Category: Spirituality

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Law and Policy Spirituality Theology

David Gushee on Palin's Challenge

David Gushee, one of my favorite evangelical thinkers, writes a provocative piece in USA Today on the challenge he thinks Sarah Palin’s nomination to Vice President poses for conservative evangelicals (HT:  Euangelion).

I’m not sure Gushee completely hits the mark concerning church leadership.  As others note, gender roles and authority in the sphere of church polity is not necessarily the same question as gender roles and authority in the sphere of civil government.  However, Gushee is right, I think, that the arguments many “complementarians” make are rooted in what they understand as the order of creation, which extends to the church, the family, and presumably, to the other significant sphere of influence in society, the civil government. 

In fact, one of the key reasons complementarians hold that 1 Timothy 2:11-12 is normative for the entire Church age, rather than a limited cultural prohibition (such as, say, the repeated New Testament injunction that women should cover their heads during worship, which almost all evangelicals ignore) is that verses 13-15 refer directly to the order of creation of man and woman and to the woman’s role in the Fall.  This suggests, according to complementarians, that there is something inherent in the nature of “male” and “female” that establishes different (but complementary, not “superior” and “inferior”) social roles.

I won’t try to untangle all the impossibly difficult exegetical and hermeneutical issues the “complementarian vs. egalitarian” debate raises, but Gushee’s questions seem fair, particularly these:

  • If you agree that God can call a woman to serve as president, does this have any implications for your views on women’s leadership in church life? Would you be willing to vote for a qualified woman to serve as pastor of your church? If not, why not?
  • Do you believe that Palin is under the authority of her husband as head of the family? If so, would this authority spill over into her role as vice president?

The second question I quote above seems particularly dicey for complimentarians.  You might sidestep the first question by noting the distinctive spheres of governance represented by Church and State, but there’s no getting around the sphere of governance represented by the family.

Categories
Spirituality

That's My King

This is from S.M. Lockridge. (HT: Scot McKnight).   I remember hearing this recording played at a Promise Keepers rally in the mid-1990’s in a stadium full of 50,000 men.  Awesome.

Categories
Spirituality Theology

Christians and "The Culture"

Once in a while, the Introduction of a book has me shouting “yes” right from the start.  Such is the case with Andy Crouch’s Culture Making:  Recovering Our Creative Calling.  This paragraph in particular stated some things I have been thinking for a long time:

We talk about ‘the culture’ even though culture is always cultures, plural:  full of diversity, variety and history.  We talk about ‘engaging,’ ‘impacting’ and ‘transforming the culture’ when in fact the people who most carefully study culture tend to stress instead how much we are transformed by it.  If we are to be at all responsible agents in the midst of culture, we need to learn new ways of speaking about what we are doing.

Yes!!  When I hear or read about “the culture,” it is like nails on a blackboard to me.  We don’t inhabit “the culture”; we constitute and are part of many varied cultures, even within the seemingly homogenous world of middle class America.  My friend who is a graduate student, another friend who is a contractor, another who is a doctor, and myself as a law professor, all are white (or maybe white, Asian, African-American, and other) middle class guys in suburbia, all worship at similar kinds of churches, but all participate in diverse cultures relating to our different family and professional experiences.

Crouch continues:

The worst thing we could do is follow that familiar advice to ‘pray as if it all depended on God, and work as if it all depended on you.’  Rather, we need to become people who work as if it all depends on God — because it does, and because that is the best possible news.  We work for, indeed work in the life and power of, a gracious and infinitely resourceful Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.  And we know ourselves well enough that the thought that it might in fact all depend on us would drive us straight to fasting and trembling prayer.

Yes again!  I’m looking forward to chewing over this one.

Categories
Biblical Studies Spirituality Theology

What is Biblical "Faith"

This is one of those amazing things.  I’ve been thinking a bit lately about what Biblical “faith” means, how it contrasts with “doubt,” and how these concepts tie together in connection with the way we understand the Bible.  Literally moments after praying for some wisdom about this, I thought of checking the Conn-versation blog, and lo and behold — there is a post from a week ago on this very topic.  I reproduce that post below, to be chewed on when I have more time:

Over the past year, as I have been posting, lurking, and chiming in here at Conn-versation, and reading and occasionally commenting on Art Boulet’s personal blog, I have continually found myself brought back to the question of what Christian faith really is.

 

 

The Bible has a good bit to say on the subject, but it’s really a New Testament concept. The OT explicitly addresses faithfulness, but it’s usually in the context of a quality of Yahweh and the desired quality of his people. The aspect of belief and trust that we typically mean when we talk about faith makes its first appearance in the gospels. Jesus observes faith in the people he encounters, and tends to evaluate it on a quantitative scale: little or great. He seems to be addressing their specific willingness to trust in him personally to accomplish in-real-time salvific acts, manifest most often in healing and life-restoration miracles, which then serve as object lessons pointing to his greater purpose. For the most part, it’s not until the epistles that we get a fuller-blown explication of faith as belief and trust in the person and work of Christ for salvation and eternal life.

 

 

In light of this, what does it then mean when we talk about hanging on to faith or losing faith as we ask questions of the Bible? It has occurred to me that conservative reformed Christians have worked hard to ensure that faith is so underpinned by certainties that – well – it doesn’t require all that much faith. To be one of the people of Yahweh requires faith in Jesus, which requires faith in the Bible, which believers can trust completely because the church has doctrinally declared to be inerrant, wholly trustworthy, and perfect down to its very words. Start asking too many untidy questions of the Conn-versation sort, and the whole system, it would seem, is at risk of collapsing, bringing the faith of the faithful along with it.

