we need to respect them, fear God, and teach that his terrible wrath is a reality people will have to face unless they repent.
Rather than try to thoroughly critique this position, I will just state briefly why I have problems with it. To be clear, the main difficulty is not that God judges. It is rather the explicit commands in the Old Testament to (for example) kill women and children.
There is another way of reading the Bible which seems to be embedded in everything Jesus himself says. It is a spiritual allegory, a prophecy about him and his ministry, and about the ultimate destiny of those who follow his Way.
Jesus does indeed perform acts of war in the New Testament--against demons!
I read it spiritually in this way. The people of Israel is the human spirit. Once we were slaves in Egypt. This is a metaphor for our slavery to sin and death. Then God called us out of Egypt with might acts of power, and he gave us a new identity. He gave us his law, so that we might be united. But as everyone who has ever put faith in God knows, it is easy to stumble, right from the very beginning. Even after we are made free in God, we must then wander through the wilderness, just as the Israelites did for forty years.
The final mission is to go into the promised land and conquer. If in the beginning God did all the acts of power himself, liberating us by his own hand, so that we had only to stand back and watch, in the last act we must take up arms ourselves--against the demons of our own hearts. We must utterly annihilate them, wiping out even women and children, which means metaphorically that we must destroy even the possibility of our sins being reborn, thus coming back to haunt us ("so that they may not teach you to do all the abhorrent things that they do for their gods"). It is still God who fights for us, but his power is infused into our own efforts.
But why should the word of God come to us as such a long history when it would have sufficed to simply teach us this brief lesson? Well, I don't agree that it would have sufficed. First of all, we should not discount the fact that the Bible's historical books do indeed record events of history, even if it they are presented in a spiritual (and often mysterious) way. There is always value in such records.
Second, there is no end to all of the subtle lessons one can learn by meditating on the details of sacred history. For instance, I am quite fond of the story of the Gibeonites in the book of Joshua. Since they fear defeat by the Israelites, the Gibeonites dress themselves up in rags and pretend to come to the Israelites from a long distance. The Israelites make peace with them before consulting the Lord, and so they disobey God. In the same way, our sins often dress up to us as outsiders; we think that such faults could never come from our own hearts, but must somehow be the influence of our environment. Or they dress up as outsiders, in the sense that they are not a threat to us, and so we make an alliance with them and permit them to go on dwelling in our souls. "Show no pity," God says. If we do not consult him, our sins will remain, and we will not live long in the promised land (that is, spiritual life) as he desires for us.
That is how I read the Bible these days. It is not that I totally discount the literal meaning of texts--indeed, I take the story of Jesus's death and resurrection quite literally. And I don't think my lens of interpretation is out of line with traditional Christian reading. But at some point, I simply can't accept that all of the words of Scripture are literally true, in the sense that the God of the universe would actually order women and children to be killed (or, alternatively, taken as property). My conviction is that Jesus himself teaches us a new way to fight our wars, one that is spiritual and not literal. This does not require less strength, but more.
The New Testament is quite different, of course. Jesus did not lead an army in a rebellion, but rather willingly handed himself over to be crucified. "My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here." (John 18:36)
War imagery reappears mainly in Revelation, where Jesus is depicted as having a sword coming out of his mouth, destroying Satan, and judging the nations. There are of course many references to judgment throughout the New Testament, but rarely are there explicit images of weapons and violence.
It seems there are many formulas for how to tie all this together. Some say that God is a God of wrath, and that both the Old Testament calls to holy war and the war imagery of Revelation are both consistent with his character. Rather than fret over these images, we need to respect them, fear God, and teach that his terrible wrath is a reality people will have to face unless they repent.
Rather than try to thoroughly critique this position, I will just state briefly why I have problems with it. To be clear, the main difficulty is not that God judges. It is rather the explicit commands in the Old Testament to (for example) kill women and children.
When you draw near to a town to fight against it, offer it terms of peace. If it accepts your terms of peace and surrenders to you, then all the people in it shall serve you at forced labor. If it does not submit to you peacefully, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it; and when the Lord your God gives it into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword. You may, however, take as your booty the women, the children, livestock, and everything else in the town, all its spoil. You may enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the Lord your God has given you. Thus you shall treat all the towns that are very far from you, which are not towns of the nations here. But as for the towns of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, you must not let anything that breathes remain alive. You shall annihilate them--the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusite--just as the Lord your God has commanded, so that they may not teach you to do all the abhorrent things that they do for their gods, and you thus sin against the Lord your God. (Deut. 20:10-18, emphasis mine)When I take this passage literally, I simply don't know how to square it with the ethical teaching of Jesus to love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. And I don't know why Jesus would have suddenly changed the strategy from war to self-sacrifice. We could argue about details all day long, but ultimately I just don't see how to form a coherent view of Scripture out of a literal reading of the Old Testament.
There is another way of reading the Bible which seems to be embedded in everything Jesus himself says. It is a spiritual allegory, a prophecy about him and his ministry, and about the ultimate destiny of those who follow his Way.
Jesus does indeed perform acts of war in the New Testament--against demons!
If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then will his kingdom stand? If I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your own exorcists cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you. Or how can one enter the house of a strong man and plunder his property, without first tying up the strong man? Then indeed the house can be plundered. (Matthew 12:26-29)But spiritual warfare is not physical warfare, and Jesus did not come to lead an armed rebellion against the Romans. How then might we read the Old Testament (and Revelation) in light of his ministry and his character?
I read it spiritually in this way. The people of Israel is the human spirit. Once we were slaves in Egypt. This is a metaphor for our slavery to sin and death. Then God called us out of Egypt with might acts of power, and he gave us a new identity. He gave us his law, so that we might be united. But as everyone who has ever put faith in God knows, it is easy to stumble, right from the very beginning. Even after we are made free in God, we must then wander through the wilderness, just as the Israelites did for forty years.
The final mission is to go into the promised land and conquer. If in the beginning God did all the acts of power himself, liberating us by his own hand, so that we had only to stand back and watch, in the last act we must take up arms ourselves--against the demons of our own hearts. We must utterly annihilate them, wiping out even women and children, which means metaphorically that we must destroy even the possibility of our sins being reborn, thus coming back to haunt us ("so that they may not teach you to do all the abhorrent things that they do for their gods"). It is still God who fights for us, but his power is infused into our own efforts.
But why should the word of God come to us as such a long history when it would have sufficed to simply teach us this brief lesson? Well, I don't agree that it would have sufficed. First of all, we should not discount the fact that the Bible's historical books do indeed record events of history, even if it they are presented in a spiritual (and often mysterious) way. There is always value in such records.
Second, there is no end to all of the subtle lessons one can learn by meditating on the details of sacred history. For instance, I am quite fond of the story of the Gibeonites in the book of Joshua. Since they fear defeat by the Israelites, the Gibeonites dress themselves up in rags and pretend to come to the Israelites from a long distance. The Israelites make peace with them before consulting the Lord, and so they disobey God. In the same way, our sins often dress up to us as outsiders; we think that such faults could never come from our own hearts, but must somehow be the influence of our environment. Or they dress up as outsiders, in the sense that they are not a threat to us, and so we make an alliance with them and permit them to go on dwelling in our souls. "Show no pity," God says. If we do not consult him, our sins will remain, and we will not live long in the promised land (that is, spiritual life) as he desires for us.
That is how I read the Bible these days. It is not that I totally discount the literal meaning of texts--indeed, I take the story of Jesus's death and resurrection quite literally. And I don't think my lens of interpretation is out of line with traditional Christian reading. But at some point, I simply can't accept that all of the words of Scripture are literally true, in the sense that the God of the universe would actually order women and children to be killed (or, alternatively, taken as property). My conviction is that Jesus himself teaches us a new way to fight our wars, one that is spiritual and not literal. This does not require less strength, but more.
