A nice article from the Chief Rabbi of the United Congregations of the Commonwealth in the UK.
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Month: August 2008
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Finding Faith, Losing Faith
On the Jesus Creed blog, Scot McKnight’s regular guest poster, RJS, comment’s on Scot’s new book, “Finding Faith, Losing Faith.” RJS is a chemist at the University of Michigan. I think anyone who works with youth and young adults needs to read this very carefully. We need to find ways to pass along an intellectually honest and robust faith to our young people. Evangelicals of previous generations — of my generation — so far have mostly failed to do this. The old model of hostility, confrontation, and defensiveness doesn’t work. We cannot encourage or allow people to hide their heads in the sands of dogmatic statements concerning how historical and textual criticism and the findings of the contemporary natural sciences relate to the Bible as scripture. Inevitably, many of them will look up, and be decapitated.
This is the third in the “Text(s) of Scripture” series between Thomas and yours truly.
Our present text is Psalm 18:31:
As for God, his way is perfect;
the word of the LORD is flawless.
He is a shield
for all who take refuge in him.
Thom:
This God—his way is perfect;
the word of the LORD proves true;
he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.
“Prove It!”
That’s what a nine year old says to another nine year old when a boast has been made or a bluff is waiting to be called. Even if something is proven, the person who is right still might need to take refuge from the more powerful or the bully. Spun out into a cosmic game of good versus evil, where spears are being thrown at harp players and prophetic words seem weak when confronted with the sword, proving right over might seems impossible.
In this psalm of David, he is declaring once again that the word of the LORD proves itself true, because it has been witnessed in his own life. He has seen God’s prophecy and law prove its worthiness and perfection. He has seen his life spared. He has seen the wisdom of the Proverbs play itself out in real life. He has heard God’s true prophets say “this is the word of the LORD” and then seen the fulfillment of this word.
God’s word is his covenant to us. It is his agreement, his oath, his desire, focus, and pleasure. He speaks and the earth shakes. He speaks and Creation becomes. He delights in the fulfillment of his Word, the heirs of his coming kingdom.
Christians live on the dawn of the last days. We have seen the light cusp the horizon, and we prepare for the sunrise. But it hasn’t come yet.
But it has! Christ is risen each Easter morn, in each soul that follows his way, in each mouth that is fed, heart warmed, cold body clothed, and orphan adopted. His Word, though tempted and suffering, even death on a cross, has been proven. It was the same in the time of David. It will be the same forevermore, until the Kingdom dawns.
Dave:
What does it mean that the “word of the Lord is flawless?” I think this is a kind of relational, experiential term: God’s ways are perfect and his “word” is “tested” or “tried and true” — a more accurate translation of the Hebrew here than “flawless” (the Hebrew root refers to the purification and smelting of precious metals).
David here is referring specifically to the benefits of keeping the Torah, the Law. He claims in verses 18-24, for example, that
For I have kept the ways of the LORD,
And have not wickedly departed from my God.
For all His ordinances were before me,
And I did not put away His statutes from me.
I was also blameless with Him,
And I kept myself from my iniquity.
Therefore the LORD has recompensed me according to my righteousness,
According to the cleanness of my hands in His eyes.
David celebrates his fidelity to Torah and attributes his success over his enemies to superior keeping of Torah. In fact, this Psalm is recorded essentially verbatim in 2 Samuel 22, after David has consolidated his rule over Israel after bloody conflict with Saul and civil war against his own son, Absalom.
David’s claim to be “blameless,” however, is something of a rhetorical and literary device. In fact, David repeatedly violated God’s law in serious ways. Absalom was the son of David’s unlawful tryst with Bathsheba, which David tried to cover up through the murder of Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah (2 Samuel 11-12). As another example, David took a census of Israel, which he later acknowledged to be sinful, and which resulted in a judgment of pestilence against Israel (this census was sinful probably because it involved increased taxation, conscription and forced labor) (2 Sam. 24). David, who ultimately repents for his violations of the Law, is “blameless” only in comparison to those who disregard the Law entirely.
The claim here, then, is that those who follow God’s ways will not be disappointed. There is also an implied lesson, I think, that when we fail to follow God’s ways we should turn back to Him and that He will receive us.