 

 

This is where I’ve had difficulty. Does my faith in the Jesus of the gospels really hinge on Genesis 5 being literally true, as opposed to an Israelite retooling and repurposing of the Sumerian kings list?  On insisting as true that Samson was a historic figure and his deeds were accomplished as recorded or that David wrote the Psalms bearing his name?  On intentionally burying my understanding of the very different looks of Jeremiah in the MT and the LXX in favor of one Jeremiah only?  If these things are equivocal, must it follow that Jesus is equivocal?

 

 

Faith requires an element of trust in the absence of concrete proof. It is, as the writer of Hebrews puts it, “the conviction of things not seen.” Given that, to what extent does the church’s admittedly well-intended insistence on the perfection of Scripture as a bedrock of faith begin to work at cross-purposes with trusting in things not seen? It strikes me as requiring a greater measure of faith to go with the kind of Bible we’ve actually got than the kind of Bible we may have at one time thought we had, or the kind that arch-conservatives continue to insist we must have. Is there room for the Holy Spirit to infuse the believer’s soul with the truth of the gospel resulting in faith even when Genesis 1-11 is understood to be literature rather than history?

 

 

I think it’s time for some reflections on exactly what we as Christian believers mean when we say we have faith. Is the Bible we have, the one that God in some mysterious way caused to be written, assembled, translated, and passed down by generation after generation of Christians, robust enough to withstand detailed secular and academic scrutiny and still contribute to the creation and growth of faithful believers in the person and work of Jesus to salvation? If it’s not, what are we really saying? Is it, as the conservatives would argue, that God is less than fully God? Or, is it, as I have begun to think, that our faith is less than the faith that Jesus himself commended?  Or, is it something else?  What do you think?

Categories
Spirituality Theology

Missional Faith and the Role of Questions

Here’s a nice excerpt from Michael Barram’s article “Located Questions for a Missional Hermeneutic“:

The Bible itself illustrates the importance of questions in understanding the character and mission of God in the world. Questions punctuate critical turning points in Scripture, in many cases providing the opportunity for a deeper understanding and appropriation of God’s purposes and intentions. Moses asks whom he should say has sent him to Egypt, leading to God’s self-identification and eventual liberative action on behalf of those enslaved by Pharaoh (Exodus 3:13). Isaiah hears the voice of the Lord calling out, “Whom shall I send?,” leading to the prophet’s commission (Isaiah 6:8). Micah clarifies God’s expectations regarding human conduct when he asks, “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8). Upon hearing John the Baptist’s call for a repentance exemplified by “worthy fruit,” Luke describes the crowds, tax collectors, and even soldiers asking the pivotal, potentially life-changing question, “What should we do?” (Luke 3:10, 12, 14). Mark’s Gospel reaches its climax as Jesus asks the disciples not merely what others say about him, but more importantly, who do they say that he is? (Mark 8:29). According to John’s Gospel, Nathaniel and Pilate both articulate fundamental questions that ironically point to the very heart of Jesus’ identity and mission. Nathaniel asks, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” (John 1:46). The obvious answer for John’s readers is “absolutely!” Likewise, Pilate’s frustrated query, “What is truth?” (John 18:38), seems particularly poignant near the end of a Gospel that repeatedly describes Jesus, the Father, and the Spirit in terms of truth. Over and over again, Paul uses a variety of rhetorical questions in his letters to further his primary line of reasoning and to expose erroneous perceptions regarding the implications of his gospel (e.g., Rom 6:1, 15; 7:7).

We could go on to passage after passage in which various questions lead to crucial insights, refreshed priorities, and more faithful discipleship. Indeed, the Bible suggests that seemingly innocuous, inarticulate, and even half-baked questions can prove to be remarkably important. Consider, for example, the lawyer’s surprise in Luke’s Gospel when he has heard Jesus’ response to his question, “Who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29). Or how about the confusion and disappointment the apostles must have felt at the beginning of Acts, when they asked, “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6). Jesus’ answer demonstrates that human expectations are far smaller and more provincial than anything God has in store, even as he clarifies the apostles’ missional calling as witnesses (Acts 1:7-8). It is tempting to suggest that a fairly complete and compelling portrayal of the missio Dei could be written by focusing on biblical passages that feature question marks!

Perhaps more than anything else, a missional hermeneutic should be characterized by the relentless articulation of critical questions.

Categories
Ecclesiology Spirituality

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.

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Spirituality Theology

The Text(s) of Scripture: the living word of God

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.

Categories
Hermeneutics Spirituality Theology

The Text(s) of Scripture: Living and Active

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.

Categories
Spirituality

One Man's Journey

An amazing post from the iMonk.  Wow, can I relate on so many levels.

Categories
Spirituality

Golf

Scot McKnight writes light-heartedly on “Why Golf is Better than Soccer.”  I had the opportunity to play New Jersey’s top public course, Ballyowen, twice in the past two days.  Both days were special, with lovely weather and good playing partners, including my brother.  Sunday I handily broke 100, which is very good for me particularly on this course, and yesterday I missed it by one shot, after a disastrous front nine and a good back nine.  When the afternoon shadows are falling across the fairways, a summer breeze is blowing, and the little white ball arches against a blue sky on its way to a soft landing on the green — how grateful I am to be alive!