Thursday, June 2, 2016
God's belated wrath
It's easy to read the Bible, especially the Old Testament, and feel overwhelmed by how angry God is. Long passages of Scripture dwell on all of the ways God will punish and destroy. For instance, Deuteronomy 28 spends 14 verses describing all the blessings the Israelites will receive if they obey the law; then it spends 54 more verses describing in increasing levels of horror all that God will do to punish them if they do not obey. And not all of it is hypothetical. Elsewhere we can read of plagues, venomous snakes, and the earth swallowing up Israelites because of their sins.
All of this, of course, becomes fodder for skeptics to throw at Christianity. It becomes a stumbling block for Christians like me. It's not easy to see how to reconcile "God is love" (1 John 4:16) with these passages of Scripture.
But let's back up to the beginning. In Genesis 3:3, Eve explains to the serpent that "God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.'" Of course, Adam and Eve did eat the fruit, and they were banished from the Garden of Eden. Some say that this was a spiritual death. Christian tradition has often taught that human beings were created immortal, and that through this first sin they lost immortality. But what does the text say?
The very next story is far more telling. The second generation of human beings--Cain and Abel--manages to introduce murder to the world. So what does God do to Cain, who murders his brother? He doesn't kill him. On the contrary, God protects Cain: "Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance." (Genesis 4:15)
Ten generations go by, from Adam to Noah. Then God looks down and sees the wickedness of humankind. "And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart." (Genesis 6:6) So he decides to wipe out all the creatures with a huge flood--except, of course, sparing Noah.
In other words, God waits ten generations (the number ten may have some significance...) before finally unleashing justice on humankind. Even then, he can't go all the way through with it (he spares Noah and his family). Then, in a telling passage, he says,
It is interesting that God, after this covenant made with Noah, finally introduces the death penalty for murderers (Gensis 9:6). Then he blesses Noah and gives him the rainbow as a sign of his covenant never to flood the earth again. We think of a rainbow as pretty and colorful, but let's not forget what it is. It's a bow, that is to say a weapon, pointed toward the heavens. It is as if God is saying, "May the arrows of his bow strike me if I should ever think to flood the earth again."
And so Noah and his sons go out from the ark to repopulate the earth--a fresh beginning. So what happens? Noah gets drunk and is violated by his son, thus absolutely confirming what God says in Genesis 8:21.
Generations go by. Then human beings once again try to obtain immortality, not by eating from the Tree of Life but rather by constructing a tower to heaven. Just as in the Garden of Eden, God is wary of this outcome: "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them." (Genesis 11:6) Much as he shut out Adam and Even from the Garden of Eden, so he now shuts down the Tower of Babel by confusing the people's speech. Such is God's terrifying act of wrath...
After this story, ten more generations are listed, starting with Shem and finishing with Abraham. Just as Noah became the father of all nations, so now Abraham's very name means "ancestor of a multitude of nations" (Genesis 17:4). Abraham is God's new hope for a renewed humanity, just like Noah was.
So is it time for another judgment? It is. God hears a cry against Sodom, and he tells Abraham that he is going to send judgment on it. In a famous passage (Genesis 18:23-33), Abraham negotiates with God to see how many righteous people there would have to be left in Sodom in order for God to stay his wrath. God patiently listens while Abraham whittles the number slowly down from 50 to 10, after which the conversation ends in a chilling sense of foreboding--there aren't even 10 righteous people left in Sodom, are there? God has waited the maximum allowable time, until there is simply nothing left to do.
But I have skipped over something. God promises to Abraham the land of Canaan. He says,
All of this lays God open to the charge that in fact he is not quick enough to enact judgment. He is indeed "slow to anger" (Exodus 34:6) but when his anger finally arises, how terrible it is!
This theme of God's belated wrath is taken up once again in the New Testament, where Paul declares,
All of this should give us a bit of a framework in which to read the rest of the Bible. Since it does talk so much about God's wrath and how imminent it is, we find it easy to be taken aback. But there are at least two points to consider. For one, perhaps when God says his wrath is imminent, it is really not so imminent, after all. This is why Peter has to urge his readers, saying, "The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9) The prophets, who probably have the longest extended passages describing God's wrath, probably should not be taken too literally, and they should always be read keeping in mind that the goal is to urge the people to repentance.
Another point to keep in mind is that if God is harsh with Israel, it is because he doesn't want to make the same mistake (!) that he made with earlier generations. "Know then in your heart that as a parent disciplines a child so the Lord your God disciplines you." (Deuteronomy 8:5) I have often struggled with that verse. Surely sending fiery snakes and plagues is a little more harsh than the discipline one gives a child. But then, perhaps the literal meaning of these stories is not so important as the spiritual meaning, by which we understand all these acts of judment to be a cleansing of God's people. Or maybe we ought to believe that God can use death itself as a tool of discipline, saving our eternal souls by putting utterly to death our present bodies of flesh.
In any case, if we keep in mind the whole story that the Bible tells, we cannot possibly see God as some cantankerous deity waiting to throw thunderbolts on a whim. On the contrary, the psalms often complain that he is too slow to do so! God's patience almost seems blameworthy--why did he wait so long before finally judging the earth which was so full of wickedness, or before giving his people justice and saving them from slavery? Yet it is precisely this patience which gives us the chance to repent and find salvation. This tension is difficult to resolve.
And so often it is with the Bible, that ultimately we never find resolution, but we live spurred on by that tension. "Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming." (Matthew 24:42) If we are led by faith in Jesus Christ, we must always live as if judgment is just around the corner, and yet we must continue to believe in God's infinite patience. That is just one of the many paradoxes, it seems to me, of the Christian faith.
All of this, of course, becomes fodder for skeptics to throw at Christianity. It becomes a stumbling block for Christians like me. It's not easy to see how to reconcile "God is love" (1 John 4:16) with these passages of Scripture.
But let's back up to the beginning. In Genesis 3:3, Eve explains to the serpent that "God said, 'You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, nor shall you touch it, or you shall die.'" Of course, Adam and Eve did eat the fruit, and they were banished from the Garden of Eden. Some say that this was a spiritual death. Christian tradition has often taught that human beings were created immortal, and that through this first sin they lost immortality. But what does the text say?
Then the Lord God said, 'See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever'--therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. (Genesis 3:22-23)The text does not at all indicate that humans were immortal. On the contrary, God wanted to prevent them from becoming immortal. So what happened to the threat, "Or you shall die"?
The very next story is far more telling. The second generation of human beings--Cain and Abel--manages to introduce murder to the world. So what does God do to Cain, who murders his brother? He doesn't kill him. On the contrary, God protects Cain: "Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance." (Genesis 4:15)
Ten generations go by, from Adam to Noah. Then God looks down and sees the wickedness of humankind. "And the Lord was sorry that he had made humankind on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart." (Genesis 6:6) So he decides to wipe out all the creatures with a huge flood--except, of course, sparing Noah.
In other words, God waits ten generations (the number ten may have some significance...) before finally unleashing justice on humankind. Even then, he can't go all the way through with it (he spares Noah and his family). Then, in a telling passage, he says,
I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. (Genesis 8:21, emphasis added)Now, consider that not only does God promise never to wipe out humankind again, but he even takes away the one punishment he had given Cain, the first murderer. Why? Not because human beings are good, after all, but rather because they are evil! One can hear a tremendous sigh in this passage, like an incredible divine realization that humans are beyond hope.
