Awaiting Redemption

The King Jesus Gospel by Scot McKnight

2011-09-14T21:47:00.000-07:00

When I was in Bible college, I took a class on evangelism. One of our assignments was to find the “bare minimum” of the gospel. Our professor took us to 1 Cor 15:1-5, and showed us that the gospel was the message that Jesus died for sins and rose from the dead, that there is no way for a person to save himself or herself, and that Christ alone can save through faith. When I claimed that I didn’t see the theology of justification by faith in 1 Corinthians 15:1-5, I was told that it was implicit in the confession “Jesus died for sins.”

I didn’t believe that then and I don’t believe that now.

Even as a student, I saw a troubling implication of the gospel my professor was advocating. If the theology of justification by faith is part of the gospel, then denominations with different theology (i.e. the Roman Catholic Church) don’t believe the gospel. That bothered me, considering the number of Roman Catholic relatives I have, including my mother. But again, what bothered me the most is that it’s not in the text!

Don’t get me wrong, I believe in justification by grace through faith. There is nothing we can do to save ourselves. We are saved only by the grace of God through faith in Jesus. That is good theology. But it’s not the gospel. The gospel is a story about Jesus.

This is also the idea in Scot McKnight’s new book, The King Jesus Gospel (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011). McKnight argues that too many of us have inappropriately collapsed “the gospel” into soteriology (the theology of how people are saved). As important as doctrines like justification by faith, substitutionary atonement, and divine grace are, they are not the gospel. The biblical gospel, according to McKnight, is a story about Jesus—who he is and what he did. Our misunderstanding of the gospel has caused us to devalue discipleship, over-emphasize “making a decision,” and limit the effects of the cross to “me and my personal salvation.” McKnight suggests that by recapturing the biblical gospel, we can eliminate the disconnect between faith and following, make disciples that are in it for the long haul, and apply the lordship of Jesus to all of life and creation.

McKnight begins his book with some familiar stories, sobering statistics, and provocative questions. In 1971, McKnight became a Christian and had his first experience with evangelism gone bad. He and a deacon from his church invaded the home of a Sunday-morning visitor, whom the deacon badgered with the gospel until he said uncle and accepted Christ. The evangelism team rejoiced at the salvation, but the new “convert” never darkened the door of the church again. Research by the Barna group suggests that McKnight’s experience isn’t unique. At least 50 percent of Americans who “make a decision for Christ” don’t show any measure of discipleship. (20. He cites personal correspondence with Bill Kinnaman from the Barna group and statistics dated December 17, 2010.) Why do so many “conversions” not lead to discipleship? McKnight argues that it is because we have preached a “gospel” that is inaccurately boiled down to justification by faith and a personal decision for Christ. While McKnight affirms justification by faith and the importance of a personal decision, he says that the gospel is bigger than these things.

Having made the charge that church attrition is due in part to a misunderstanding of the gospel, McKnight transitions to walking through a number of biblical passages that recount the original gospel. He begins with the earliest account of the gospel—Paul’s summary in 1 Cor 15:1–5 (ESV):

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.

McKnight sees in this neither a detailed explanation of substitutionary atonement, nor a defense of justification by faith, nor a passionate plea for a decision. Instead, he sees a story about how Jesus fulfilled the hope of Israel. He writes:

The Gospel for the apostle Paul is the salvation-unleashing Story of Jesus, Messiah-Lord-Son, that brings to completion the Story of Israel as found in the Scriptures of the Old Testament. To “gospel” is to declare this story, and it is a story that saves people from their sins. That story is the only framing story if we want to be apostolic in how we present the gospel. We can the frame the “gospel” with other stories or categories, but there is one holy and apostolic story, and it is the Story of Israel. That is the apostolic framing story for the gospel. (61)

He contrasts this apostolic gospel with what we are tempted to do:

We are tempted to turn the story of what God is doing in this world through Israel and Jesus Christ into a story about me and my own personal salvation. In other words, the plan has a way of cutting the story from a story about God and God’s Messiah and God’s people into a story about God and one person—me—and in this the story shifts from Christ and community to individualism. We need the latter without cutting out the former. (62)

Having established that the apostolic gospel was a story about Jesus fulfilling the hope of Israel, McKnight walks through the Gospels, the preaching of Jesus, The Book of Acts, and the ancient creeds to show a consistent pattern: for the first Christians, the gospel was a story about Jesus. (Why else would we call the first four books of the New Testament “The Gospel”?)

McKnight finishes the book by turning his attention to modern day “gospeling.” In the penultimate chapter, he makes six comparisons between our methods of gospeling with those of the apostles. First, while our gospeling “seeks to persuade sinners to admit their sin and find Jesus as the Savior,” the apostles’ “summon[ed] listeners to confess Jesus as Messiah and Lord” (133). Second, the framing story of the apostles’ gospel was not the atonement or personal salvation, but the Story of Israel. Third, both ancient and modern gospeling have an element of avoiding the wrath or judgment of God. Fourth, the problem that modern gospeling seeks to solve is that individuals are sinners and destined to hell. The apostles’ gospel emphasized Israel’s story that humanity was created as co-rulers over the earth and mediators of God’s presence to creation. Both Adam and Israel failed at this task, but Jesus succeeded and is now working out his rule through the church. Fifth, McKnight acknowledges that there may be a slight anti-imperial message in the gospel (though he doesn’t see this emphasized by the apostles) that is largely ignored today. Finally, the apostles’ gospel was about Jesus, not the sinner or personal salvation.

In the final chapter of the book, McKnight challenges the church to become “people of the story”—to find our story in God’s story, to tell a radical counter-narrative to the stories of our day, and to create a Gospel culture.

There is a lot to like in McKnight’s book. First, it is biblical. McKnight is an expert in New Testament theology, and he investigates what the Bible has to say about the gospel. He doesn’t defend a theological system and he doesn’t attack any denomination or tradition; he simply looks at the texts and asks, “What did the first Christians believe about the gospel?” One may disagree with McKnight’s conclusions, but at least he roots the discussion in the ancient texts.

The second strength of McKnight’s book is that it exposes (and solves) the shortcomings of the way in which the gospel is popularly understood. If the gospel is synonymous with justification by faith, how did Jesus preach the gospel? Why are the first four books of the New Testament called “The Gospel”? Why don’t we see a clear explanation of justification by faith in the apostles’ preaching in Acts? Why does Paul talk about Jesus when he describes the gospel instead of defending justification by faith? (Again, McKnight believes that justification only comes through faith in Jesus; he just doesn’t think that this is the gospel.) These questions are all answerable when the gospel is understood as a story about Jesus and his fulfillment of the Story of Israel.

The final strength of McKnight’s book (and the one he is probably most proud of) is that it provides a robust gospel for a generation of “gospelers” engaging a post-everything culture. Methods of evangelism emphasizing theological systems and propositional truth-claims are becoming less and less effective. People in the Google era think and communicate in narrative. Many have tried to create a narrative gospel for the postmodern culture, but the results largely have been too existential. Postmoderns aren’t just looking for their own story, they want to be a part of a cosmic story. McKnight has successfully communicated the gospel in a narrative, but in a narrative that is consistent with the ancient narrative. The king Jesus gospel allows us to find our story in God’s story.

One area that deserves more exploration is the role of contextualization in “gospeling.” McKnight’s account of the gospel on pages 148–52 marches through the whole Bible, touching on Adam and Eve, the Tower of Babel, David and Solomon, the Babylonian exile, the life-story of Jesus, and the politics behind Jesus’ crucifixion. As I read it, I imagined trying to preach it to a bunch of 20-somethings who knew nothing about the Bible. I can’t imagine them tracking with me through all of that (apart from divine illumination!). My mind immediately went to the Story of Israel, and how much of it is important to understanding the Gospel. How Jewish do we have to be to be Christian?

The major accomplishment of the Third Quest for the Historical Jesus and the New Perspective on Paul is that they have recovered the “Jewishness” of both Jesus and Paul. The New Testament was written primarily by Jews, and the language, symbols, and stories they told make the most sense as a continuation of that of the Jews. However, there is also a sense in which the church is something new. There is a sense in which the Gentiles are accepted as they are—with their own histories, languages, and symbols, and without the need to adopt those of the Jews.

McKnight makes the point that all of the “gospeling” sermons in the Bible make use of the Story of Israel. This is not entirely true, and I wonder what would happen when we take into account audience when evaluating these early sermons. The vast majority of the sermons in Acts were preached either to Jews or to Gentile “god-fearers” who had already adopted the Jewish story as their own (for instance, Peter’s sermon to Cornelius and Paul’s sermon in the synagogue at Antioch).

The only instances we have in Acts of sermons given to Gentile pagans are Paul’s sermons in Lystra and Athens. In both of these instances, the only element of the Story of Israel that Paul includes is that God is the Creator (and Judge in Athens). While McKnight rightly points out that the apostles’ gospeling involved showing the overlap between God’s story and that of the listeners, he overemphasizes the role of Israel’s story because that is the story that most of the apostles’ audiences had previously adopted. In instances in which the apostles gospeled pagans, Israel’s story played a lesser (and almost nonexistent) role.

As they did when they spoke to Jews and god-fearers, the apostles demonstrated to pagans how God’s story intersected with their listeners’ stories. But in these instances, humanity’s story (not just Israel’s) provided the frame for God’s story. In each of Paul’s sermons to pagans, he condemns idolatry (Acts 14:15, 17:29), contrasts the Creator God with idols (14:15, 17:24), ties God’s story to theirs by saying that God overlooked their idolatry in the past (14:16, 17:30), calls them to repent (14:15, 17:30), and cites historical evidence for his message (14:17, 17:31). In Lystra, Paul cites God’s giving of rain as evidence and in Athens he cites the resurrection of Jesus. (It is important to note, though, that in Lystra, Paul also demonstrated the power of the Spirit by healing a crippled man.)

It makes sense that Paul’s preaching to pagans would differ from his preaching to Jews. After all, Paul believed that Jesus was the telos, the goal or the fulfillment, of the law (Romans 10:4). When the Galatians tried to make the story of Israel their own by adopting circumcision, Paul accused them of turning to a different Gospel (Galatians 1:6-7). To Paul, Jesus’ death and resurrection ushered in a new age where there was neither Jew nor Gentile, but one new people of God (Gal 3:28, Eph 2:14-15, Col 3:11). There was some continuity, but there was also something new.

McKnight is right in emphasizing that the message of Jesus, Paul, and the apostles has to be understood in Jewish terms. After all, they were all Jewish. But when Paul preached the gospel to Gentile pagans, he contextualized it to their own stories. We can assume that the story of Israel was part of the catechizing of new converts, as all of the New Testament churches (including the Galatians) seem to be familiar with the story. Teaching the story of Israel is important, it just isn’t the gospel.

So what does that mean for modern-day gospelers preaching in a non-Jewish context? First, start with the biblical gospel that McKnight has so clearly communicated in his book—that Jesus is Lord, that his death on the cross for our sins and resurrection from the dead has vindicated him as Son of God and Lord of the universe. Understanding Israel’s story is crucial to understanding God’s story. God created mankind to co-reign with him over the earth and reflect his glory as his eikons. Both Adam and Israel failed at that calling, but Jesus succeeded. Through Jesus’ death and resurrection and the work of the Holy Spirit, God is redeeming for himself a new humanity to fulfill his purposes for Creation.

Second, go to the problems that the gospel resolves, contextualized for the audience. The dominant framing story of my city (Gig Harbor, WA) is that happiness, love, and security can be found in money and a prestigious career. People live according to that story, but find it relatively unsatisfying (as evidenced by the prevalence of substance abuse, divorce, and addictions). God is absent, loneliness is rampant, and many (especially youth) lament life’s lack of purpose and meaning. Despite the fact that the idols of money, career, and sex directly contribute to the people’s unhappiness, they continue to worship them in the hope of achieving a different result.
The challenge of gospeling the people of Gig Harbor is contextualizing God’s story in light of their story. The King Jesus Gospel intersects the story of Gig Harbor in a number of areas. It resolves the problem of God’s absence though the indwelling of the Spirit. It resolves the problem of broken human relationships through God’s new humanity. Finally, it resolves the problem of life’s lack of meaning through working for the kingdom of God.

Third, tell God’s story in light of Gig Harbor’s story. While McKnight insists upon tying Gig Harbor’s story to the Story of Israel, this doesn’t seem to be the practice of the apostles when gospeling pagans. Instead, they located the pagans’ story within God’s broader story (of which Israel’s Story is a part). For Gig Harbor, this means showing that the dominant framing story fails, and explaining how God’s story resolves the problems created by that story (connecting to God through the Spirit, living in community as part of the new humanity, and finding purpose by engaging the world in the missio dei). At the center of God’s story is the simple message that Jesus Christ died for sins and rose from the dead as Lord and God, and a call to repent and follow Jesus.