God’s “word” — His Law — His definition of the “good life” — is “tried and true.” Many heroes of the faith — even highly flawed heroes such as David — have listened to God’s word and have found God to be faithful. And many others have obstinately turned aside from God’s ways, to their ultimate destruction.
So is this passage a proof text for a particular doctrine of scripture? Yes and no, I think. Yes, in that God’s precepts and commands, which fundamentally concern appropriate respect for God, self, and others, always lead to a “true” life for those who follow them. No, I humbly submit, in that it isn’t really connected to our modern meticulously phrased, logically systematic statements about how the human and divine aspects of scripture as a whole relate to each other in general, or about how scripture “measures up” to modern ideas of historiography.
Here’s a photo that shows bullet holes and other damage to a 4000-year-old ziggurat in Ur, the Biblical city from which Abraham originated, located in modern Iraq.
This is the second in the Text(s) of Scripture series between Thomas and myself. Our text is Luke 3:1-3:
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar—when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, Herod tetrarch of Galilee, his brother Philip tetrarch of Iturea and Traconitis, and Lysanias tetrarch of Abilene— during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the desert. He went into all the country around the Jordan, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.
Thom: There is no other way around it. This passage necessitates a different understanding of “word of God” than as a synonym for the Bible. Putting aside the fact that John calls Christ the Word, here in this passage the word of God travelling to John in the desert cannot be interpreted as an autobiographical testimony (the Bible talking about itself).
There is a spiritual, or better yet “Holy Spiritual” aspect to the Word of God travelling. The word of God is travelling, on the mood, a rushing wind—pushing John out into the desert and filling his mouth with the traditional Jewish prophetic decleration: repent!
The word of God is active here, it is spiltting sould and spirit, calling people to repent, to go out into the desert to remove themselves from the patterns of the world. To die. To be planted in the baptismal water and rise up again as a new creation.
The word of God is moving John around the country as the Holy Spirit hovered over the waters at the dawn of Creation. This prophecy is creational, calling people to a new Eden, a new way to live.
A bound book made by a scribe did not grow legs and arms and push John out into the desert with super-book strength. The word of God came from outside the “word of God.” Wait, no, that is a bad way to look at this. One way is not proper, the other mystical or “other.” Instead, the word of God is just that: the word of God.
It is written on paper.
It is written on our hearts.
And sometimes it comes to us, and speaks to us, and lets us know our calling. Our calling into the desert, our calling into new creation, our calling into the kingdom.
Dave: What jumps out at me in this passage is that the “word of God” moves “to” John the Baptist. In the Greek, the preposition translated “to” here is “epi,” which means “on” or “upon.” So John is waiting in the desert and the “word of God” seizes him. He is filled, perhaps suddenly and noticeably, with something that causes him to get up and preach.
It’s also interesting that “word of God” here is “rhema Theou,” not the “logos ton Theou” of Hebrews 4:12 (our previous text). Why “rhema” — an utterance or topic, often of command or dispute — rather than “logos,” a “word” with its Johanine implications of the divine essence / Christ? Well, I lack the scholarly chops to say anything definitive about that, but perhaps it’s significant that Luke uses a forceful term for “word.” The “word of God” here animates and compels John. It is time for action. John is seized by an imperative from God that compels him to preach.
This can remind us, I think, that the “word of God” is transformative. I’m very tempted here to say something Barthian: the “word of God” is only really the “word of God” when it is transforming the Christian community and the world. Maybe I’d nuance that a bit: the “word of God” must transform us if it is to function in and through us as God desires. The “word of God” has not “come upon” us when we extract a list of propositions from the Biblical texts, nor can any such list of propositions transform the world. Rather, the “word of God” has “come upon” us when it causes us to repent and to call others to repentance from the violence and death of sin to the peace and life of righteousness (right-ness) in Christ.
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Tocqueville on Lawyers
My friend and colleague Frank Pasquale offered this quote from Tocqueville’s Democracy in America in his address today at the Seton Hall Law School new student orientation:
The government of democracy is favorable to the political power of lawyers; for when the wealthy, the noble, and the prince are excluded from the government, the lawyers take possession of it, in their own right, as it were, since they are the only men of information and sagacity, beyond the sphere of the people, who can be the object of the popular choice. If, then, they are led by their tastes towards the aristocracy and the prince, they are brought in contact with the people by their interests. They like the government of democracy without participating in its propensities and without imitating its weaknesses; whence they derive a twofold authority from it and over it.