It is interesting that God, after this covenant made with Noah, finally introduces the death penalty for murderers (Gensis 9:6). Then he blesses Noah and gives him the rainbow as a sign of his covenant never to flood the earth again. We think of a rainbow as pretty and colorful, but let's not forget what it is. It's a bow, that is to say a weapon, pointed toward the heavens. It is as if God is saying, "May the arrows of his bow strike me if I should ever think to flood the earth again."
And so Noah and his sons go out from the ark to repopulate the earth--a fresh beginning. So what happens? Noah gets drunk and is violated by his son, thus absolutely confirming what God says in Genesis 8:21.
Generations go by. Then human beings once again try to obtain immortality, not by eating from the Tree of Life but rather by constructing a tower to heaven. Just as in the Garden of Eden, God is wary of this outcome: "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them." (Genesis 11:6) Much as he shut out Adam and Even from the Garden of Eden, so he now shuts down the Tower of Babel by confusing the people's speech. Such is God's terrifying act of wrath...
After this story, ten more generations are listed, starting with Shem and finishing with Abraham. Just as Noah became the father of all nations, so now Abraham's very name means "ancestor of a multitude of nations" (Genesis 17:4). Abraham is God's new hope for a renewed humanity, just like Noah was.
So is it time for another judgment? It is. God hears a cry against Sodom, and he tells Abraham that he is going to send judgment on it. In a famous passage (Genesis 18:23-33), Abraham negotiates with God to see how many righteous people there would have to be left in Sodom in order for God to stay his wrath. God patiently listens while Abraham whittles the number slowly down from 50 to 10, after which the conversation ends in a chilling sense of foreboding--there aren't even 10 righteous people left in Sodom, are there? God has waited the maximum allowable time, until there is simply nothing left to do.
But I have skipped over something. God promises to Abraham the land of Canaan. He says,
Know this for certain, that your offspring shall be aliens in a land that is not theirs, and shall be slaves there, and they shall be oppressed for four hundred years; but I will bring judgment on the nation they they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions. As for yourself, you shall go to your ancestors in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete. (Gensis 15:12-16)What an odd plan! God very forthrightly admits that he is going to tolerate oppression and injustice for four hundred years until finally judging the oppressors. And as for the Amorites who occupy the land promised to Abraham, God freely admits they are already sinful, but he would rather wait before sending judgment on them. Four hundred years, no less!
All of this lays God open to the charge that in fact he is not quick enough to enact judgment. He is indeed "slow to anger" (Exodus 34:6) but when his anger finally arises, how terrible it is!
This theme of God's belated wrath is taken up once again in the New Testament, where Paul declares,
While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. (Acts 17:30-31)And yet, here we are, two thousand years later...
All of this should give us a bit of a framework in which to read the rest of the Bible. Since it does talk so much about God's wrath and how imminent it is, we find it easy to be taken aback. But there are at least two points to consider. For one, perhaps when God says his wrath is imminent, it is really not so imminent, after all. This is why Peter has to urge his readers, saying, "The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9) The prophets, who probably have the longest extended passages describing God's wrath, probably should not be taken too literally, and they should always be read keeping in mind that the goal is to urge the people to repentance.
Another point to keep in mind is that if God is harsh with Israel, it is because he doesn't want to make the same mistake (!) that he made with earlier generations. "Know then in your heart that as a parent disciplines a child so the Lord your God disciplines you." (Deuteronomy 8:5) I have often struggled with that verse. Surely sending fiery snakes and plagues is a little more harsh than the discipline one gives a child. But then, perhaps the literal meaning of these stories is not so important as the spiritual meaning, by which we understand all these acts of judment to be a cleansing of God's people. Or maybe we ought to believe that God can use death itself as a tool of discipline, saving our eternal souls by putting utterly to death our present bodies of flesh.
In any case, if we keep in mind the whole story that the Bible tells, we cannot possibly see God as some cantankerous deity waiting to throw thunderbolts on a whim. On the contrary, the psalms often complain that he is too slow to do so! God's patience almost seems blameworthy--why did he wait so long before finally judging the earth which was so full of wickedness, or before giving his people justice and saving them from slavery? Yet it is precisely this patience which gives us the chance to repent and find salvation. This tension is difficult to resolve.
And so often it is with the Bible, that ultimately we never find resolution, but we live spurred on by that tension. "Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming." (Matthew 24:42) If we are led by faith in Jesus Christ, we must always live as if judgment is just around the corner, and yet we must continue to believe in God's infinite patience. That is just one of the many paradoxes, it seems to me, of the Christian faith.
Thursday, October 29, 2015
God against humanity
I'm going to be intentionally provocative here, exaggerating my point just to make it clear.
Traditionally (in our culture) Christianity is presented as a story about humanity. We were meant to live in relationship with God, and the problem is that sin destroys that relationship and leads to death. So in order to fulfill our purpose and find happiness we need to deal with sin. The Christian answer to this problem is to put our faith in Jesus Christ, whose perfect sacrifice on our behalf completely erases our guilty, and whose Spirit enables us to live holy lives.
This story is beautiful, but it's totally anthropocentric. There is no need for the world to exist. "Relationship" can be rather abstract--it can be minds or souls that interact on an ethereal plane, without any need for bodies. Moreover, sin in this story could come from anywhere. It could be that sin exists solely because God has established certain arbitrary rules. If He would just relent and change the rules, couldn't He deal with sin that way instead? So while beautiful from one point of view, the anthropocentric story might be problematic.
What's really interesting is that as I read the Bible, the story is not at all anthropocentric. God starts by creating a world. He spends six days creating before human beings ever cross His mind. When He does create them, He wants them specifically to cultivate the ground and rule over the animals. When they turn against Him, God is sorry He ever made them. He destroys them with a flood, except for one family, whom He watches grow into another human population, most of which will become utterly evil once again.
He calls out the Israelites from their enslavement to go wipe out the people who live in the land of Canaan. He assures them that it is not for their sake that He is calling them, it is for the sake of the land. The evil of the Canaanites pollutes the land, and their evil has to be utterly wiped out so that the land will be purified. If the Israelites sin as the Canaanites did, God assures them that the land will "vomit them out" just like the Canaanites. Yes, God is faithful to His convenant with Abraham, and eventually He will bring the Israelites back to the promised land after they repent with all their heart. But, He says, the land must have a sabbath before permitting them to return.
In this story, the nature of sin is clear: it hurts the land. That is, it hurts God's good creation. God create humankind to tend to His garden, and instead they destroy it. God has to strike back, or else humans will totally ruin everything. It's God versus humanity.
God's violence in the Bible appears horrendous if God is some abstractly conceived "perfect" being--omniscienct, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. But in the Bible, God is first and foremost the Creator of a good world, who must keep things in order by maintaining justice and restoring balance. He creates human beings in order to help Him do this, but they turn against Him and do just the opposite.
From that point of view, the story of Jesus takes a whole new meaning. Rather than continuing to fight back, God surrenders. He humbles Himself to the point of taking on human flesh, then lets Himself be killed by the empire of humanity. Yet He has the last victory by coming back from the dead. What is His purpose? Presumably the same as it ever was: to save the world that He made.
I suppose that raises many more questions than answers, but it's a way to throw out old baggage and to think about the whole story in a different way. Because the story is not so anthropocentric, it's a little more mysterious how humans fit into it. I guess I'll leave that for another time.
Traditionally (in our culture) Christianity is presented as a story about humanity. We were meant to live in relationship with God, and the problem is that sin destroys that relationship and leads to death. So in order to fulfill our purpose and find happiness we need to deal with sin. The Christian answer to this problem is to put our faith in Jesus Christ, whose perfect sacrifice on our behalf completely erases our guilty, and whose Spirit enables us to live holy lives.