McKnight’s book is needed in churches today. At a time when churches are forming coalitions around the gospel it is important to clarify that gospel. What gospel are we together for? The gospel Jesus preached, or another gospel? While many are collapsing the gospel into a message of personal salvation, McKnight has recaptured the King Jesus Gospel for a new generation. He dives into the Scriptures, sorts truth from assumptions, and comes up with a simple message about Jesus. McKnight overplays the role that Israel’s story plays in gospeling pagans, but his emphasis on story is refreshing for those gospeling the post-everything generation.

Story and History--The Role of Historical Investigation for Faith

2011-09-02T11:58:00.001-07:00

In his essay, “Knowing Jesus: Story, History and the Question of Truth,” Richard Hays critiques N.T. Wright’s method of knowing Jesus as described in his book Jesus and the Victory of God (JVG). Hays (a Barthian) argues that Wright’s method is doomed to fail from the start and that the “historical” Jesus is unknowable apart from the confessional Jesus.

What role does historical investigation play in the life of the church?

In JVG, Wright paints a portrait of Jesus based on critical realism and scientific investigation of history. While his method and conclusions differ from other historical Jesus scholars, his aim is basically the same—to discover the “Jesus of history” apart from the “Christ of faith” (Wright wouldn’t state his aim in those words, but his book does the same thing as others written by people who do use those words). The genius of JVG is that by using the scientific method for historical investigation, Wright is able to unveil a “Jesus of history” who looks remarkably similar to the “Christ of faith.” Wright demonstrates that the church’s confessions about Jesus stand up to the rigors of historical investigation.

Hays has two significant critiques of Wright’s method:

1. Wright is not as objective of an observer as he claims. Hays points out that Wright does not approach Jesus as an unbiased observer, but as an Anglican bishop and a lifelong follower of Jesus. Wright may be testing a hypothesis in JVG, but it is a hypothesis derived from his life in the church.

2. The “truth” of the story affects the method by which we investigate history. In order to remain “scientific” and “unbiased,” Wright has to table the church’s confessional claim that Jesus is the second member of the trinity. At the end of his investigation, Wright concludes that there is good reason for the church to confess what it does, but Hays notes that this changes the way we evaluate the data. If Jesus is God, then history cannot be evaluated in the same way that it can if he is merely a man.

Hays writes:

In a significant essay in Seeking the Identity of Jesus, the theologian Robert Jenson confronts exactly this issue and asks a provocative question: ‘But what if the church’s dogma were a necessary hermeneutical principal of historical reading, because it describes the true ontology of historical being?’ Let me paraphrase that: if it is true that Jesus was the incarnation of the Word, the fleshly embodiment of the one through whom all things were made—and if it is true that he was raised from the dead by the power of God and now reigns over the whole world (whether the world acknowledges it or not)—then it follows that the historical figure of Jesus cannot be rightly known or understood apart from the epistemological insight articulated precisely in the confession that Jesus is Lord—Jesus is the kyrios. This is where we ought to begin in we want to know the truth about Jesus.

This is the insight that Tom’s whole historical Jesus project doesn’t ever quite take on board. The ‘hypothesis’ that Tom seeks to verify by pulling together the evidence of the Synoptics is not a naked inference from uninterpreted data. Rather, the hypothesis that Tom is testing is already encoded in the New Testament texts themselves as proclamatory stories, and already imbedded in Tom’s own worldview by virtue of his lifelong participation in a community that continues to retell the story. So the hypothesis-verification model can’t escape the hermeneutical circle. Nor should it. Precisely because the church’s dogma names a truth the world does not nor cannot know, it rightly describes the truth about history in a way that secularist history is bound to miss. (Richard Hays, “Knowing Jesus: Story, History and the Question of Truth,” Jesus, Paul and the People of God: A theological Dialogue with N.T. Wright, ed. by Nicholas Perrin and Richard B. Hays [Downers Grove: IVP, 2011], 60-61.)

Note what Hays is saying (like Barth): the true Jesus cannot be known by natural means, so using natural means to know him is destined to fail. What do you think? Does historical investigation (think also of apologetic works like Josh McDowell’s Evidence that Demands a Verdict) have a role in the life of the church, or does Jesus identity as the incarnation of the Word render that kind of investigation moot?

What Were We Thinking? Radical Together by David Platt

2011-03-21T16:40:00.001-07:00

When I was a kid, hair metal ruled. Van Halen, Poison, Twisted Sister—the bigger the hair, the better. If you wanted to be a rocker in the 1980s, tight denim, a shred guitar and a can of Aqua Net were keys to your success. But, like every fad, hair rock gave way to grunge rock, which in turn gave way to something else. Looking back at the androgynous arena superstars of my childhood, I can’t help but ask, “What were we thinking?”

If David Platt is right, another child of the 1980s, the highly-programmed-seeker-sensitive-attractional-mega-church, is also destined for the “What were we thinking?” bin. In his book, Radical Together, Platt argues that current axioms for reaching the lost are actually counter-productive for building the kingdom of God. Shockingly, pouring money into rock-show-quality worship, holographic preachers, and multi-million-dollar campuses isn’t the best way to spread a message of self-sacrifice, service, and love for our neighbor.

What were we thinking?

In Radical Together, Platt expands on the message of his earlier book and applies it to the church. What Radical was to the individual, Radical Together is to the body. Conventional wisdom says that the keys to a healthy growing church are: superstar preachers, state-of-the-art worship technology, professionals at key leadership positions, targeting specific demographics, and keeping the message as simple as possible. Instead, Platt argues that church programs can distract us from the mission, preaching the Word is key to life-change, ministry should be done by everyone, and the mission is to take the Gospel to all nations.

The gold in Platt’s book is his ability to inspire through stories. From his own church’s ability to trim their budget and give $1.5 million to missions in India, to another church’s decision to meet outside and pass $60,000 in annual savings to God’s kingdom, Platt encourages and motivates churches to be radical for the Gospel. You can’t walk away from this book without being challenged to do something big.

The one weakness I see with Radical Together is Platt’s elevation of the Word as the only means of life-change (to the exclusion of the Spirit). Certainly, the Spirit works through the Word to change lives, but the Spirit also gifts the body to minister to one another in ways other than preaching. After all, “If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing?” (1 Corinthians 12:17 ESV) Although he doesn’t say it outright, one gets the feeling that Platt is encouraging churches to cut programs emphasizing incarnational, life-on-life ministry in favor of those that emphasize the preached Word. While not discounting the value of the preached Word, there is also a value to ministries that “merely” involve Christians doing life together.

Hair metal seemed like a good idea at the time. Seriously, it did. So also the seeker-sensitive church seemed like a good idea for a time. But if Radical Together is any indication, church leaders are starting to wake up and return to Jesus’ call to make disciples from all of the nations.

The Next Christians by Gabe Lyons

2011-02-09T21:02:00.000-08:00

As I met a friend for lunch the other day, I walked past an Apple store and saw an ad announcing their new partnership with Verizon: “This changes everything. Again.” A handset manufacturer expands to a new carrier, and the world is changed forever. Really?

Now, iPhone 4 is very cool, and Verizon customers have long bemoaned Apple’s exclusive contract with AT&T. The announcement certainly evokes celebration from them, but, “This changes everything”?

Good marketing doesn’t just inform us, it tells us a story. Advertisers convince us that bliss can be ours with a click of the mouse or a trip to the store. Marketing has become its own genre, complete with stock heroes (early adopters), villains (purists), tragedies (classicists who are left behind), and comedies (the geeks redeemed through innovation). Sadly, as I read The Next Christians by Gabe Lyons, I felt like I was reading an advertisement for the next Christians rather than a description of them.

The book is not terrible. There are a lot of cool stories of entrepreneurs using their gifts to help people and promote the Gospel. Jaime Tworkowski’s founding of To Write Love on Her Arms is the high point. Lyons also notices patterns that others have identified in younger Christians—their disdain for culture wars, their longing for community, and their desire to be countercultural—but he supports his claims with anecdotes rather than research.

The Next Christians is not what it claims to be. Promising to combine “current-day models and relevant research with stories of a new generation of Christian leaders,” it delivers a series of anecdotes without indication of their widespread relevance. Like judging an entire generation after a few viewings of Jersey Shore, we can’t stereotype the emerging followers of Jesus by relating how Nick and Josh started a magazine or how Jeremy gave up Facebook for Lent. The next Christians are more complex than that.

Lyons’ ad for the next Christians claims they “engage the dirtiness of our world without fear of tarnishing their reputations” (83), “[create] good culture” (95), “are already positioned to affect the cultural landscape in a big way” (120), “enjoy reading the Bible as much as curling up with a great novel” (136), “live in proximity to one another and often combine their resources to serve others” (163), and “try to create the most good for all people, regardless of race, class, or religion” (184). The movement “has all the signs of being a manifestation as crucial as the Reformation was” (120).

This changes everything. Again.

The Next Christians is filled with inspiring stories of creative people doing “neat” things for the kingdom of God, but we can only speculate on the significance of these stories.

I was not compensated for this review, but I was provided a free copy of the book in return for writing it.

Planned Parenthood and Sex Trafficking

2011-02-02T09:32:00.000-08:00

HT: Evangel

This is one office manager at one Planned Parenthood (and she has since been terminated), but this bad.

Systematic Theology by Wolfhart Pannenberg

2010-11-10T15:55:00.000-08:00

I just finished volume 3 of Wolfhart Pannenberg's Systematic Theology, and for the third year in a row it will reign as "the best book I read this year." Pannenberg is brilliant. I will be digesting this work for a long time. He ends the three-volume book:

On the whole path from the beginning of creation by way of reconciliation to the eschatological future of salvation, the march of the divine economy of salvation is an expression of the incursion of the eternal future of God to the salvation of creatures and thus a manifestation of the divine love. Here is the eternal basis for God's coming forth from the immanence of the divine life as the economic Trinity and of the incorporation of creatures, mediated thereby, into the unity of the trinitarian life. The distinction and unity of the immanent and economic Trinity constitute the heartbeat of the divine love, and with a single such heartbeat this love encompasses the whole world of creatures. (Systematic Theology, 3, 646.)

Three years ago I would have read that and said, "What?" Now, I read it and say, "Sweet."

I have sketched an outline of how Pannenberg's theology can provide a way forward for "Big Tent Evangelicalism" to work together for the Gospel. I hope to put something together for Scot McKnight's blog. More on that soon.

Another Passage I Don't "Get"

2010-11-10T09:33:00.000-08:00

What do we do with this one?

Jeremiah 35:1 The LORD spoke to Jeremiah when Jehoiakim son of Josiah was ruling over Judah. He said, 2 "Go to the Rechabite community. Invite them to come into one of the side rooms of the LORD's temple and offer them some wine to drink." 3 So I went and got Jaazaniah son of Jeremiah, the grandson of Habazziniah, and his brothers and all his sons and all the rest of the Rechabite community. 4 I took them to the LORD's temple. I took them into the room where the disciples of the prophet Hanan son of Igdaliah stayed. That room was next to the one where the temple officers stayed and above the room where Maaseiah son of Shallum, one of the doorkeepers of the temple, stayed. 5 Then I set cups and pitchers full of wine in front of the members of the Rechabite community and said to them, "Have some wine." 6 But they answered, "We don't drink wine because our ancestor Jonadab son of Rechab commanded us not to. He told us, 'You and your children must never drink wine. 7 Don't build houses. Don't plant crops. Don't plant a vineyard or own one. Live in tents all your lives. If you do these things you will live a long time in the land that you wander about on.' 8 We and our wives and our sons and daughters have obeyed everything our ancestor Jonadab commanded us. We have never drunk wine. 9 We haven't built any houses to live in. We don't own any vineyards, fields, or crops. 10 We have lived in tents. We have obeyed our ancestor Jonadab and done exactly as he commanded us. 11 But when King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon invaded the land we said, 'Let's get up and go to Jerusalem to get away from the Babylonian and Aramean armies.' That is why we are staying here in Jerusalem."
12 Then the LORD spoke to Jeremiah. 13 The LORD God of Israel who rules over all told him, "Go and speak to the people of Judah and the citizens of Jerusalem. Tell them, 'I, the LORD, ask, "Won't you learn a lesson from this about obeying what I say? 14 Jonadab son of Rechab ordered his descendants not to drink wine. And his orders have been carried out. To this day his descendants have drunk no wine because they have obeyed what their ancestor commanded them. But I have spoken to you over and over again and you have not obeyed me.

I am just thinking of how it squares up with James 1:13, "Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am tempted by God,' for God cannot be tempted by evil, and he himself tempts no one."