The people in democratic states do not mistrust the members of the legal profession, because it is known that they are interested to serve the popular cause; and the people listen to them without irritation, because they do not attribute to them any sinister designs. The lawyers do not, indeed, wish to overthrow the institutions of democracy, but they constantly endeavor to turn it away from its real direction by means that are foreign to its nature. Lawyers belong to the people by birth and interest, and to the aristocracy by habit and taste; they may be looked upon as the connecting link between the two great classes of society.
My latest paper, “Patent Damages Reform and the Shape of Patent Law“, is available on SSRN.
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Mount Hood
Here I am at Mount Hood in Oregon.
We also spent some time in wine country:
This is the first post in the “Text(s) of Scripture” series in conjunction with Thomas at Everyday Liturgy.
Our first text is Hebrews 4:12: “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”
Exegetical note: It is difficult from the context to determine what “ho logos ton theou,” “the word of God,” means in this context. The immediate context seems to refer to the gospel, and warns that the gospel must be received in faith for the promise of a “Sabbath rest” to become effective for the hearer. Some commentators therefore suggest “the word of God” here refers specifically to the gospel; others identify it with Christ, the “Logos” of John 1, though this is not a typical Pauline usage; and still others identify it with revelation generally, including all of the scriptures.
Reflections:
Dave: What does it mean for a text to be “living and active?” I’m reminded of current debates in the United States about whether our Constitution is a “living” document. There is lots of unfortunate political baggage around this concept, but it seems obvious to me that the Constitution is a living document, whatever approach one takes to its interpretation. The Constitution must continually be applied to circumstances the framers never could have anticipated, such as the scope of free speech rights on the Internet. And the Constitution continually judges our polity and praxis, forcing us to consider again and again whether “we the people” are living up to our formative ideals. There is a hermeneutical spiral in the interpretation and application of the Constitution, as we move from the original context to the contemporary challenges and back again.
The Bible is a sort of constitution for the Church, and it is “living and active” in a manner similar to the U.S. Constitution. The community governed by the Biblical constitution – the Church – must continually apply the principles reflected in the text to new circumstances the human writers could never have imagined. How do we respond to ethical challenges posed by new technologies, such as in vitro fertilization? What kind of community should we become in a global village networked on a scale inconceivable in the first century? And the Biblical constitution continually judges the polity and praxis of the Church, cutting through our cultural baggage and hypocrisy and asking whether we truly are loving God and neighbor fully.
Yet the Bible is “living and active” in ways that cannot be claimed for a legal text like the Constitution because this “word” is uniquely “of God.” The God who speaks this “word” is the triune God, who became incarnate in the Son and who speaks in and to the Church in the Spirit. The “text” of the “logos ton Theou” is not merely a set of signs that signify discrete legal-regulative principles in the manner of a Constitution. It is rather the signification of the presence of the triune God who continually transforms the community of faith.
Thom: There is a sense here that the author is intentionally linking the “word of God” or gospel to Creation. The Sabbath rest is a signifier of judgment or completion, for only when Creation was good and complete did God rest. The actional quality of the “word of God” is the sense that it moves beyond the text to stir hearts to adhere to the gospel message. Here, the gospel or “word of God” finds its truest sense as the way that a person is judged once he or she has completed the task at hand: to live a life based on the “word of God.” I do not take “word of God” to be inclusive of Scripture here, but instead to be the fullness of God’s prophetic action in the world, whether through the words of Scripture, the words of his servants, prophets, or kings (especially the true King, Christ). The statement that follows our quote is “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. Thus, the “word of God” is substance to which we must give account. There are troubling and awesome prospects in this: that we cannot enter the rest of God unless we live the living Word. This is not a justification by works (alone), for the author clarifies in the previous section “for we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as those who have fallen short of it did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard it did not combine it with faith. Now we who have believed entered that rest.” The intersection of Word and Creation is evident in that Christ, the first fruits of the new creation, enables the faithful to enter into a Sabbath rest. The Word of God, the voice that called Creation into existence has been completing the work of rest since the creation of the world. Therefore, the “word of God” is thus a prophetic message, one of prayer, Scripture, prophecy, judgment, and action, that calls people out of the patterns of this world and into the Sabbath rest of God.