This story is beautiful, but it's totally anthropocentric. There is no need for the world to exist. "Relationship" can be rather abstract--it can be minds or souls that interact on an ethereal plane, without any need for bodies. Moreover, sin in this story could come from anywhere. It could be that sin exists solely because God has established certain arbitrary rules. If He would just relent and change the rules, couldn't He deal with sin that way instead? So while beautiful from one point of view, the anthropocentric story might be problematic.
What's really interesting is that as I read the Bible, the story is not at all anthropocentric. God starts by creating a world. He spends six days creating before human beings ever cross His mind. When He does create them, He wants them specifically to cultivate the ground and rule over the animals. When they turn against Him, God is sorry He ever made them. He destroys them with a flood, except for one family, whom He watches grow into another human population, most of which will become utterly evil once again.
He calls out the Israelites from their enslavement to go wipe out the people who live in the land of Canaan. He assures them that it is not for their sake that He is calling them, it is for the sake of the land. The evil of the Canaanites pollutes the land, and their evil has to be utterly wiped out so that the land will be purified. If the Israelites sin as the Canaanites did, God assures them that the land will "vomit them out" just like the Canaanites. Yes, God is faithful to His convenant with Abraham, and eventually He will bring the Israelites back to the promised land after they repent with all their heart. But, He says, the land must have a sabbath before permitting them to return.
In this story, the nature of sin is clear: it hurts the land. That is, it hurts God's good creation. God create humankind to tend to His garden, and instead they destroy it. God has to strike back, or else humans will totally ruin everything. It's God versus humanity.
God's violence in the Bible appears horrendous if God is some abstractly conceived "perfect" being--omniscienct, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. But in the Bible, God is first and foremost the Creator of a good world, who must keep things in order by maintaining justice and restoring balance. He creates human beings in order to help Him do this, but they turn against Him and do just the opposite.
From that point of view, the story of Jesus takes a whole new meaning. Rather than continuing to fight back, God surrenders. He humbles Himself to the point of taking on human flesh, then lets Himself be killed by the empire of humanity. Yet He has the last victory by coming back from the dead. What is His purpose? Presumably the same as it ever was: to save the world that He made.
I suppose that raises many more questions than answers, but it's a way to throw out old baggage and to think about the whole story in a different way. Because the story is not so anthropocentric, it's a little more mysterious how humans fit into it. I guess I'll leave that for another time.
Saturday, July 25, 2015
Then the Lord raised up judges
After a four year hiatus, I've decided to resume my series on the Bible on this blog. My other posts are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. No explanation for giving up on this series could ever be honest--it's been four years now, and I simply don't remember why exactly I stopped. I do remember that the last post on Joshua made quite an impact on me. Genocide and the Bible: it seems like it would be a common question, but if you Google it there's a surprising dearth of resources on the topic for a religious perspective. Most answers you get will be from skeptics, which makes sense. The best little article I found from a Christian perspective was from Peter Enns, but it's quite brief and doesn't get too deep. Other Christian responses more or less waffle between, "I promise there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for all this," and, "Does the potter have no right over the clay?" These are hardly satisfying answers.
Then there's the story of Deborah and Barak. Deborah the prophetess tells Barak to go to battle against Sisera, but Barak won't go without Deborah. So she tells him that because of this, "the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman." Now the woman she's talking about is actually Jael, who tricks Sisera into coming to rest in her tent after he flees from battle. Then while he's sleeping, she takes a tent peg and drives it into his skull.
Then there's the awesome story of Gideon, who defeats the Midianites. God commands him to narrow his army of 22,000 down to just 300 (why does that number sound familiar?), so that the Israelites will be convinced that the victory was truly miraculous. Gideon is one of my favorite characters because of something he says near the end of his story. From 8:22-23:
After Gideon one of his seventy sons, Abimelech, tries to establish himself as king by first killing off all of his brothers. Only one of them, Jotham, survives. Jotham prophesies that the people's allegience to Abimelech will backfire, and that is what happens: Abimelech burns all the people of the Tower of Shechem, and in the very next scene Abimelech has a millstone thrown on his head and dies.
Then there's story of Jephthah, who delivers the people from the Ammonites. Jepthah makes the most twisted vow I've ever heard of: he promises that if God gives him victory, he'll kill the first thing that comes out of his house upon his return as a sacrifice. So guess what that is? His daughter--his only child. And guess what happens next? He actually kills her. Even worse, his daughter agrees with his decision; she only asks to be allowed to go to the mountains for two months to "bewail her virginity."
I actually heard a sermon about this passage once, for which I applaud the pastor. It was something about not acting on bad theology; Jephthah was basically the example of what not to do. For that I applaud this particular pastor.
By the way, Jephthah is where we get that word Shibboleth. The Ephraimites get angry at Jephthah because he went to battle without them, so they go to war with the Gileadites (Jephthah's people). If any of the Ephraimites tried to escape, here's what the Gileadites did (12:5-6):
The reason I list all of these stories is that they deserve the repetition. Simply trying to derive an abstract meaning from them would do them and the reader a disservice. This is not a morality play. I would never teach my children to try to be like Ehud or Gideon, certainly not Jephthah or Samson. These are heroes because of their strength, pure and simple.
Yet there is a clear message which comes through as all these stories are woven together. God will never stop saving his people. There are enemies all around, and God will show his strength by raising up a hero to stop them. But why? Why does God still love his people after they've betrayed him over, and over, and over again? That's love, folks. No matter how angry God is with Israel, he always welcomes them back.
There is a second part of this book, Chapters 17 - 21, which is just about the most horrifying thing you can find in all of literature. I read these chapters as one unit, framed by the repetition of the following verse, which is both 17:6 and 21:25, the very last verse of the book:
The ending of Judges sends a mixed message. Is it now time for God to install a king in Israel? Perhaps that will turn them back from their wickedness. Yet all of this time, God himself has been their king; why do they need human protection? Later Samuel will tell the Israelites they have sinned in asking for a king, though God will give them one anyway. One way to read these words--"In those days there was no king in Israel"--is that the people had rejected even God as their king, and that is what they did "what was right in their own eyes."
If the first part was attractive because of its stories of strength and glory, the second part is nothing of the sort: it can only make one shudder. The Bible can be a very dark book.
But the thing is, I've always found Judges less disturbing than Joshua. It's no wonder that we see darkness when all the people do what is right in their own eyes. Somehow I can deal with that much more easily than I can with God himself commanding people to "show no mercy."
We'll just have to keep dealing with this as the Old Testament stories progress. War never stops being a central theme. Maybe by the time we get to Jesus there will be a way to make sense of it all.
The reason I harp on this is because war is in no way a small theme in the Bible. In the Old Testament, "salvation" means, almost always, God rescuing his people in battle. To enter into the world of the Old Testament is to rejoin a warrior nation with constant danger on every side. If I'm honest with myself, I must admit two things. One, I have no idea from real experience what this is like. Two, I nevertheless sense deep down an atavistic longing awakened by these texts. I mention this because, before we sit in judgment over the text with our self-righteous modern ethical mindset, I think we should let ourselves be disarmed by the Bible. Before we ask, "How do we interpret the text and apply it to our lives?" maybe we should first just try to enjoy the stories. If you do this, you will absolutely love the book of Judges.