David Opderbeck on God's Justice

2010-09-24T08:16:00.000-07:00

Good article. Here's an excerpt:

The Girl in the Cage, the Lion, and the Lamb
Somewhere in America right now, there is a little girl locked in a dog cage. A man will bind her with duct tape. The man will sexually abuse her while another takes pictures and videos. The men will distribute these materials over a vast network of child pornography file sharing servers. Tens of thousands of other men will look at the pictures and videos, discuss them in chat rooms, use them as masturbatory tools, and demand more. And they will get more, much more.
I know this is true because I’m teaching a course this semester on “Cybersecurity Law.” Most of the course focuses on commercial and public espionage – hacking, data theft, and so on. This week, however, the topic has been online safety – cyberstalking, harassment, obscenity and child pornography. Our guest speaker yesterday was the Brian Sinclair, Chief of the Computer Crime Prosecution Unit in Bergen County, New Jersey. While he mercifully didn’t show us any of the volumes of child porn his unit has seized over the years (it is technically a felony to display such materials even in an educational setting), he described in general terms the sorts of things that commonly appear, including what he noted as “disturbing recent trend” towards the literal caging of victims.
What is justice? When is justice? Where is justice?

Eugene Peterson on the Busy Pastor

2010-09-16T14:20:00.000-07:00

I just started reading The Contemplative Pastor by Eugene Peterson. Wow! There are so many gems even in the first chapter. This is the one I like the best, on pastors being busy:

The one piece of mail certain to go unread into my wastebasket is the letter addressed to the 'busy pastor.' Not that the phrase doesn't describe me at times, but I refuse to give my attention to someone who encourages what is worst in me.

I'm not arguing the accuracy of the adjective; I am, though, contesting the way it is used to flatter and express sympathy.

'The poor man,' we say. 'He's so devoted to his flock; the work is endless, and he sacrifices himself so unstintingly.' But the word busy is the symptom not of commitment but of betrayal. It is not devotion but defection. The adjective busy set as a modifier to pastor should sound to our ears like adulterous to characterize a wife or embezzling to describe a banker. It is an outrageous scandal, a blasphemous affront.

So you know where he is going with this, he writes later:

But if I vainly crowd my day with conspicuous activity or let others fill my day with imperious demands, I don't have time to do my proper work, the work to which I have been called. How can I lead people into the quiet place beside still waters if I am in perpetual motion? How can I persuade a person to live by faith and not by works if I have to juggle my schedule constantly to make everything fit into place?

What Does It Mean to Love God?

2010-09-15T13:12:00.000-07:00

Christians talk a lot about loving God (which is good, since Jesus said that the most important commandment is to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and that the second is like it--to love your neighbor as yourself). But, how often do we ask ourselves what this looks like? What does it mean to love God?

The Greeks had three words that we translate, love--agape, phileo, and eros. Phileo refers more to a "friendship" love, eros to an erotic love, and agape to a sacrificial, unconditional love.

When we talk of loving God, often we mistakenly think of our love for God in terms of phileo love (or worse yet, eros love). We have nice feelings for God. We like Him. But, agape love is the love with which God loves us, and it is the love with which we have been called to love God and others.

What does it look like to love God with agape love? First John 4:7–12 (NET) says:

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

Wolfhart Pannenberg asks some provocative questions about Christian love for God:

If Christian love is essentially a participation in God's love for the world, then we have to ask whether we can distinguish at all between love of God and love of neighbor. Does not true love consist of sharing in God's love for the world? And in the depth of turning to the cohuman Thou, do we not also love God? (Systematic Theology, vol. 3, 187.)

Pannenberg argues that, while love for God and love for neighbor are inseparable, they do not collapse into one another. Jesus seemed to prioritize love for God over love for others, implying at least a subtle distinction. Pannenberg describes love for God:

We love God by letting him be God to us as Jesus let the Father be God to him, by letting him be our God, our Father, and thus by putting our trust and confidence in him. (Systematic Theology, vol. 3, 193.)

Love for God is expressed in faith.

Is Egalitarianism/Complementarianism a Gospel Issue?

2010-09-13T11:26:00.000-07:00

Scot McKnight links to an article by Dan Stringer, asking the neo-calvinists whether complementarianism is essential to the gospel. Can egalitarians be gospel-centered?

(Complementarianism and egalitarianism relate to the roles of men and women in the church, home, and society. Egalitarians say that there should be no distinctions between men and women. Complementarians say that while men and women are equal, God has assigned them diferent roles. Most complementarian churches would reserve the role of elder or pastor to a man; some would go farther than that.)

At issue is the neo-calvinists' strong stance on complementarianism. Stringer asks whether the neo-calvinists have allowed a secondary issue to muddle the gospel.

The discussion was on interest to me because I think some, like my hero James Dunn, may have gone to the opposite extreme and made egalitarianism a part of the gospel.

Wolfhart Pannenberg on Christian Hope

2010-09-13T10:16:00.000-07:00

From Systematic Theology, vol 3. I love the last sentence (emphasis mine).

Faith lifts us above our entanglement in the vicious circle of sin and death by uniting us to Jesus and giving us a share in his Spirit. Hence believers in Christ, to whom they are united in the ecstatic 'outside the self' of faith, acquire a hope beyond death. In the process, too, a basis is established for overcoming the egotistical structure of human hopes. Christians do not hope just for themselves, which would mean only too often that the hope of one would be at the cost of the hopes of others. In Christ they share in a universal hope for humanity. Individual wants may certainly be taken up and met, but this takes place within the larger context of the saving reality of God's kingdom that transcends individual particularism. By faith Christians are snatched out of bondage to their egotistical striving for happiness and find the fulfillment of their personal life precisely in the fellowship of the body of Christ and in the work for the future of humanity in the kingdom of God.

The Theology of Job's Friends--Right or Wrong?

2010-08-21T10:41:00.000-07:00

I am reading Job right now. When I studied Job in school, the first thing that we learned was that Job's friends spit out bad theology. I am starting to wonder if that is the case.

Job starts out with a wager between God and Satan. God highlights Job as an example of a righteous man, and Satan accuses Job of only being righteous because God has made it worth his while. God gives Satan permission torment Job to see whether he will curse God.

In the middle of Job's suffering, his friends try to "console" him by encouraging him to repent. In Job's friends' view, God is just and unable to punish the righteous. Job's suffering is evidence of sin. The reader knows that Job has not sinned. He is suffering, not under the hand of God, but under the hand of Satan. Thus, as Job's friends wax eloquently about righteousness, justice, and repentance, the reader knows that they are full of it.

At the end of the book, God steps in, rebukes Job's friends, and vindicates Job. So, we know that Job's friends don't "get it." They were wrong all along.

But, what do we do with Job's friends' theology? It actually lines up with what we read elsewhere in the Old Testament. If we write it off as bad theology, we have to write off a number of other passages in the Old Testament as well. What if the role of Job's friends in the story is not to debunk their theology and point out that even the righteous can suffer, but to point out that we don't have God figured out? This seems to be God's point at the end of the book--"Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct him? Let the person who accuses God give him an answer!" (40:2 NET) God essentially says, "When you figure out how to keep the universe together, then you can question how I run things."

This isn't to say that theology isn't important or that we can't know certain things about who God is or how He acts. But, maybe Job is a reminder to us that God is God and He can't fit in our box.

I taught a class once in which we were discussing God's providence and His eternal decree. We looked at several passages in which God says, "I am not a man that I should change my mind." We also looked at passages in which God apparently changes His mind. What do we do with instances like this? Do we elevate one and try to explain the other away, or can we hold them in tension and admit we don't have it figured out? I prefer the latter approach, concluding, "God's decree is permanent. He doesn't change His mind . . . except when He does."

Is that unsettling or helpful (or both)? Is that approach to theology freeing or discouraging?

Chaplain Mike on the Emerging Church

2010-08-18T14:58:00.001-07:00

In response to Scot McKnight's recent CT article about the present and future of evangelicalism, Chaplain Mike at Internet Monk is discussing McKnight's three streams--the emerging church, the ancient-future movement, and the neo-reformed. First up for discussion is the emerging church--what it was, what it is, and where it is going. I posted my thoughts on at least two of the threads.

My journey with the emerging church began when I read A New Kind of Christian by Brian McLaren. It ended when I read Deep Church by Jim Belcher, A New Kind of Christianity by Brian McLaren, and Mere Churchianity by Michael Spencer.

I think Belcher, Spencer, and McKnight are pointing the way forward.

Joe Carter on Gimmicky Preaching

2010-08-18T09:19:00.000-07:00

Joe Carter isn't impressed with the skateboarding Hungarian Catholic priest who has become a YouTube sensation. He shows why evangelicals are still the reigning champs of gimmicky preaching.

Why Don't We Ever Talk about Passages Like This?

2010-08-16T13:27:00.001-07:00

So, I was reading in the Book of Esther today, and I came across chapter 9. Yikes!

We all know the story of Esther. The Persian king Ahasuerus parties for seven straight days, and then sends a messenger to his wife Vashti to get dressed up so that he show off how hot she is to all of his drunken friends. When she refuses, he decides that she will no longer be queen and that all of the beautiful virgins of the land should be brought to him, and whichever one "pleases" him the most will be the new queen.

Mordecai is an honorable Jew living in Susa and taking care of his younger cousin, Esther, who "had a beautiful figure and was lovely to look at" (2:7 ESV). Esther is summoned to the harem, but she keeps her ethnicity a secret. Sure enough, she pleases the king more than any of the other women and she is made queen instead of Vashti. Mordecai hears of a plot to assassinate the king, he tells Esther of the plot, she warns the king, and the king is saved.

Haman is Ahasuerus's top official. He hates Mordecai because Mordecai won't bow down to him. So, he plots to exterminate all of the Jewish people, Mordecai and Esther included. When Mordecai learns of the plot, he tells Esther that she needs to step in and save her people, even though doing so would put her own life at risk. He warns her that if she doesn't step in, deliverance will come from elsewhere but that she and her father's house will perish. Esther agrees to the plan.

Esther plans a banquet for Ahasuerus and Haman, during which she plans to talk to her husband about her ethnicity and Haman's plot.

Haman decides to construct a gallows from which to hang Mordecai.

One night, when the king can't sleep, he asks his officials to read to him from the annuls, and he realizes that he never honored Mordecai for saving his life. Just then, Haman comes in to get the king's permission to hang Mordecai. The king asks him what he should do to honor a special man. Haman, presuming that the king wants to honor him, says, "Dress him in the king's robe and put him on the king's horse." The king says, "Great idea. Do this for Mordecai."

After Haman's humiliation, he attends Esther's banquet with the king. During the banquet, Esther reveals Haman's plot, and the king orders that he be executed--hung from the gallows he constructed for Mordecai. Haman is executed, the Jews are saved, Mordecai and Esther are put in charge of everything Haman once ran, the feast of Purim is established as a remembrance, and everyone lives happily ever after. End of story.

But not really. Then we come to chapter 9.

On the day on which the extermination of the Jews was supposed to take place, a counter-extermination takes place instead. The Jews are allowed to get up and kill all of their enemies. In Susa alone, 500 men are killed. The report is brought to the king, and he says to Esther, "Well, you got what you wanted. Now, if there is anything else you want me to do--I'll do it. Up to half of my kingdom." Esther responds, "Let the killing continue for another day." Over the two-day period, 75,000 people are killed throughout the Persian empire.

Now, I have heard Esther characterized in a number of ways. Some are positive, pointing out that she risked her life to save her people. Others are negative, pointing out that she got her power through sexual prowess and that she didn't step up to save the Jews until Mordecai threatened her. Esther never honors God or even mentions Him.

But not once have I ever heard anyone point out that Esther, when offered anything in the world by the most powerful man in the world, chose to continue a massacre for an additional 24 hours. This makes Herodias's daughter's request look like a call for world peace.

What do we do with chapters like this? Have you ever heard a sermon on Esther 9?

Scot McKnight Interviews Brian McLaren at Q

2010-08-16T11:09:00.000-07:00

This is good. McKnight asks McLaren about his "provocative ambiguity" (great phrase btw), how he reconciles his views in A Generous Orthodoxy with those in A New Kind of Christianity, and about whether he is a universalist.

Q | Conversations on Being a Heretic from Q Ideas on Vimeo.

There are no words . . .

2010-08-16T10:42:00.000-07:00

Thoughts on Ezra 8:21–23

2010-08-09T10:02:00.000-07:00

Ezra 8:21–23 NET:

I called for a fast there by the Ahava Canal, so that we might humble ourselves before our God and seek from him a safe journey for us, our children, and all our property. 22 I was embarrassed to request soldiers and horsemen from the king to protect us from the enemy along the way, because we had said to the king, "The good hand of our God is on everyone who is seeking him, but his great anger is on everyone who forsakes him." 23 So we fasted and prayed to our God about this, and he answered us.