The theme of the book is laid out near the beginning, in 2:11-23, of which I'll quote 16-19:
Then the Lord raised up judges, who delivered them out of the power of those who plundered them. Yet they did not listen even to their judges; for they lusted after other gods and bowed down to them. They soon turned aside from the way in which their ancestors had walked, who had obeyed the commandments of the Lord; they did not follow their example. Whenever the Lord raised up judges for them, the Lord was with the judge, and he delivered them from the hand of their enemies all the days of the judge; for the Lord would be moved to pity by their groaning because of those who persecuted and oppressed them. But whenever the judge died, they would relapse and behave worse than their ancestors, following other gods, worshiping them and bowing down to them. They would not drop any of their practices or their stubborn ways.There are basically two parts of the book after this. The first part, which runs through Chapter 16, is a series of tales recounting the deeds of the awesome judges. The Greeks had their pantheon of gods; the Israelites had their judges, each one of them known for showing glory in battle. You cannot find more entertaining stories, but let the reader be warned--there are blood and guts everywhere. The first of these stories is Ehud defeating King Eglon of Moab. "Now Eglon was a very fat man," says the sacred text. So do you know how Ehud killed him? He went before the king all alone to give him a "message from God," then he plunged a sword into his belly, "and the fat closed over the blade." This is in the Bible, folks.
Then there's the story of Deborah and Barak. Deborah the prophetess tells Barak to go to battle against Sisera, but Barak won't go without Deborah. So she tells him that because of this, "the Lord will sell Sisera into the hand of a woman." Now the woman she's talking about is actually Jael, who tricks Sisera into coming to rest in her tent after he flees from battle. Then while he's sleeping, she takes a tent peg and drives it into his skull.
Then there's the awesome story of Gideon, who defeats the Midianites. God commands him to narrow his army of 22,000 down to just 300 (why does that number sound familiar?), so that the Israelites will be convinced that the victory was truly miraculous. Gideon is one of my favorite characters because of something he says near the end of his story. From 8:22-23:
Then the Israelites said to Gideon, "Rule over us, you and your son and your grandson also; for you have delivered us out of the hand if Midian." Gideon said to them, "I will not rule over you, and my son will not rule over you; the Lord will rule over you."This beautiful statement of Israelite allegiance to God over all human authorities is that tainted by what happens just after. Gideon creates an idol for the people, and they bow down and worship it. The Bible is full of this kind of stuff: there is never a clean victory, because even the good guys always screw up something.
After Gideon one of his seventy sons, Abimelech, tries to establish himself as king by first killing off all of his brothers. Only one of them, Jotham, survives. Jotham prophesies that the people's allegience to Abimelech will backfire, and that is what happens: Abimelech burns all the people of the Tower of Shechem, and in the very next scene Abimelech has a millstone thrown on his head and dies.
Then there's story of Jephthah, who delivers the people from the Ammonites. Jepthah makes the most twisted vow I've ever heard of: he promises that if God gives him victory, he'll kill the first thing that comes out of his house upon his return as a sacrifice. So guess what that is? His daughter--his only child. And guess what happens next? He actually kills her. Even worse, his daughter agrees with his decision; she only asks to be allowed to go to the mountains for two months to "bewail her virginity."
I actually heard a sermon about this passage once, for which I applaud the pastor. It was something about not acting on bad theology; Jephthah was basically the example of what not to do. For that I applaud this particular pastor.
By the way, Jephthah is where we get that word Shibboleth. The Ephraimites get angry at Jephthah because he went to battle without them, so they go to war with the Gileadites (Jephthah's people). If any of the Ephraimites tried to escape, here's what the Gileadites did (12:5-6):
Then the Gileadites took the fords of the Jordan against the Ephraimites. Whenever one of the fugitives of Ephraim said, "Let me go over," the men of Gilead would say to him, "Are you an Ephraimite?" When he said, "No," they said to him, "Then say Shibboleth," and he said, "Sibboleth," for he could not pronounce it right. Then they seized him and killed him at the fords of the Jordan.Finally, the last great tale in this series is Samson. In terms of awesome heroes, it doesn't get much better than this: he kills a lion with his bare hands, he kills thirty men at once by himself in order to pay a debt, he kills a thousand Philistines with a donkey's jawbone. And last and best of all, he is seduced by Delilah, which turns out to be his undoing, because she gets him to tell her the secret of his strength. As 16:16 says, "Finally, after she had nagged him with her words day after day, and pestered him, he was tired to death." I'm telling you guys, the Bible can tell it like it is. The Philistines cut off his hair, which takes away his strength, so they capture him and throw him in prison. But do not fear, Samson's end is glorious. The Philistines make him perform in front of them in their temple. Then Samson asks God for one last bit of super-strength in order to crush the Philistines. His hair grows back just in time for him to push against the pillars of the temple, crushing all of the Philistines and himself.
The reason I list all of these stories is that they deserve the repetition. Simply trying to derive an abstract meaning from them would do them and the reader a disservice. This is not a morality play. I would never teach my children to try to be like Ehud or Gideon, certainly not Jephthah or Samson. These are heroes because of their strength, pure and simple.
Yet there is a clear message which comes through as all these stories are woven together. God will never stop saving his people. There are enemies all around, and God will show his strength by raising up a hero to stop them. But why? Why does God still love his people after they've betrayed him over, and over, and over again? That's love, folks. No matter how angry God is with Israel, he always welcomes them back.
There is a second part of this book, Chapters 17 - 21, which is just about the most horrifying thing you can find in all of literature. I read these chapters as one unit, framed by the repetition of the following verse, which is both 17:6 and 21:25, the very last verse of the book:
In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes.It is a tale of idolatry, rape, murder, war, and lawlessness. There is a clear comparison made between the Benjaminites of Gibeah and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah from Genesis. The whole story is not worth recounting here, and I'm not sure my stomach could take it if I tried.
The ending of Judges sends a mixed message. Is it now time for God to install a king in Israel? Perhaps that will turn them back from their wickedness. Yet all of this time, God himself has been their king; why do they need human protection? Later Samuel will tell the Israelites they have sinned in asking for a king, though God will give them one anyway. One way to read these words--"In those days there was no king in Israel"--is that the people had rejected even God as their king, and that is what they did "what was right in their own eyes."
If the first part was attractive because of its stories of strength and glory, the second part is nothing of the sort: it can only make one shudder. The Bible can be a very dark book.
But the thing is, I've always found Judges less disturbing than Joshua. It's no wonder that we see darkness when all the people do what is right in their own eyes. Somehow I can deal with that much more easily than I can with God himself commanding people to "show no mercy."
We'll just have to keep dealing with this as the Old Testament stories progress. War never stops being a central theme. Maybe by the time we get to Jesus there will be a way to make sense of it all.
Monday, May 4, 2015
Evolution, tradition, reason, faith
To me the Bible is the greatest book never written. Its contents were collected and edited over centuries until finally becoming the self-contained cornerstone of Judeo-Christian tradition that it is today. Like any great institution, the Bible was grown, not designed.
As a result of its history, the Bible carries around it now a sort of magical fence which, Catholic-Protestant debates notwithstanding, prevents any serious changes to be made to its contents. There is a marvelous double effect of the Bible on the community of Christian believers: on the one hand, conservative Bible believers are forced to confront a wealth of confusing, frustrating, and downright bizarre stories and passages which, by their own standard, cannot be erased; and on the other hand, liberals are forced to confront the reality that faith is not the result of pure reason, that rationalistic belief can only be something other than Christianity, and that it is in ancient tradition rather than current that the mind continues to receive its greatest stimulation and challenge.
It's a delicious irony. Conservatives, who hate evolution because they love the idea of God the designer of all things, are in reality relying on an evolved tradition, while liberals, who love evolution because they love the process of reason which discovered evolutionary theory, have in reality found the very principle which destroys their own rationalism.
If you really want to be a rationalist, the logical belief is not that the creation story was too short (thousands of years vs. billions of years) but rather too long, as Origen pointed out. Everyone knows God the great architect really created everything at once. Those seven days are all just metaphors.
Indeed, it's hard to accept that God might just like watching things grow. Evolution requires both patience and spontaneity; that is, one must go into it knowing it will take a very long time but not at all knowing the final outcome. And the really strange thing is that the conservative hates this because he is too impatient, while the liberal hates it because he isn't spontaneous--when it should really be the other way around.
As a result of its history, the Bible carries around it now a sort of magical fence which, Catholic-Protestant debates notwithstanding, prevents any serious changes to be made to its contents. There is a marvelous double effect of the Bible on the community of Christian believers: on the one hand, conservative Bible believers are forced to confront a wealth of confusing, frustrating, and downright bizarre stories and passages which, by their own standard, cannot be erased; and on the other hand, liberals are forced to confront the reality that faith is not the result of pure reason, that rationalistic belief can only be something other than Christianity, and that it is in ancient tradition rather than current that the mind continues to receive its greatest stimulation and challenge.
It's a delicious irony. Conservatives, who hate evolution because they love the idea of God the designer of all things, are in reality relying on an evolved tradition, while liberals, who love evolution because they love the process of reason which discovered evolutionary theory, have in reality found the very principle which destroys their own rationalism.
If you really want to be a rationalist, the logical belief is not that the creation story was too short (thousands of years vs. billions of years) but rather too long, as Origen pointed out. Everyone knows God the great architect really created everything at once. Those seven days are all just metaphors.
Indeed, it's hard to accept that God might just like watching things grow. Evolution requires both patience and spontaneity; that is, one must go into it knowing it will take a very long time but not at all knowing the final outcome. And the really strange thing is that the conservative hates this because he is too impatient, while the liberal hates it because he isn't spontaneous--when it should really be the other way around.
Friday, June 7, 2013
Historical and Theological Adam
Peter Leithart's argument on historical Adam confuses me. On the one hand, he subscribes to Pope John Paul II's distinction between "historical" and "theological" humanity. In order to understand Christian ethics, it is necessary to go back to the beginning:
Leithart gives theological arguments which suggest that if we give up on the historical reality of the creation of Adam, we will lose our theological and ethical foundation. This is problematic because it simply forbids us from asking any questions about the material reality of Adam. If we buy his argument, we accept the existence of Adam as recounted in the Bible because of the theological implications that come with it. Forget whether or not archaeology, biology, geology, or physics might have anything to say about the possible physical existence of such a human being, or the age of the earth, etc.
While I have never much appreciated the notion that theology and science are wholly separated spheres, the other extreme seems equally problematic. N. T. Wright's description of biblical cosmology has always stuck with me: it's the intersection of two worlds. Just as in C. S. Lewis's Narnia series there are two distinct worlds which intersect, so heaven and earth in the Bible appear to have such a relationship.
So what of historical Adam? Is it necessary that we accept this belief on theological grounds? Would it not be more appropriate to accept the existence of theological Adam?
The common objection from evangelical circles is that this is really a way to say Adam never existed in any real way. My response: this is a limited view of "real." If heaven is real, indeed if God is real, but is not perceptible by the methods of historical humanity--that is to say by the sciences and reason--I don't see why the same can't be true of Adam.
It's difficult to capture the distinction, here, but I'll try to do so with the Resurrection, the fundamental turning point for Christian theology. Christians historically believe that the Resurrection really happened--that is, Jesus physically, literally, really rose from the dead. But what we don't believe is that there is any scientific explanation for this. How could there be? Science insists on explaining things in terms of things we can control or observe repeatedly. We can't repeat the Resurrection. If it happened, it happened once and for all, and we hope it will happen to the rest of us some day. What can we say about it, then? Is there an explanation of the Resurrection? The most we can say is that the power to raise the dead came from heaven. This is inaccessible to us, but we believe it is there, and we believe we will have access to it again one day.
So with Adam, what analogy can one draw? Adam is inaccessible to the sciences. We can't see him with archaeology, we can't verify the historical records and find he is there. But we believe he was there, in the sense that we believe humanity was in a real sense created in the image of God. We don't have access to this. We believe that one day we will, but for now, all we have is the historical tools of historical humanity, which don't have access to theological Adam.
I am not suggesting the Bible is describing another world which has no relation to ours. But then I am suggesting that the Bible is not describing solely our world. If there really are two world which intersect (and sometimes collide?) then it should not be surprising of sometimes the Bible describes things which are simply inaccessible to any rational tools we have.
Whatever the appropriate response may be, I've found conservative evangelicals consistently failing in addressing this issue, because they always give me theological reasons to believe something historical, rather than theological reasons to believe something theological (or historical reasons to believe something historical). As someone who believes both science and theology are very important, I believe the distinction is worth making and then exploring.
Historical humanity is the humanity enslaved by sin, turned here and there by mixed motives, the humanity of domination and control, of objectification and shame. But the Bible begins with an account of a different form of human life, which John Paul labels the “theological,” according to which humanity is made in the image of God to be God’s covenant partner.On the other hand, having accepted this distinction between "historical" and "theological," Leithart goes on to assert that,
...And this theological form of humanity is still normative. Christians can’t stop at the boundary. We can’t concede that there is only “historical man” in all his evil and shame and abuse. We can’t really understand the career of historical man, John Paul says, without knowing that it is a deviation from the original state of man.
Unfortunately, Evangelicals appear eager to replicate the liberal error. Today, many, perhaps most, Evangelicals still believe that Adam was an actual man, but there is a growing body of opinion asserting the contrary.What does "actual" mean in this context? Does it mean ... historical?
Leithart gives theological arguments which suggest that if we give up on the historical reality of the creation of Adam, we will lose our theological and ethical foundation. This is problematic because it simply forbids us from asking any questions about the material reality of Adam. If we buy his argument, we accept the existence of Adam as recounted in the Bible because of the theological implications that come with it. Forget whether or not archaeology, biology, geology, or physics might have anything to say about the possible physical existence of such a human being, or the age of the earth, etc.
While I have never much appreciated the notion that theology and science are wholly separated spheres, the other extreme seems equally problematic. N. T. Wright's description of biblical cosmology has always stuck with me: it's the intersection of two worlds. Just as in C. S. Lewis's Narnia series there are two distinct worlds which intersect, so heaven and earth in the Bible appear to have such a relationship.
So what of historical Adam? Is it necessary that we accept this belief on theological grounds? Would it not be more appropriate to accept the existence of theological Adam?
The common objection from evangelical circles is that this is really a way to say Adam never existed in any real way. My response: this is a limited view of "real." If heaven is real, indeed if God is real, but is not perceptible by the methods of historical humanity--that is to say by the sciences and reason--I don't see why the same can't be true of Adam.
It's difficult to capture the distinction, here, but I'll try to do so with the Resurrection, the fundamental turning point for Christian theology. Christians historically believe that the Resurrection really happened--that is, Jesus physically, literally, really rose from the dead. But what we don't believe is that there is any scientific explanation for this. How could there be? Science insists on explaining things in terms of things we can control or observe repeatedly. We can't repeat the Resurrection. If it happened, it happened once and for all, and we hope it will happen to the rest of us some day. What can we say about it, then? Is there an explanation of the Resurrection? The most we can say is that the power to raise the dead came from heaven. This is inaccessible to us, but we believe it is there, and we believe we will have access to it again one day.
So with Adam, what analogy can one draw? Adam is inaccessible to the sciences. We can't see him with archaeology, we can't verify the historical records and find he is there. But we believe he was there, in the sense that we believe humanity was in a real sense created in the image of God. We don't have access to this. We believe that one day we will, but for now, all we have is the historical tools of historical humanity, which don't have access to theological Adam.