I like this passage. Ezra is leading a group to Jerusalem from the Babylonian captivity. He gathers the heads of the families and arranges to set off on the long walk to Israel. But before they leave, he calls for a fast.

I love Ezra's explanation for the fast: he was afraid and he was embarrassed. He made some bold statements to the Persian king, "The good hand of our God is on everyone who is seeking him, but his great anger is on everyone who forsakes him," but then he was afraid that someone would mug them on the road to Jerusalem. He wanted soldiers for protection, but he was embarrassed to ask for them because of his God-talk.

Honest words from Ezra preserved for eternity.

Interesting Re-Reading of the Jacob Narrative

2010-08-03T15:07:00.000-07:00

So, I was reading in Genesis the other day, and I had an interesting thought: Why do we take the claims of Jacob seriously in this narrative?

The question arose when I compared Genesis 30:25–43 and Genesis 31:4–11. Genesis 30:25–43 is that strange passage in which Jacob makes a deal with Laban that his wages shall be the spotted and striped goats of the heard and that Laban would keep the solid colored ones. After Laban agrees to the deal, Jacob starts putting out sticks by the water troughs when the goats are breeding, and as a result of his actions, the young goats are all spotted and striped and Jacob gets rich.

Questions of science aside, Jacob clearly intends to take advantage of Laban in this passage.

But, it's interesting how Jacob spins this in the next chapter. When he is explaining to his wives why they must leave their father-in-law and travel back to his hometown, Jacob accuses Laban of taking advantage of him and he says that the LORD appeared to him in a vision and told him that He had vindicated him by giving him wealth anyway. So, in Genesis 31, Jacob says that God gave him prosperity because Laban tried to take advantage of him, but in Genesis 30 the text says that Jacob got wealthy by taking advantage of Laban.

Typically, we try to harmonize these passages. We conclude, "Well, Laban was trying to take advantage of Jacob, and even though Jacob was trying to take advantage of Laban, too, God sided with Jacob and vindicated him over Laban."

The question that popped into my head was, "Why do we try to harmonize what the text itself says happened with what Jacob claimed happened?" Why do we take Jacob seriously when he talks of visions that he received from the Lord? After all, Jacob's name means "deceiver," and he lies to keep himself out of trouble every chance that he gets. The text never says that Jacob actually had a vision of the LORD, it just says that he told his wives that he had a vision of the LORD. What if he was lying?

So, I started reading the Jacob narrative differently. Unless the text says explicitly that God told Jacob something, I just assumed that he was lying about everything that he claimed God told him. It makes for an interesting re-read. It intensifies Jacob's character as a deceiver and highlights God's grace for being faithful to him even though he manipulated everyone he met.

I don't know that I will settle on that reading as my preferred reading, but it's an interesting exercise.

2 Chronicles 30:18–20

2010-08-02T14:40:00.000-07:00

I came across an interesting passage in 2 Chronicles the other day. It's one of those strange passages about which a former professor of mine may have said, "Put THAT in your theological pipe and smoke it."

Judah had come under the judgment of God due to the actions of their former king, Ahaz. His son Hezekiah, the new king, was trying to get them back on track by restoring the Temple worship. After the priests and Levites had consecrated themselves, Hezekiah decided that the nation should celebrate the Passover as an act of repentance--even though it was the wrong month (Exod 12:1–6, 2 Chr 30:1–4). A great number of people responded, but they didn't consecrate themselves and celebrate the feast according to the prescriptions in the law. The passage (2 Chr 30:18–20) says:

"The majority of the many people from Ephraim, Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun were ritually unclean, yet they ate the Passover in violation of what is prescribed in the law. For Hezekiah prayed for them, saying: 'May the LORD, who is good, forgive 19 everyone who has determined to follow God, the LORD God of his ancestors, even if he is not ritually clean according to the standards of the temple.' 20 The LORD responded favorably to Hezekiah and forgave the people." (NET)

So, the people repent and decide to come back to God, but they don't "do it right," according to the Scriptures. Hezekiah prays that God would honor their actions anyway, and God does. What do we do with that?

Systematic theology would be so much easier were it not for the Bible. :)

Brian McLaren on Resurrection

2010-07-24T11:07:00.001-07:00

I know I said I was done writing about this, but I am finishing the book. I found McLaren's eschatology to confusing and saddening, so I am looking for someone to correct me here if I am mistaken in my understanding.

As I read through McLaren's chapter on eschatology, I found one concept curiously absent--resurrection. So, I did some digging, scouring the pages for any reference to resurrection or any discussion of it in the footnotes, and the best I came up with was a link to a deleted chapter called "Making Echatology Personal." McLaren says that the article was written in response to the question, "What happens to me when I die?"

Here is the article. Is this resurrection? Note especially the italicized portions on pages 12–14.

It seems to me that McLaren's "resurrection" is that the good deeds that we did are swallowed up into the memory of God, so that they live on, but our bad deeds are consumed by the judgment so that they are forgotten. Curiously, his descriptions of Jesus' resurrection are starting to look like that to me, too--the resurrection shouldn't be interpreted as a bodily resurrection, but as rememberance by Jesus' people. Jesus is "resurrected" in the sense that the church is his body and memory of him lives on.

If this is the role resurrection (especially Jesus' resurrection) plays in the new kind of Christianity, then I don't think it can be called Christianity in any meaningful sense. That saddens me.

I hope I am mistaken about this. If anyone can correct me, please do. I would appreciate it.

A New Kind of Christianity--I Quit :(

2010-07-21T13:15:00.000-07:00

Sitting in my "drafts" folder is a 2500 word review of Brian McLaren's "gospel question." I get depressed just thinking about it. In fact, reviewing this book has been such a downer that I have decided to quit. I hate quitting projects, but I have to quit this one for the following reasons:

I am not finding the book to be helpful. McLaren's approach to life and faith are so different than my own that I struggle to find points of commonality. Also, his attitude toward people like me (conservative evangelicals, especially conservative evangelical pastors) has me constantly on the defensive.

I am not finding reviewing the book to be helpful. I hate being negative. I have tried to put a positive spin on my review of his book, but it's getting tougher. Sometimes negativity and criticism are good, even needed, but I am not really interested in continuing a project that draws out the worst in me. I dread reading the book because I know I will inevitably have to follow it up with a lengthy negative review.

I am not finding his book to be as influential as I thought it would be. I think McLaren's days of being a lightning rod are over. He's a gifted writer. He is a great thinker. He's visionary and he's not afraid of asking the hard questions. He's an influential leader in his circle. But I think his hostility to his critics has marginalized him and destroyed his credibility to the middle. He has lost his voice as a "third way" or as the middle; he's an extremist. It pains me to write that, but I think it's the case. His books will be devoured by his camp and burned by the opposition.

Anyway, I will finish the book and maybe write some parting words, but I'm done spending so much time on it.

Scot McKnight on the Evangelical "Image Problem"

2010-07-21T09:30:00.001-07:00

Scot McKnight discusses a chapter out of Brad Wright's book, Christians Are Hate-Filled Hypocrites . . . and Other Lies You've Been Told: A Sociologist Shatters Myths from the Secular and Christian Media at http://blog.beliefnet.com/jesuscreed/2010/07/are-christians-really-7.html.

The discussion is on how our culture perceives evangelicals. The numbers are shocking--we don't have as bad of a reputation as some claim.

Adam Omelianchuk on the Ugliness of Baseball

2010-07-20T11:49:00.000-07:00

Adam Omelianchuk illustrates how baseball mirrors all that is tragic in life: http://firstthings.com/blogs/evangel/2010/07/the-sheer-ugliness-of-baseball/.

He writes, "Beholding such monotony gives one a rotten sense of the infinite where hope for one last out comes to symbolize Kierkegaard’s notion of despair; wanting no longer to exist and not being able to do anything about it."

Great writing.

My Review of Mere Churchianity on Jesus Creed

2010-07-19T11:48:00.001-07:00

Scot McKnight published a review I wrote of Mere Churchianity by Michael Spencer. Spencer was the Internet Monk. He passed away in April.

Read the review at: http://blog.beliefnet.com/jesuscreed/2010/07/saturday-afternoon-book-review-24.html.

Brian McLaren's Jesus Question

2010-06-29T17:16:00.001-07:00

“To recast Jesus as a limp-wrist hippie in a dress with a lot of product in his hair, who drank decaf and made pithy Zen statements about life while shopping for the perfect pair of shoes.” (Quoted in McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, 120)

Instead, Mark D. prefers a different Jesus:

“In Revelation, Jesus is a prize fighter with a tattoo down his leg, a sword in his hand and the commitment to make someone bleed. That is the guy I can worship. I cannot worship the hippie, diaper, halo Christ because I cannot worship a guy I can beat up.” (Quoted in McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, 120)

McLaren insists that, while his Jesus may be “new” to some people, we need to be careful of rejecting a “new” Jesus in favor of the previous generation’s Jesus. Just because a Jesus is familiar, that doesn’t make it the real Jesus. He says that his critic’s Jesus looks more like the Greco-Roman Jesus than the Jesus of the Bible.

In contrast to the tattooed, sword-toting Jesus of his critics, McLaren describes a peaceful Jesus with a sword in his mouth, not in his hands (Mark misquotes Revelation 19:15), and with a robe drenched in his own blood, not the blood of his enemies. He writes:

“If you don’t want to worship a guy you can beat up, then I might humbly suggest you reconsider Caesar and the Greco-Roman narrative. It sounds like ‘Christ and him crucified’ is not for you. At least not yet.” (126)

Ouch.

Having debunked one critic’s Jesus, McLaren moves on to the Jesus of critic number two, whom we will call “Johnny Mac.” Johnny Mac wrote a book critical of McLaren that featured a rattlesnake on the cover. In an interview related to the book, he said:

“The only reason Jesus came was to save people from hell. . . . Jesus had no social agenda. . . . [He didn’t come to eliminate poverty or slavery or] . . . fix something in somebody’s life for the little moment they live on this earth.” (Quoted in McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, 127)

In contrast to the Jesus who only wants to save people from hell, McLaren describes a Jesus according to his reading of the biblical narrative, one who is primarily concerned with self-actualization and liberation from bondage. His key text (a good one) is Luke 4:17–19. He writes:

“Jesus, contrary to my dear loyal critic’s assertion, did not come merely to ‘save souls from hell.’ No, he came to launch a new Genesis, to lead a new Exodus, and to announce, embody, and inaugurate a new kingdom as the Prince of Peace (Isa. 9:6). Seen in this light, Jesus and his message have everything to do with poverty, slavery, and a ‘social agenda.’” (135)

So, what do we do with these three portrayals of Jesus—Mark’s cage-fighter Jesus, John’s fire-insurance Jesus, and McLaren’s Che-Guevara Jesus?

I have to agree with McLaren’s critiques. In saying, “I can’t worship a Jesus that I can beat up,” we are putting ourselves in the shoes of the Roman soldiers mocking Jesus from the foot of the cross. Also, suggesting that Jesus did nothing to challenge the social institutions of his day (as John does in the interview to which McLaren refers) couldn’t be further from the truth. What about his association with prostitutes and sinners? What about his welcoming of Gentiles? What about his “You have heard it said . . . but I tell you” teachings? As John Meier points out, the historical Jesus is the halakic Jesus.

But, does this mean that McLaren’s Jesus is the real one? Not exactly. What do we do with those passages in Revelation that portray Jesus as killing his enemies? McLaren offers a reinterpretation of the blood on Jesus robe, but I can’t help but think that this is an allusion to Isaiah 63:3. And what do we do with Jesus’ teaching on hell? Sure, Jesus taught that the kingdom of God was at hand in his ministry, but he also expected something in the future.

I think McLaren’s error here is his failure to read the Scriptures in the way he suggests in part 3 (the authority question). Absent in these chapters is any attempt to describe Jesus on his own terms. Instead, McLaren starts with the biblical narrative that he outlined in part 2 and shoehorns Jesus into the narrative. As I argued earlier, I don’t think Jesus read the narrative of the Old Testament in the way that McLaren is suggesting. McLaren doesn’t offer any evidence in this section that he did.

McLaren’s Jesus leaves me with some unanswered questions. What is the kingdom of God? Is it fully present now, or are we awaiting its consummation? Is he writing off resurrection of the dead and eternal rewards and punishment? Did Jesus believe in those things? If there is future justice and retribution, is there room for the sword-toting, tattooed Jesus?

Ultimately, I think the “real” Jesus has elements of each of these Jesuses. Mark may be right that Jesus isn’t a limp-wrist hippie, but he did overcome the forces of evil through suffering, not through violence. John may be right that Jesus wanted to deliver humanity from hell, but that doesn’t mean he was unconcerned about present evil and suffering. McLaren may be right that Jesus is a liberator, but he’s a liberator from sin, not just from the powers of this age.