I am not suggesting the Bible is describing another world which has no relation to ours. But then I am suggesting that the Bible is not describing solely our world. If there really are two world which intersect (and sometimes collide?) then it should not be surprising of sometimes the Bible describes things which are simply inaccessible to any rational tools we have.
Whatever the appropriate response may be, I've found conservative evangelicals consistently failing in addressing this issue, because they always give me theological reasons to believe something historical, rather than theological reasons to believe something theological (or historical reasons to believe something historical). As someone who believes both science and theology are very important, I believe the distinction is worth making and then exploring.
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Origen on creationism
Okay, so Origen didn't actually write about creationism. But he did write some things that might be relevant, such as the following passage from The Philocalia (emphasis added):
Anyway, will any man of sense suppose that there was a first day, and a second, and a third, evening and morning, without sun and moon and stars? and the first, as it were, even without a heaven? And who is so silly as to imagine that God, like a husbandman, planted a garden in Eden eastward, and put in it a tree of life, which could be seen and felt, so that whoever tasted of the fruit with his bodily teeth received the gift of life, and further that any one as he masticated the fruit of this tree partook of good and evil? And if God is also said to walk in the garden in the evening, and Adam to hide himself under the tree, I do not suppose that any one will doubt that these passages by means of seeming history, though the incidents never occurred, figuratively reveal certain mysteries. Moreover, Cain's coming out from the presence of God, if we give heed, is a distinct inducement to inquire what is meant by "the presence of God," and by a man's "coming out from" it. Why say more? They who are not quite blind can collect countless similar instances of things recorded as actual occurrences, though not literally true.Note: this was written approximately 18 centuries ago by a Christian theologian. Doesn't that make it seem a little silly that we still have arguments about creationism?
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Sunday, July 10, 2011
In defense of Ecclesiastes
If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God, who gives to all generously and ungrudgingly, and it will be given you.At Trinity Pres we're doing a Sunday school (I'm sorry, "education hour") on Ecclesiastes and James. Not much has been written comparing and contrasting James and Ecclesiastes. I think the above quotes should make it clear why not.
James 1:5
And I applied my mind to know wisdom and to know madness and folly. I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind.
For in much wisdom is much vexation,Ecclesiastes 1:17-18
and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow.
Inevitably, there are some in the class who are immediately concerned with whether or not there are contradictions in the Bible. Stalwart defenders of the truth must chime in with their rationalizations of any and all differences between one book and another. It simply will not do to let the tension stand.
One of the most remarkable things about Scripture is that books like Ecclesiastes made it in. Also on my list of favorites for similar reasons are Esther, Job, and Song of Solomon. It really seems like the very middle of the Bible is packed full of stuff to throw people off (the Psalms themselves are often no exception). (Proverbs, I suppose, is not so challenging.)
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Finally, a hermeneutic I can get into
Thanks to Mockingbird for pointing out this wonderful article by Timothy Beal, though I have serious problems with the interpretation they give. (In particular, I've found that Mockingbird presents a pretty distorted view of reality by relentlessly filtering it through the "law" and "gospel" dichotomy. Because of this, I also think their critique of Beal falls flat.)
This article seems to have been written just for me:
In the midst of many discussions in which I feel sandwiched between the strident claims of atheists and the overly conservative claims of evangelical Christians, it's nice to hear someone say, as Beal puts so well,
This article seems to have been written just for me:
For many potential Bible readers, that expectation that the Bible is univocal is paralyzing. You notice what seem to be contradictions or tensions between different voices in the text. You can't find an obvious way to reconcile them. You figure that it must be your problem. You don't know how to read it correctly, or you're missing something. If the Bible is God's perfect, infallible Word, then any misunderstanding or ambiguity must be the result of our own depravity. So you either give up or let someone holier than thou tell you "what it really says." I think that's tragic. You're letting someone else impoverish it for you, when in fact you have just brushed up against the rich polyvocality of biblical literature.
In the midst of many discussions in which I feel sandwiched between the strident claims of atheists and the overly conservative claims of evangelical Christians, it's nice to hear someone say, as Beal puts so well,
Bible debunkers and Bible defenders are kindred spirits. They agree that the Bible is on trial. They agree on the terms of the debate, and what's at stake, namely the Bible's credibility as God's infallible book. They agree that Christianity stands or falls, triumphs or fails, depending on whether the Bible is found to be inconsistent, to contradict itself. The question for both sides is whether it fails to answer questions, from the most trivial to the ultimate, consistently and reliably.
But you can't fail at something you're not trying to do. To ask whether the Bible fails to give consistent answers or be of one voice with itself presumes that it was built to do so. That's a false presumption, rooted no doubt in thinking of it as the book that God wrote. On the contrary, biblical literature is constantly interpreting, interrogating, and disagreeing with itself. Virtually nothing is asserted someplace that is not called into question or undermined elsewhere. Ultimately it resists conclusion and explodes any desire we might have for univocality.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Be strong and courageous
How should I react to the book of Joshua? For me, there is no easy way to resolve the issue. Four different "modes" of reaction seem to arise in me, and it's difficult to see how they can be combined coherently. So in this little blog post, I will simply go through these four modes of reaction, one at a time, and leave them all standing in tension with one another. Perhaps, just as musical strings must be held in tension in order to produce beautiful sound, it is necessary simply to hold ideas in tension before they make any music.
Mode 1: Just enjoy the show. Joshua would make an epic movie, in the hands of the right producer. That same visceral energy that drives the movie 300 would carry through in this blood-and-guts epic battle sequence. Make no mistake, this book should be rated "R." It does not shy away from prostitutes, from cities being burned and pillaged, from kings being beheaded, or from the wrath of God consuming sinners in the flame. Without doubt, this story appeals to that instinct in us to be part of a warrior nation, a people sworn to absolute allegiance, willing not only to die but to kill for the sake of God. Who would not be stirred by the words of Joshua? "Come near, put your feet on the necks of these kings. ... Do not be afraid or dismayed; be strong and courageous; for thus the Lord will do to all the enemies against whom you fight." Who would not be proud to fight for such a man before whom kingdom after kingdom fell? As we read later in Judges 3:1-2, war was a test of Israel's devotion to God, which he explicitly meant for successive generations to experience. I think it is still not so difficult to understand, even in our pampered culture, the appeal of such a life: to forget how to fight, after all, is to become weak, complacent, and unfit for holiness.
Mode 1: Just enjoy the show. Joshua would make an epic movie, in the hands of the right producer. That same visceral energy that drives the movie 300 would carry through in this blood-and-guts epic battle sequence. Make no mistake, this book should be rated "R." It does not shy away from prostitutes, from cities being burned and pillaged, from kings being beheaded, or from the wrath of God consuming sinners in the flame. Without doubt, this story appeals to that instinct in us to be part of a warrior nation, a people sworn to absolute allegiance, willing not only to die but to kill for the sake of God. Who would not be stirred by the words of Joshua? "Come near, put your feet on the necks of these kings. ... Do not be afraid or dismayed; be strong and courageous; for thus the Lord will do to all the enemies against whom you fight." Who would not be proud to fight for such a man before whom kingdom after kingdom fell? As we read later in Judges 3:1-2, war was a test of Israel's devotion to God, which he explicitly meant for successive generations to experience. I think it is still not so difficult to understand, even in our pampered culture, the appeal of such a life: to forget how to fight, after all, is to become weak, complacent, and unfit for holiness.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
These are the words
There is something exquisitely theatrical about Deuteronomy (I suppose Vanhoozer is right on that one). This is not simply a restatement of the law given to the Israelites. It is Moses' great farewell speech, rounding out the Pentateuch with a glimpse of the future to come. The book flows beautifully from a recounting of Israel's journey through the wilderness to a series of exhortations to remember the commandments diligently, followed by a detailed examination of those commandments, then a dramatic enactment of the covenant, and finishing with Moses' song. The epilogue with a bold summary of Moses' life: "Never since has there arisen a prophet in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face."