Brian McLaren's God Question

2010-04-09T12:03:00.001-07:00

I’m not saying that the Bible is free of passages that depict God as competitive, superficially exacting, exclusive, deterministic, and violent. But neither am I saying that those passages are the last word on the character of God. I am not saying that the Bible reveals a process of evolution within God’s actual character, as if God used to be rather adolescent, but has taken a turn for the better and is growing up nicely over the last few centuries. I am saying that human beings can’t do better than their very best at any given moment to communicate about God as they understand God, and that Scripture faithfully reveals the evolution of our ancestors’ best attempts to communicate their successive best understandings of God. As human capacity grows to conceive of a higher and wiser view of God, each new vision is faithfully preserved in Scripture like fossils in layers of sediment. If we read the Bible as a cultural library rather than as a constitution, and if we don’t impose a Greco-Roman plotline on the biblical narrative, we are free to learn from that evolutionary process—and, we might even add, participate in it. (103)

McLaren argues that this is often the way we teach children. For instance, in second grade, you might learn that “you can’t subtract a larger number from a smaller number.” However, in sixth grade, you might start working with negative numbers and learn that “a negative number is the result of subtracting a larger number from a smaller number.” Does this new knowledge mean that what you learned in second grade was wrong? No; it just means that what you learned in second grade was appropriate for second-graders. Sixth-graders can handle more complex truth.

So, how do we, 2000 years after Jesus, develop our theology in conversation with the Bible? McLaren insists that Jesus is the ultimate authority for our theology, not the Bible. The Bible is an invaluable conversation partner, but not the ultimate authority. Instead, he suggests we plot the Bible’s teaching over time on any given subject, and look for a trajectory that represents the teaching of Jesus. For instance, take our treatment of “the other.” In the early parts of the Old Testament, other tribes were feared, conquered, and exterminated. When Joshua conquered the Promised Land, they slaughtered the Canaanites, showing them no mercy. Later in the Old Testament, we see this idea of Israel being a light to the Gentiles—that some day the nations would come and worship at the Temple in Jerusalem. In the New Testament, we see Jesus associate with Gentiles on their terms, and in Paul we see the Gentiles fully accepted into the fold. What does this trajectory suggest to us about how Jesus would like us to treat those outside of our “tribe”?

I find very little of Brian’s hermeneutic to be helpful. In fact, I was more discouraged than helped. McLaren misrepresents the way he develops his theology, and he falsely caricatures those who disagree as Neanderthals, abusers, and fear-mongers. To paraphrase Scot McKnight’s response to the book, there is very little generous and orthodox about this section.

At the very end of this section, McLaren illustrates his approach to the Bible and theology with a physical Bible. He opens the Bible to the beginning of the New Testament, and lays it on a table, spine up. The Old Testament side represents the Old Testament, the New Testament side represents the New Testament, and the spine represents Jesus. Most people read the Bible flat, taking bits and pieces from everything and giving them equal weight. Some might give precedence to the Old Testament (and he lifts the Old Testament side of the Bible as he says this), and others might give precedence to the New Testament (he lifts the Bible from the other end at this point). McLaren would prefer to read the Bible through the lens of Jesus (at this point he lifts the Bible by the spine so that both Old and New Testaments are sloping toward the middle).

I think that this is a great illustration—but it is not what McLaren is doing. The trajectory illustration is a better picture of what he is doing--imagine the cover of the New Testament extending a couple of inches to represent the 2000 years since it was written, and McLaren picking the Bible up by this extended side. Thus the Old Testament, Jesus, the New Testament, the church Fathers, the medieval church, the Reformers, and modern philosophers all lead up to him—the ultimate authority on what “Jesus” thinks we should think about God.

Jesus was the climax of God’s revelation to mankind (Hebrews 1:1–3). William Blake wrote that “the final revelation of Christianity is, therefore, not that Jesus is God, but that ‘God is Jesus.’” If we want to know what God is like, we look at Jesus. What, then, do we do with the Bible?

First, we have to recognize that the Bible is God’s revelation to mankind, even if it is inferior revelation to that of Jesus (inferior in the sense that not as much can be deduced about God through the Bible as through Jesus).

Second, I think we have to recognize progress in revelation. I don’t know that I agree with McLaren’s illustration about Noah and Moses, but something like that is happening in the Bible. The clearest examples of this are the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the role of messiah. If the Old Testament teaches that God exists eternally as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that God would become human and die for the sins of humanity, and that messiah would be a suffering messiah, why didn’t anyone get this when Jesus walked the earth? Even Jesus’ own family and his closest followers missed the point. It wasn’t until after the resurrection that the church started sorting out this new revelation. I would argue, like McLaren, that God has eternally existed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but only revealed Himself as such in the first century CE.

Third, we have to understand Jesus in his own context, not ours. This means we read the Old Testament because it was the Bible that Jesus read. He was immersed in the stories of the Old Testament, and his theology grew out of its pages. This also means that we read the New Testament as the immediate response of the church to what happened with Jesus. Under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the Apostles wrote the New Testament as a record of what Jesus did and thought, and His significance for the life of the church. The church Fathers continued this tradition, as did many who came afterward.

So, when we try to understand “the Christlike God,” we have to look at Jesus in his context. How did Jesus arise out of first century Judaism? What did Jesus believe about the God of the Old Testament? Helping us to understand that is the New Testament—What teachings did Jesus pass on to his followers? As I mentioned in the previous post, the historical Jesus has to come out of first century Judaism, and He has to explain the rise of the church.

Is this what McLaren is trying to do? I don’t think so. He seems more interested in creating a theology that is more palatable to the new atheists. This may be a noble effort, but as his theology grows more and more acceptable to our contemporary situation, it looks less and less like the theology of Jesus. Jesus said and did some things that weren’t popular. He wasn’t crucified for being a nice guy.

Personally, I don’t have a problem with McLaren teaching “liberal” theology. I am confident enough with what I believe and familiar enough with what I don’t believe that I don’t need to agree with him on every point. Why doesn’t he just identify himself as a “liberal Christian” and get on with his life? Why does he have to demonize those who disagree? He writes:

People who are part of what is often called fundamentalism today, whether Christian, Muslims, or Jews, often find it difficult to acknowledge this kind of progression in understanding across the centuries. If anything, they feel obliged to defend and give priority to the early, raw, more primal, less-tested and –developed view of God, minimizing or marginalizing what I am calling the more mature and nuanced understandings. So the God of the fundamentalists is a competitive warrior—always jealous of rivals and determined to drive them into defeat and disgrace. And the God of the fundamentalists is superficially exacting—demanding technical perfection in regard to ceremonial and legal matters while minimizing deeper concerns about social justice—especially where outsiders and outcasts are concerned. Similarly, the fundamentalist god is exclusive, faithfully loving one in-group and rejecting—perhaps even hating—all others. The fundamentalist God is also deterministic—controlling rather than interacting, a mover of events but never moved by them. And finally, though the fundamentalist God may be patient for a while, he (fundamentalist versions of God tend to be very male) is ultimately violent, eventually destined to explode with unquenchable rage, condemnation, punishment, torture, and vengeance if you push him too far. (102)

I don’t know anyone who would describe God in those terms. Yet, this is the way McLaren caricatures those who dissent from his opinions.

One of the first books I read by Brian McLaren was A New Kind of Christian (not to be confused with A New Kind of Christianity). In it, McLaren tells the story of a pastor’s journey from a “modernist” concept of God to a more “postmodern” concept. I liked a lot in the book—many of McLaren’s questions resonated with me. But when I read the sequel, The Story We Find Ourselves In, I was turned off by the rhetoric. In the first book, McLaren presented his opinions as ideas to be discussed. The tone of the book was, “These are just some thoughts I am having. Don’t hate me if you disagree.” But in the second book, the tone changed. He introduced some more conservative Christian characters to the novel that were little more than stereotypes. The shoe was clearly on the other foot, and McLaren dished out just as must hate as he claimed to be a victim of in the first book.

I didn’t read the third novel in the trilogy, but I tried to give McLaren the benefit of the doubt. I reasoned that perhaps he had significant negative experiences with conservatives, and I attributed his stereotyping to ignorance.

But, I am starting to think that this is not the case—it’s just the way he writes. He presents himself as the victim, and when he has gained his readers’ sympathy, he goes on the attack. If Brian wants to understand why people keep sending him hate mail, maybe he should stop asking why people are afraid of his ideas and look instead at the rhetoric he uses to describe the “conversation partner.”

Theology and LOST

2010-03-31T09:31:00.000-07:00

I admit, I have been hooked on LOST for the past 4 or 5 years. Brooke and I usually wait until the DVDs come out and watch an entire season in a few weeks, but now that we have a computer that runs HULU well, we have been keeping up with the show as it unfolds.

I have to say, season 6 is fantastic. I lost interest in the show during season 4. I don't know if it was the writers' strike or what, but season 4 was awful. (Yet, for some reason, I couldn't stop watching.) Season 5 was an improvement over season 4, but the show had lost the "must-see" excitement of the first three seasons.

That has all changed.

The sixth season of LOST changed the theme of the show from time travel and pseudo-science to serious questions about evil, justice, and redemption. Here are some of the more compelling questions on my mind as the final season of LOST unfolds:

[SPOILER ALERT]

1. What will happen to Benjamin Linus? As soon as Ben was introduced on the show he became the most interesting character. It's tough to think of a character in any book, movie, or television show as evil as Ben. He is a master manipulator. Every word he says is a lie, and yet you can't stop believing him.

But in the last two seasons, Ben has been cast in a more human light. We have seen why he is as evil as he is (traumatic home life, perceived betrayal by Jacob). He has even shown signs of remorse for his crimes (especially the acts that led to the death of his daughter), and the flash sideways episode about him suggested he might not be so bad of a guy were it not for Jacob and the island.

What do we do with Ben? Do we believe that he is truly repentant? Can he be redeemed? Can we forget all of the atrocities he committed (let's not forget he killed everyone in the Dharma Initiative)? Can we help but empathize with him when he was asked about why he was joining the man in black, and he answered, "Because he'll have me"?

2. What is the point of the "flash sideways"? (For that matter, what is the plural of "flash sideways," "flash sidewayses"?)

Are they setting us up to show that life would have been worse were it not for the crash? If so, is this an attempt at theodicy? Jacob, representing the good "god," brought innocent people to the island against their will to prove to the man in black that not all people are evil. I see echoes of Job here--God and Satan having a wager over whether or not Job would curse God if Satan plagued him. But if Jacob is so good, why kill all of those people in the plane crash? Why wreck the lives of the survivors? Perhaps the flash sideways will show us that life would have been worse were it not for the crash.

Also, in the first episode of season 6, Sawyer saw that Juliet was still down in mine shaft, dying, and he said, "It didn't work." Juliet corrected him, "It did work." What did she mean by that? If it worked, then life would have gone on as in the flash sideways scenes. What do we do with the island scenes, then?

3. What is Jacob's plan for defeating the man in black? The writers have set us up for a "good god" (Jacob) versus "bad god" (the man in black) battle. When Ben killed Jacob, I thought, Huh. I guess Jacob wasn't as powerful as everyone thought he was. But, in last week's episode, Richard tried to kill Jacob (using the same knife that Ben would later use to kill him), and Jacob showed remarkable reflexes and fighting ability. This makes me think that Jacob allowed Ben to kill him. Why would he do that? If I were writing the show, it would to show that the only way sin (the man in black) could be defeated was for a good God (Jacob) to be murdered at the hands of evil men (Ben). But I'm not writing the show, so the symbolism is probably a stretch.

4. Why did actor Matthew Fox stop trying? Just kidding about that one, but Jack has become the least interesting character in the show.

Brian McLaren's Authority Question

2010-03-29T10:47:00.001-07:00

I am blogging through A New Kind of Christianity by Brian McLaren. McLaren is noted for his dissatisfaction with evangelicalism, and his new book raises “ten questions that are transforming the faith.” He writes, “It’s time for a new quest, launched by new questions, a quest across denominations and around the world, a quest for new ways to believe and new ways to serve faithfully in the way of Jesus, a quest for a new kind of Christian faith.” In the second chapter, he insists that he is not offering answers to these questions, but responses that invite counter-responses. Let the conversation begin! I will offer summaries of each question and response, along with my counter-responses.

McLaren’s second question is the authority question: How should the Bible be understood? McLaren argues that the Bible has traditionally been treated as a constitution—a consistent and easily understood set of rules and regulations—but should rather be understood as a library—a collection of community-relevant documents that inform, but do not end, conversation.

In chapter seven, McLaren claims that we are in drastic need of a new way of reading the Bible. First, the current paradigm produces a truth problem—the church consistently finds itself on the wrong side of scientific investigation. Second, the current paradigm produces an ethics problem—the church finds itself unable to answer the pressing ethical questions of the day. Finally, the current paradigm produces a peace problem—preachers use the text to promote violence. The clearest example of the dominant hermeneutic’s shortcomings was the American church’s inane defense of slavery in the South, similar arguments for which are currently used to support other unethical social positions. (Hermeneutics is “the art and science of biblical interpretation,” and someone’s hermeneutic is their system for reading and interpreting the Bible. Some with a literal hermeneutic reads the Bible literally. Someone with an allegorical hermeneutic reads the Bible allegorically. Some with a redemptive-historical hermeneutic reads the Bible looking at how each passage relates to God’s redemptive history. There are as many hermeneutics as there are theologians.)

In chapter eight, contrasts a Bible-as-constitution hermeneutic with a Bible-as-library hermeneutic. In the former, the Bible is a collection of internally consistent, authoritative declaration about all things pertaining to life. For each of life’s questions there is a definitive verse that ends discussion. In the latter, the Bible is a collection of thoughts about God and life from different perspectives, none of which is intended to be absolute. While the Bible has a “unique” and “unparalleled” role in the conversation, it is not the only voice. Instead, it “preserves, presents, and inspires an ongoing vigorous conversation with and about God, a living and vital civil argument into which we are all invited and through which God is revealed.” (83)

In chapter nine, McLaren presents the Book of Job as a hermeneutic paradigm. The story opens with a contest between Job and the Satan to see whether Job only worships God because of the good it brings him and his family. Although Job has done nothing wrong, God allows the Satan to plague him to test the basis of his allegiance. Neither Job nor his friends have any idea about the cosmic wager, and Job’s friends are quick to offer inaccurate platitudes about blessing for obedience and cursing for disobedience, all of which come from the theology of Deuteronomy. Job rightly rejects his friends’ instructions, and when God finally speaks he takes Job’s side.

McLaren raises some stimulating hermeneutical questions related to Job. First, the character “God” rejects the theology of Job’s friends, but this theology comes from Deuteronomy. What do we do with this tension? Second, do we assume that the character “God” represents the thoughts of the real God? Perhaps “God’s” opinions are merely the opinions of the author, preserved in the biblical text to be debated and engaged with.

At this point, some readers may object to this idea, noting that Job is “inspired” by God. McLaren agrees that Job is “inspired,” but questions what this means. In the Bible-as-constitution paradigm, an inspired text means an accurate, conversation-stopping text. In McLaren’s Bible-as-library paradigm, an “inspired” text is a vital part of a community’s library that needs to be debated and engaged. Thus the story of Job needs to be a part of our conversation, even if we come to different conclusions than the author.

Although McLaren has much good to say in these chapters, he presents a false dichotomy. Rejection of McLaren’s hermeneutic does not mean endorsement of human slavery, or approval of those who use the Bible to endorse other, similar social positions. There are as many approaches to reading the Bible as there are people who read it. While I agree with McLaren in some of his criticisms, I am reluctant to accept his hermeneutical suggestions.

McLaren rightly calls this section “the authority question,” because at the heart of his critique of the dominant hermeneutic are the questions, Does the Bible have special authority? And, if so, Why? Before we can answer these questions, we have to answer the more foundational questions, What is the Bible? and How did we get the Bible? Once we establish what the Bible is, we can discuss its authority.

The Bible is not one book, but a collection of smaller books. (As I discuss the formation of the Bible, I am going to limit my comments to the formation of the New Testament, because that’s where I have a broader knowledge-base. The formation of the Old Testament was similar, but also unique.) There are twenty-seven books in the New Testament—the four Gospels, The Book of Acts, thirteen letters written by the Apostle Paul, seven other letters written by others, one anonymous homily (The Book of Hebrews), and one apocalyptic vision, recorded and sent as a letter to seven churches in Asia Minor (The Book of Revelation).

These books of the New Testament varied in structure, genre, and intent, but they circulated quickly within in the early church. Matthew, Mark, and Luke evidence dependence upon each other, convincing many scholars that Mark was written first and that Matthew and Luke combined Mark’s Gospel with other Jesus tradition to create their own Gospels. Colossians 4:16 instructs the readers to pass the letter on to the Laodiceans and to read that letter originally written to them. In 2 Peter 3:15, the author expresses familiarity with the writings of Paul. So, early on, the church saw the writings of the New Testament to be relevant to, if not authoritative upon, the teaching and ministry of their local congregations. As time went on, churches in the major metropolitan areas gained access to more and more of these writings, along with other letters and stories written by Christian authors.

The second and third centuries brought new and definitive challenges to the church—the rise of Gnosticism and other new ideas. The Gnostics combined Christian theology with Greek dualism to create their own hybrid system of belief. Much of it sounded Christian, but Gnostic thought demanded that their theologians deny either the full humanity of Jesus or the deity of the God of the Old Testament. They cut and pasted passages that they liked and disliked from the Old Testament and the forming New Testament, and they added books of their own that supported Gnostic theology (i.e. The Gospel of Thomas). The rise of Gnosticism, Arianism, and other new ideas led the church to discuss things like canon (which books are authoritative), orthodoxy (which teachings are faithful to the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles), and heresy (which teachings are incompatible with the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles). It is in this context that the twenty-seven books of the New Testament were “canonized” in the early fourth century. It is also in this context that the ancient creeds were written and ideas like Gnosticism, Arianism, etc. were condemned as heresy, i.e a departure from the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles.

So, what is the New Testament? At one level, the New Testament is a collection of letters, sermons, and stories, written by the first generation of Christians, that best represent the teachings of Jesus and the Apostles. Atheist historians even admit to that much. But people of faith see something else going on at another level. While the Holy Spirit is active in the life of all believers, we recognize that something special was going on in the ministries of Jesus and the Apostles. In fact, we would even say that the Spirit was so present in their ministries that the words that they have left behind contain the Word of God.

But, even if the Bible is the Word of God, it is the Word of God packaged in the words of people. When God speaks through the Scriptures, he does so through the personalities of those writing and reading. For instance, consider the following two passages, both commentaries on the Genesis account of Abraham’s justification:

“What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.’ Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.” (Romans 4:1–5 ESV)

“Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness’- and he was called a friend of God.” (James 2:21–24 ESV)

It’s interesting that Paul and James use the same verse, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness,” to prove opposite things. Paul writes, “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law” (Romans 3:28), and James writes, “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone” (James 2:24).

How do we reconcile this blatant contradiction in Scripture? The only solution is to recognize that Paul and James mean something completely different by the terms “justified” and “works.” Paul is dealing with the question of whether someone has to be Jewish to be Christian, and he concludes, “No. A person is justified by faith apart from works of the law.” James is dealing with the question of whether or not someone can have faith if they don’t care for the poor and downtrodden, and he concludes, “No. A person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” While the Bible is a divine book, it is also a human book, full of nuance from the human authors.

Now, McLaren would probably agree with everything I have written to this point. He believes that the Bible is the Word of God. He believes that it was written by human beings by the power of the Spirit. Where we disagree is in the nature of this relationship and the implications for the authority of the Scriptures.

I recognize a human element in the creation of the Bible. Just as Jesus was both God and man, I think the Bible is both the words of men and the Word of God. We need to use every historical, grammatical, and theological tool in our toolbox to best discern the message of the human author of the Bible, because it is only in understanding that message that we can understand the divine message. To propose wooden literalism as the only alternative to his hermeneutic is misleading by McLaren. There is a middle ground that accounts for the language, culture, and genre of the Bible that doesn’t reduce it to one voice among many in the development of theology.

So, what of McLaren’s hermeneutic? McLaren inappropriately elevates the novel over the ancient. G.K. Chesterton wrote, “Democracy means that no voice is excluded on the accidence of his birth. Tradition means that no voice is excluded on the accidence of his death.” Christianity is a communal faith, and when we read the Bible we are communing with those who have gone before. Their voices are important and they deserve to be considered.

Further, while McLaren can point to a few examples of bad theology stemming from a wooden hermeneutic, he doesn't show how his hermeneutic can prevent similar bad theology. When we allow the spirit of the age to control the conversation, we are vulnerable to the prejudices and evils of that age.

When you read the words of Jesus, he doesn’t enter the conversation as a dialog partner, but as our Lord. To treat him as less than Lord is to betray the heart of Christianity. The same can be said about the words of the Apostles—they spoke with authority as men with a unique gifting and calling. We reject their thoughts about God at our own peril.

Like I said, McLaren gets a lot right in this section. We can’t neglect the artistic elements of the Bible—much of it intends to raise questions or stir emotions, and not all of it can be read like a constitution or recipe. But it is unfair to characterize all of the Bible as a mere conversation starter. The message of the Bible represents to teachings of our fathers in the faith and the One that we worship as Lord and God. As Paul wrote about the authority behind one of his “judgments” (sticking his tongue firmly in his cheek), “Yet in my judgment she is happier if she remains as she is. And I think that I too have the Spirit of God.” (1 Cor 7:40, see 7:25)

Brian McLaren's Narrative Question

2010-03-25T11:01:00.001-07:00

“Few of us acknowledge that this master narrative starts with one category of things—good and blessed—and then ends up with two categories of things: good and blessed at the top line and evil and tormented at the bottom. Might we dare ask if this story can be reduced to a manufacturing process—producing a finished product of blessed souls on the top line with a damned unfortunate by-product on the bottom line? Could this be the story of a sorting and shipping process, the purpose of which is to deliver souls into their appropriate eternal bin? Can we dare wonder, given an ending that has more evil and suffering than the beginning, if it would have been better for this story never to have begun?” (34–35)

Second, he argues that this narrative cannot be found in the Bible itself. Instead, it is the product of the church reading Greco-Roman philosophy back into a Hebraic document. When we read the words of Jesus, we read them through a modern lens. We don’t see Jesus as he actually was, but we see Jesus as interpreted by Paul as interpreted by Augustine as interpreted by Aquinas as interpreted by Luther as interpreted by Calvin as interpreted by Jerry Falwell. So much post-Jesus theology has influenced our thinking that we are unable to see Jesus as he actually was.

On the other hand, McLaren suggests we learn to see Jesus through a Hebraic lens. In other words, if we start the story with Adam, and then move to Abraham, then Moses, then David, then the prophets, then John the Baptist, and finally to Jesus, we can see how Jesus fit into the context of his day.

According to McLaren, the predominant view of the Bible’s narrative comes from reading Greco-Roman philosophy back into the text. Plato was the one who introduced the notion of a “perfect” creation and a fall into an imperfect reality, and the Greeks were the ones looking for “salvation” through a return to the perfect order. This, however, was not the mindset of the ancient Hebrews.

According to McLaren, the Hebrews began with a “good” (but not perfect) Creation. Humanity’s “Fall” wasn’t so much of a catastrophic fall from the ideal, but a gradual spiraling into more and more depravity, climaxing at the building of the Tower of Babel—representing humanity’s empire-building and oppressing tendencies. Genesis sets the stage for the most important book in the Bible, Exodus, which demonstrates God’s heart for the oppressed and His liberating work in freeing people from the tyranny of Empire. The second half of Exodus (the giving of the law) demonstrates God’s work in forming people through the overcoming of “the dominating powers of fear, greed, impatience, ingratitude, and so one” (58). The rest of the Old Testament is a repeat of this greatest chapter—God’s longing for a peaceful kingdom to be built on earth contrasted with humanity’s tendency to build oppressive empires.

There is much to applaud in this first section of McLaren’s book. He is right in emphasizing the need to understand Jesus within a Jewish context. A Jesus that cannot be situated within the realm of first century Judaism is most likely not the historical Jesus. There is also much right in his “return from exile” or “liberation” theology. The theme of God’s liberation of the oppressed echoes throughout the Scriptures, and Exodus is a key book in understanding the Bible’s overarching narrative.

However, I think that McLaren has made some critical errors in his reconstruction of the biblical narrative. First, he omits early Christian interpretations of the biblical narrative. Second, he fails to appreciate the influence of Greco-Roman thought on first century Judaism and on Jesus himself. Finally, he fails to show how his interpretation of Genesis and Exodus is actually the ancient interpretation of these books.

While McLaren rightly insists that Jesus be placed in his appropriate Jewish context, he forgets that he also needs to be placed in an appropriate Christian context. Historians studying Jesus are governed by two principles. First, Jesus needs to be fit into a first century Jewish context. Jesus was a Jew just like all of the other Jews of his day. He spoke the same language, had the same education, celebrated the same holidays, and thought of God the same way they did. But, Jesus also needs to be fit into the movement that bears his name. N.T. Wright is fond of saying about this principle, “Where there is smoke, there is probably fire.” In other words, unless it can be proven otherwise, the beliefs and practices of the early followers of Jesus probably go back to Jesus himself. So, McLaren’s glaring omission is: How did Paul understand the narrative of the Old Testament? Since the writings of Paul are the earliest Christian documents that we have, shouldn’t they be the starting point of analyzing Christian thought (or at least a very important piece of the puzzle)?