I wish I could read through this book in one sitting. It isn't necessarily too long to do, but it's just long enough that time doesn't always allow it. One thing I find incredibly amusing about the modern Christian reading of the Old Testament law is how people are overwhelmed by how long it is. What I find remarkable is how much the opposite is true: this law is profoundly concise. Considering a single bill in the U. S. Congress can be more than 2000 pages, it is totally laughable that anyone would balk at the number of commandments in Torah. What I am getting at here is that each book in Torah deserves to be read as a whole, perhaps in a single reading or even narration. (What kind of insight might we gain if we listened to a professional actor read the whole of Deuteronomy as a dramatic monologue?)
I wish I could read through this book in one sitting. It isn't necessarily too long to do, but it's just long enough that time doesn't always allow it. One thing I find incredibly amusing about the modern Christian reading of the Old Testament law is how people are overwhelmed by how long it is. What I find remarkable is how much the opposite is true: this law is profoundly concise. Considering a single bill in the U. S. Congress can be more than 2000 pages, it is totally laughable that anyone would balk at the number of commandments in Torah. What I am getting at here is that each book in Torah deserves to be read as a whole, perhaps in a single reading or even narration. (What kind of insight might we gain if we listened to a professional actor read the whole of Deuteronomy as a dramatic monologue?)
Theological jargon and the Church
Kevin Vanhoozer's The Drama of Doctrine attempts to address "the strange disappearance of doctrine in the church." He attempts in many long, drawn out sentences to illustrate how doctrine can be the "stuff of life," related to everything we do. Yet his own tendency to say everything in more words than necessary gives us all the evidence we need to understand the disconnect between theology and the Church.
Let me pick a typical paragraph from this book, and then I'll translate it for you.
There is nothing wrong with technical language where absolutely necessary to convey meaning. As a mathematician, I very comfortably use highly technical language which is packed with meaning. In other words, any other possible way to say the same thing in a mathematical argument would be longer, not shorter. As an off-the-cuff example, there simply is no shorter way to say, "Every bounded linear operator is continuous." In theology (or at least in this book) it appears just the opposite. It reminds me of a sign on one of my college professors' office doors: "Think! There has to be a harder way to do it." We are doing the Church a terrible disservice if theologians continue to endorse language which, though translatable into simple terms which any layman could understand, is meant solely for the purposes of conversation between theologians.
Such convoluted language is generally symptomatic of ideas which cannot be defended in the face of current evidence. The fact that I am 70 pages into Vanhoozer's book and he has yet to actually begin to defend his main thesis is deeply worrisome. I am more satisfied by two blog posts from my brother than I am with 70 pages of flowery reinterpretation of doctrine as "theo-drama."
Let me pick a typical paragraph from this book, and then I'll translate it for you.
It is tempting to reduce the communicative act to its proposition content alone. Yet such an identification of divine discourse with propositional content is too hasty and reductionist, for it omits two other important aspects of the communicative action, namely, the illocutionary (what is done) and perlocutionary (what is effected). To repeat: what is authoritative about the Bible is what God says and does in and with its words. To equate God's word with the content it conveys is to work with an abbreviated Scripture principles that reduces revelation to the propositional residue of it's locutions [!]. Such an abbreviated Scripture principle, in overlooking the illocutionary and perlocutionary dimensions, is both christologically and pneumatologically deficient. It fails to see that what Scripture is doing is witnessing to and hence mediating Christ, and it fails to do justice to the role of the Holy Spirit in making sure that this witness is effective.Translation: "the authority of the Bible isn't just about ideas; it's about knowing Christ through the Holy Spirit." There, now I think everyone in our congregation gets it. If someone translated the whole book in this way, I might be done with it in one sitting.
There is nothing wrong with technical language where absolutely necessary to convey meaning. As a mathematician, I very comfortably use highly technical language which is packed with meaning. In other words, any other possible way to say the same thing in a mathematical argument would be longer, not shorter. As an off-the-cuff example, there simply is no shorter way to say, "Every bounded linear operator is continuous." In theology (or at least in this book) it appears just the opposite. It reminds me of a sign on one of my college professors' office doors: "Think! There has to be a harder way to do it." We are doing the Church a terrible disservice if theologians continue to endorse language which, though translatable into simple terms which any layman could understand, is meant solely for the purposes of conversation between theologians.
Such convoluted language is generally symptomatic of ideas which cannot be defended in the face of current evidence. The fact that I am 70 pages into Vanhoozer's book and he has yet to actually begin to defend his main thesis is deeply worrisome. I am more satisfied by two blog posts from my brother than I am with 70 pages of flowery reinterpretation of doctrine as "theo-drama."
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Strength in Numbers
The title of this post is meant as more than just a pun on the title of the Bible's fourth book. It is meant to convey what I think is the key theme of Numbers: a test of strength. The book starts with a census of all military eligible men among the Israelites. It proceeds to continue the narrative begun in Exodus, with the Israelites heading out from Sinai and moving toward the promised land so that they can move in and conquer it. Just as the Israelites are about to enter, the central crisis of the book unfolds. They send spies to scope out the land, and all the spies but Caleb and Joshua come back with an unfavorable report about the gigantic Anakites. Thus the people doubt God's mission for them to enter the land of Canaan, and many try to escape back to Egypt. It is at this moment that God desires to be rid of all the Israelites and start over with Moses, and Moses responds with this plea:
"Then the Egyptians will hear of it, for in your might you brought up this people from among them, and they will tell the inhabitants of this land. They have heard that you, O Lord, are in the midst of this people; for you, O Lord, are seen face to face, and your cloud stands over them and you go in front of them, in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night. Now if you will this people all one time, then the nations who have heard about you will say, 'It is because the Lord was not able to bring this people into the land he swore to give them that he has slaughtered them in the wilderness.' And now, therefore, let the power of the Lord be great in the way that you promised when you spoke, saying,
'The Lord is slow to anger,Forgive the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of your steadfast love, just as you have pardoned this people, from Egypt even until now."
and abounding in steadfast love,
forgiving iniquity and transgression,
but by no means clearing the guilty,
visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children
to the third and the fourth generation.'
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
The Priests' Manual
Leviticus is often very boring, at times horrifying, and at certain rare moments satisfying. And that's no wonder: it's an ancient document about government. After the story of the Exodus, in which God leads the nation of Israel out of Egypt, declares them his people, and makes a covenant with them to be their king, a question remains: what is God's administration going to be like? There's no separation of church and state here; the priests are the ones who provide access to God, the king of Israel.
Caveat: Moses is not himself a priest, yet he is higher than all of them. The refrain of Leviticus is, "The Lord spoke to Moses, saying..." Although the priests are to minister more directly to God than the common people, there is yet a buffer even between the priests and God. The holiness of God is probably the key issue throughout all of Leviticus. Thus the writer is concerned with demonstrating how nothing tainted can come near him without following strict guidelines, not even the most holy of all the people of Israel.
Caveat: Moses is not himself a priest, yet he is higher than all of them. The refrain of Leviticus is, "The Lord spoke to Moses, saying..." Although the priests are to minister more directly to God than the common people, there is yet a buffer even between the priests and God. The holiness of God is probably the key issue throughout all of Leviticus. Thus the writer is concerned with demonstrating how nothing tainted can come near him without following strict guidelines, not even the most holy of all the people of Israel.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)