McLaren’ second error is in neglecting the importance of Greco-Roman thought on first century Judaism and on Jesus himself. After reading this first section of the book, you’d think that Plato had no influence in the world until the sixth century A.D. Not only did Platonism dominate Greco-Roman thought at the time of Jesus, but it also heavily influenced his contemporary Judaism. (The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls has proven this beyond a shadow of a doubt.) So, if we are going to take McLaren’s advice and start with Adam, and then move to Abraham, Moses, David, etc., we have to place Plato somewhere between Isaiah and John the Baptist. While Christianity is a Hebraic religion, it is also a western religion.

McLaren’s third error is his failure to demonstrate that his re-reading of Genesis and Exodus is actually the ancient reading of those texts. Even if we grant that it is possible that Jesus read Genesis and Exodus the way that McLaren is suggesting, how do we know if it is likely that he read it that way? McLaren doesn’t give any examples of ancient writers reading the Bible according to his framework.

Do we have examples of ancient writers reading Genesis according to the traditional interpretation? Second Baruch is a Jewish document written at about the same time as the New Testament. The author writes:

“For, although Adam sinned first and has brought death upon all who were not in his own time, yet each of them who has been born from him has prepared for himself the coming torment. . . . Adam is, therefore, not the cause, except for himself, but each has become his own Adam.” (54:15, 19, A.F.J. Klijn translation)

The author continues:

“And as you first saw the black waters on the top of the cloud which first came down upon the earth; this is the transgression which Adam, the first man, committed. For when he transgressed, untimely death came into being, mourning was mentioned, affliction was prepared, illness was created, labor accomplished, pride began to come into existence, the realm of death began to ask to be renewed with blood, the conception of children came about, the passion of parents was produced, the loftiness of men was humiliated, and goodness vanished.” (56:5–6, A.F.J. Klijn translation)

While the writer of 2 Baruch insists that no one is condemned for the sin of Adam (but for his own sin), he also indicates that a curse was brought upon the earth through Adam’s sin so that sickness, death, and evil hearts infected all people.

Fourth Ezra is another Jewish work written around the time of the New Testament. The author writes:

“You did not take away from them their evil heart, so that you Law might bring forth fruit in them. For the first Adam, burdened with an evil heart, transgressed and was overcome, as were also all who were descended from him. Thus the disease became permanent; the law was in people’s heart along with the evil root, but what was good departed, and the evil remained.” (3:20–22, B.M Metzger translation)

The writer of 4 Ezra likewise noted that something happened within the heart of humanity when Adam sinned. Before, there were tendencies both toward good and evil, but after Adam the good departed and people were left with an evil root.

Finally (and most importantly), there is the Apostle Paul. Paul was a Pharisee and a contemporary of Jesus, although the two likely never met before Paul’s encounter with Him on the road to Damascus. Paul writes:

“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.” (Romans 5:12–14 ESV)

Sin and death came into the world through one man, Adam.

Paul also note that all of creation suffers from the consequences of Adam’s sin and is awaiting its redemption. He writes:

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” (Romans 8:18–23 ESV)

So, the narrative of Creation-Curse-Redemption was certainly around at the time of Jesus—it was not invented in the sixth century A.D. The same cannot be said for McLaren’s reconstruction.

Why is this important?

First, I want to reiterate that much of what McLaren says in this section is right. God is against oppression. God wants us to work for righteousness and peace in the here-and-now, and not just wait for Him to bring it in the sweet by-and-by. It’s not what McLaren affirms that I disagree with, it’s what he denies, namely that human beings are fallen creatures in need of redemption. And, for the record, he doesn’t mince words. About the two different interpretations of the biblical narrative, he writes:

“The wild, passionate, creative, liberating, hope-inspiring God whose image emerges in these three sacred narratives is not the dread cosmic dictator of the six-line Greco-Roman framework. No, that deity, we must conclude, is an idol, a damnable idol. Yes, that idol is popular, perhaps even predominant, and defended by many a well-meaning but misguided scholar and fire-breathing preacher. But in the end you cannot serve two masters, Theos [the traditional God] and Elohim [McLaren’s reconstruction], the god of the Greco-Roman philosophers and Caesars and the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the violent god of profit proclaimed by the empire and the compassionate God of justice proclaimed by the prophets.” (65)

Working for justice and peace is all well and good, but if the last 100 years has taught us anything it’s that it will never work, because there is something wrong with us. We are fallen, sinful creatures in need of redemption. If we reject that theology, we will fail in whatever sort of “kingdom-building” endeavor for which we set out.

Brian McLaren's Ten Questions that Are Transforming the Faith

2010-03-22T16:45:00.001-07:00

If you’re unfamiliar with Brian McLaren, he has been a fairly prolific author during the 21st century—one who has stirred up plenty of controversy in evangelical circles. Along with Rob Bell, he is the author I am asked about most often. Personally, I feel that he is criticized more than he is understood. Most people who ask me about him know little about his thought other than that it is bad. That’s not really fair to Brian.

On the other hand, I have heard that McLaren takes his ideas to a new level in his latest book. To this point, he has offered more questions than answers, and the answers he has offered have been frustratingly vague. I am hoping that A New Kind of Christianity clarifies his faith, and I am blogging through the book because I anticipate his ideas spreading throughout evangelicalism.

The book is divided into chapters based on ten questions and answers:

The narrative question: What is the overarching story line of the Bible?
The authority question: How should the Bible be understood?
The God question: Is God violent?
The Jesus question: Who is Jesus and why is he important?
The gospel question: What is the gospel?
The church question: What do we do about the church?
The sex question: Can we find a way to address human sexuality without fighting about it?
The future question: Can we find a better way of viewing the future?
The pluralism question: How should followers of Jesus relate to people of other religions?
The what-do-we-do-now question: How can we translate our quest into action?

I first came across McLaren’s writings in 2005, while I was living in Dallas. I thoroughly enjoyed A New Kind of Christian (2001) and was prompted to read A Generous Orthodoxy (2004). Since then I’ve read a number of his books, the most significant being The Secret Message of Jesus (2006), Everything Must Change (2007), and Finding Our Way Again (2008).

I find McLaren’s writings to be helpful but dissatisfying. They are helpful in the sense that he asks good questions and he has a knack for pointing out what is wrong with contemporary Christianity. They are dissatisfying in that, despite claiming to be “new,” his answers are largely rehashes of ideas that have been tried and found wanting. He seems to forget that evangelicalism arose to prominence because people found the 20th century liberal movement unfruitful. Sometimes it seems like he is advocating we push that button again, only harder, and expect to get different results this time. Then again, that shouldn’t be surprising—it’s far easier to agree with someone that something is wrong than agree with them how to fix it (see the now moot Nationalized Health Care Debate, The).

I’m thankful for guys like Brian McLaren. We shouldn’t be afraid to analyze current goings-on in evangelicalism or ask hard questions. I haven’t read anything written by him that would qualify as “heresy,” even if I have read things that would qualify as “non-evangelical.” I am interested in seeing where he takes the conversation next.

God is not Great—Parting Thoughts

2010-03-16T13:04:00.000-07:00

I finished god is not Great by Christopher Hitchens today. It took me almost six months to work through it, but I responded to every chapter here on the blog. (You can access them on the archives on the left side of the blog—the first entry is September 30, 2009.)

As you will be able to tell by reading through my responses, I didn’t hate the book. Obviously, there is much in it with which I disagree, and at times I found myself on the defensive while I read. I didn’t plan for this to be the case, but Hitchens’ lively rhetoric and his use of ridicule unexpectedly evoked anger and indignation from me. He’s a great writer and religions give him a lot of ammunition.

Here are some things I walked away with having read the book:

The nature of the debate has changed. In the past, attacks against religion focused on the historical reliability of religious documents or in the philosophical claims of the religions. Hitchens glances by these, focusing instead on the moral deficiencies of religions and religious people, and he has found an audience. He doesn’t care about the cosmological argument or the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, he wants to know why religious people fly airplanes into buildings and why the divorce rate in the church is just as high as that outside of the church. If we continue to focus our apologetics on the reliability of the Scriptures and philosophical proofs for the existence of God, then we are failing to answer the questions that people like Christopher Hitchens are asking.

Religious authority is a major distraction from the Gospel. There is a subtext throughout god is not Great of contempt for authority—especially religious authority. Much of the book has the tone of a rebellious teenager yelling “You’re not the boss of me!” in the face of his bewildered parents who can no longer physically restrain him.

But maybe this is what the church needs to hear.

The Gospel is not about power. It’s not about forcing people to behave a certain way by flexing our political or military muscles. Christian leadership is leadership through service, and the spiritual authority of the church does not extend to the world, which Paul says is under the control of the prince of the power of the air (Eph 2:2).

When Jesus ministered in the flesh, he was opposed by the religious authorities. He did not try to pull rank on them and insist upon his right to rule over the faith community. He led by service and let the power of the Holy Spirit testify to his authority. The church today needs to follow suit. We need to live like Christ, proclaim the Gospel as the basis for our changed lives, and allow the power of the word and Spirit to influence our world.

Science is portrayed as the primary antagonist to the church. In the final chapter of the book, Hitchens writes:

“Religion has run out of justifications. Thanks to the telescope and the microscope, it no longer offers an explanation of anything important. Where once it used to be able, by its total command of a worldview, to prevent the emergence of rivals, it can now only impede and retard—or try to turn back—the measurable advances that we have made.”

There is some basis to this perception. The scientific community and the religious community offer competing stories of the origins of the cosmos. Personally, I think we need to be careful about making this the battle ground. I don’t think most people can even articulate the theory of evolution, let alone evaluate its tenability. But, they do notice when we offer up junk science as a competing interpretation. That’s not to say that we should abandon the sciences or stop trying to show how scientific inquiry can support our views, but it is to say that we need to be absolutely sure of the soundness of our methods and we need to choose our battles. We can’t make science the enemy. If what we say about the world is true, then we have nothing to fear about honest exploration of it.

Hitchens has not interacted with the greatest Christian minds or the best Christian ideas. One of the frustrating things about reading god is not Great is the feeling one gets that Hitchens thinks that Christians have never read David Hume or that we haven’t updated our apologetics since the Middle Ages. Sure, he quotes C.S. Lewis on occasion, but Mere Christianity was written in 1952. What about 21st century apologetics? Atheists need to react to the work of Wolfhart Pannenberg. He is conversant in particle physics, string theory, evolutionary biology, philosophy of all kinds, ancient Near Eastern religion, biblical theology, systematic theology, and anthropology. His apologetic is postmodern. Even interaction with guys like N.T. Wright or Ravi Zacharias would be better than what we see in god is not Great. While some people’s faith may be shattered by his book, I found that Hitchens didn’t even address the questions that I am asking or the reasons that I believe.

A new approach to apologetics is needed. In “The Grand Inquisitor,” the most famous chapter in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, atheist Ivan and Christian Alyosha debate the existence of God. Actually, the chapter is more of a diatribe by Ivan about why God does not exist. When Ivan finishes, his brother Alyosha responds by kissing him.

I think this is the apologetic that our world needs. They may attack us with ridicule and intellectual arguments, but the most powerful response is not angry retaliation, but love. Like I said above, our culture doesn’t seem as concerned about whether or not Christianity is true, but whether or not it works. If God is real, then Christianity will make a difference in the lives of his followers. (This is also the apologetic of Wolfhart Pannenberg.)

I wish Christopher Hitchens the best. I hope he continues to be open about his doubts, and I hope the Christian community responds to him with compassion. (I think I read that his experience debating Douglas Wilson was encouraging to him. He was surprised at how hospitable Christians were to him.) The only request that I may make of Hitchens is that he tone down the ridicule. No one likes to be mocked by strangers who don’t know them or their stories. He’s a great writer; I hope he can use his gifts to advance dialog rather than impede it.

Christopher Hitchens on "The Last-Ditch ‘Case’ Against Secularism"

2010-03-15T10:48:00.001-07:00

“Whether we examine the oriental monarchies of China or India or Persia, or the empires of the Aztecs or Incas, or the medieval courts of Spain and Russia and France, it is almost unvaryingly that we find that these dictators were also gods, or the heads of churches. More than mere obedience was owed them: any criticism of them was profane by definition, and millions of people lived and died in pure fear of a ruler who could select you for a sacrifice, or condemn you to eternal punishment, on a whim.”

What about the Stalinists? Weren’t they secular totalitarians? No, says Hitchens. Stalinism was not secular but religious. He writes:

“Communist absolutists did not so much negate religion, in societies that they well understood were saturated with faith and superstition, as seek to replace it. The solemn elevation of infallible leaders who were a source of endless bounty and blessing; the permanent search for heretics and schismatics; the mummification of dead leaders as icons and relics; the lurid show trials that elicited incredible confessions by means of torture . . . none of this was very difficult to interpret in traditional terms.”

What about the Nazis and other post-World-War-I fascists? Hitchens writes:

“Arising out of the misery and humiliation of the First World War, fascist movements were in favor of traditional values against Bolshevism, and upheld nationalism and piety. It is probably not a coincidence that they arose first and most excitedly in Catholic countries, and it is certainly not a coincidence that the Catholic Church was generally sympathetic to fascism as an idea.”

While Hitchens acknowledges that secular humanists have made their mistakes in history and that some religious people have been bright spots in opposing totalitarianism, in general religion has been an embarrassing ally to totalitarians.

It is important to note at the onset that much of what Hitchens has to say is right—religious institutions often have been embarrassing allies of totalitarians. We need look no further than the contemporary situation in some of the Middle Eastern Muslim countries to see what harm can be done when church and state are infused. I have Anabaptist tendencies and affirm the separation of church and state.

But, despite my agreements with Hitchens, there is much to which I object. Unlike the previous chapters that all attack religion, this one sets out to defend secular pluralism against a religious counter-attack. So, when religious people point to Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia as examples of what can happen in a secular state, Hitchens responds by saying: (1) religious states are inherently totalitarian, and (2) Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia were religious, not secular states. I don’t find either of these arguments compelling.

First, I disagree that a few examples of the church behaving badly prove that religion is inherently totalitarian and that all religious leaders are despots. Hitchens neglects the “Already/Not Yet” aspect of the church and the implications on its decision making. While we insist that the church is indwelt by the Holy Spirit so that we have unprecedented access to the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:30, 2:6–16), we also admit that our indwelling by the Spirit is incomplete. We see as through a mirror dimly (1 Corinthians 13:12). This means that the church does not have inerrant access to the mind of God and that church pronouncements are fallible. Thus, whenever someone is in power—churchman or not—there is the potential for abuse.

Hitchens writes, “Human beings and institutions are imperfect, to be sure. But there could be no clearer or more vivid proof that holy institutions are man-made.” I agree. But just because holy institutions are man-made, doesn’t mean that they are merely man-made. As N.T. Wright describes it, the church is the place where the human and the divine intersect, or where heaven and earth intersect. The church is both a man-made institution and a divine institution.

Second, I object to the way that Hitchens redefines religion in chapter seventeen so that secular states like Nazi Germany or Stalinist Russia are recast as “religious” states. What makes an ideology a religion? Hitchens has his own ideology. He has his own creation stories and prophecies of doom and gloom. He has corresponding ethics and rituals based on these stories. He even has angels (scientists) and demons (religious people). If Hitchens were put in charge, would he be a “religious” totalitarian?

Is there any middle ground? I think so. I do not think that religious ideas should be codified into public policy simply because they are religious ideas. I am confident enough in the truth of Christianity that I think it should be considered as one idea among many. If we want to call this “secular pluralism,” then I am okay with that. As Christian ideas and policies are tested, the wisdom of God will be vindicated. On the contrary, Hitchens seems to be advocating a different kind of secular pluralism, one in which religious ideas are ignored or suffocated simply because they are religious. That is not pluralism; it’s a theocracy of a different kind.

Sad News from iMonk

2010-03-09T11:55:00.000-08:00

Michael Spencer has posted an update on his health at internetmonk.com. He is not doing well.

Christopher Hitchens on “Is Religion Child Abuse?”

2010-03-01T12:35:00.000-08:00

In Chapter sixteen, “Is Religion Child Abuse?” Hitchens questions the authority that religious leaders have over children.

Hitchens begins by recounting several scare stories told to children in order to get them to listen and obey their parents and religious authorities. Hitchens asserts that children are targeted specifically because they have not reached the age of reason. As Ignatius of Loyola said, “Give me a child until he is ten, and I will give you the man.” Since children do not have mature reasoning skills, it is “abusive” to manipulate them to immoral beliefs and practices. Hitchens claims that this is precisely what religions do.

With regard to immoral beliefs, Hitchens cites the church’s position on abortion. I have to admit, I was shocked as I tried to follow Hitchens’ logic here. (I will elaborate below.) Hitchens claims that science has thoroughly discredited the old claim that an embryo was merely part of a woman’s body, comparable to an appendix or a tumor. They are correctly called “unborn children.” However, recognizing this begins a discussion; it doesn’t end it. Since abortions happen naturally (we call them miscarriages), we can only assume that nature or god recognizes that there are certain circumstances in which it is undesirable or less beneficial for a pregnancy to result in a live birth. Contrary to this common sense, religions (and the Roman Catholic Church is the target here) have insisted upon a black-and-white stance on abortion and contraception, making IUDs “murder weapons.”

With regard to immoral practices, Hitchens cites genital mutilation—including both the Muslim practice of female circumcision and the Judeo-Christian practice of male circumcision. He exposes the disinformation about the health benefits of either of these practices and asserts that the “real” reason why they are practiced is to decrease sexual sensation and thus exercise control over the recipient’s sexual behavior.

I see three main points to this chapter. First, the thesis of the chapter is that compulsory religious education of children is child abuse. Supporting this thesis are the claims (1) that religious beliefs are immoral, and (2) religious practices are immoral.

Is compulsory religious education immoral? Is any kind of compulsory education of children immoral? I have two children whom I responsible for raising. Part of my parental responsibility is to teach my children the ways of the world and how they can be successful in it. So, I am teaching them to read, even if they don’t want to learn how to read. I will teach them how to count, even if they don’t want to learn how to count. I will teach them to play nice with others, to share toys, to work hard, to be persistent, to do their best, to be honest, to be charitable, to be a good friend, to look both ways before crossing the street, to wash their hands before dinner, to brush their teeth, to exercise, to pray, to pay their taxes, to participate in the government, to honor the elderly, and a whole slew of other things.

I will also tell them stories. I will tell them about my great grandfather who ended up in Pennsylvania because he got on a train and said, “Take me as far as this money will go.” I will tell them about my parents, and how my dad’s military career took us all around the country. I will tell them how I met their mother at my high school youth group. I will tell them about the founding fathers and how this country was formed on the principles of freedom and equality. I will tell them about human slavery and the racial inequalities that have haunted our country since its inception. I will tell them about how when I was a kid there was this place called the Soviet Union and how we all just assumed that the world would end when we eventually went to nuclear war with them. And yes, I will tell them that God created the world and that Jesus died for our sins.

Some of the things that I will teach my children will come from my religious convictions. Some will derive from my experience living in the context in which I have lived. If it’s not abusive for me to insist that my children get a dental check up every six months and that they get a medical physical every year, than it isn’t child abuse for me to insist that they be in church. Religion is a part of who we are, what we do, and what we believe. What else can any parent teach their children except the ways of the world as they have experienced it? That’s our calling as parents.

If compulsory education isn’t wrong in and of itself, then perhaps it is the religious content of that education that amounts to child abuse. Are the beliefs and practices of religion immoral?

The short answer is “yes, some times.” Any time that you make a broad, sweeping judgment like “religion” or “religious people,” you are going to find a mixed bag of beliefs and practices—some moral; some immoral. (Then again, that does raise the question of the standard for judging something to be “immoral.” Nobody thinks that their practices are immoral.)

So, what about the immoral practices that Hitchens cites? This is a tougher issue than he lets on. All cultures have liminal experiences through which they require people to go in order to become part of the group. Those who go through the process are stressed for a time, but they come out on the other side as “part of the group.” It is the shared traumatic experience that produces group solidarity. The best example that I can think of from our culture is the generation that went through World War II together. They were all stretched, and they have a solidarity that other generations can’t understand. (Think, if you played sports, of how the grueling practices and fierce competitions bonded your group.) Some liminal experiences in American culture are high school, learning to drive, college, and marriage. Other subgroups have experiences that bind them together—things like medical residencies, internships, graduate school, field work, dissertations, fraternity pledge week, etc.

Religious rites are liminal experiences. Some, like baptism, are relatively tame. Some, like female circumcision, are horrific to outsiders. But it’s these shared experiences that produce group cohesion. Groups are defined by insiders and outsiders, and the difference between the two is often determined by going through some kind of rite. So, are the rites abusive? That depends on how you define abuse. Harshness is not the same as abuse. A medical residency that requires you to work 70 hours per week is harsh, but few people would call it abuse. Two-a-days are harsh, but few would call them abuse. Compulsory military service is harsh, but few would call it a human rights violation.

The most extreme religious rite is female circumcision. It is performed on grown, pre-pubescent girls, and it is very painful. Following the procedure, sex also can be very painful. But it is also an ingrained part of some cultures, so that women who refuse to undergo the process are branded “whores.”

If you were a parent of a young girl in a culture that placed a high value on female circumcision, and your daughter said, “I don’t want to do it,” would you force her to do it? (Keep in mind that refusal to undergo the procedure would alienate her from her peers and make finding a husband difficult.) Let’s contextualize to America. What if your child didn’t want to go to school? Would you make him or her? (Of course you would.) What if your child had a physical deformity that could be treated with cosmetic surgery, only your child was afraid to have the procedure done—would you force the child, reasoning “you’ll thank me when you’re older”?

We need to be careful about judging cultures from the outside. We don’t understand why other cultures find female circumcision to be reasonable, therefore we find forced participation to be abusive. But these cultures do find it to be reasonable, or they would abandon the practice (every young girl who undergoes it has a mother who also went through it). Since I don’t come from a culture that practices female circumcision, I find the practice disturbing. But then I think of the Bible and God’s command to circumcise all adult male converts to Judaism. If I was thinking about converting to worshipping the true God, but the catch was that I would have to undergo an operation, would that be a deal-breaker?

I don’t think the question is as simple as Hitchens makes it out to be. As outsiders to the cultures that undergo female circumcision, we look on in disgust and say, “No way! I would never make my daughter do that! Those people are barbarians!” If we were part of that culture, we might think differently.

There is no theological justification for male circumcision in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Apparently, there is no medical benefit to it, either. It was just something people did to identify them as “Jewish”—a liminal experience that produced group cohesion and distinguished outsiders from insiders. (Note also that this practice is not a Christian practice. I don’t know why non-Jewish westerners do it, but the answer is found in history/sociology, not in theology.)

As someone who was circumcised (too much information, I know), I was a bit perplexed at this choice as an example of gross religious immorality. Hitchens writes:

“Full excision, originally ordered by god as the blood price for the promised future massacre of the Canaanites, is now exposed for what it is—a mutilation of a powerless infant with the aim of ruining its future sex life. The connection between religious barbarism and sexual repression could not be plainer than when it is ‘marked in the flesh.’ Who can count the number of lives that have been made miserable in this way, especially since Christian doctors began to adopt ancient Jewish folklore in their hospitals?”

Really? Ruining its future sex life? Do you really think that?

So, Christians are immoral for circumcising their infant males (but people who pierce their daughters’ ears are okay). And what about those immoral beliefs? As I said above, I was shocked by Hitchens’ moral reasoning.

Hitchens grants that an embryo is “a separate body and entity, and not merely (as some really did used to argue) a growth in the female body.” Yet, he insists, “this only opens the argument rather than closes it.” I agree so far. Removal of a tumor is not a moral issue; termination of a human life is. But this doesn’t end the discussion, since termination of a human life may be acceptable under certain circumstances.

So, I was waiting for Hitchens’ argument with regard to when and why abortion is acceptable, and why Christians are immoral for their position. Before I quote Hitchens’ position, I should note that the Christian position is not monolithic. I don’t think there are many people who would argue that abortion is always wrong. In the case of an ectopic pregnancy, where the embryo’s chance of survival is nil and the mother’s life is at risk, abortion seems to be the ethical choice. Other cases in which an unborn baby has a chance at survival and the mother has a slight health risk are grey areas. Most Christians are against abortion for convenience (the vast majority of cases).

I don’t really feel the need to respond much to Hitchens’ moral reasoning. His argument pretty much speaks for itself:

“There may be circumstances in which it is not desirable to carry a fetus to full term. Either nature or god appears to appreciate this, since a very large number of pregnancies are ‘aborted,’ so to speak, because of malformations, and are politely known as ‘miscarriages.’ Sad though this is, it is preferably less miserable an outcome than the vast number of deformed or idiot children who would otherwise have been born, or stillborn, or whose brief lives would have been a torment to themselves and others. As with evolution in general, therefore, in utero we see a microcosm of nature and evolution itself. In the first place we begin as tiny forms that are amphibian, before gradually developing lungs and brains (and growing and shedding that now useless coat of fur) and then struggling out and breathing fresh air after a somewhat difficult transition. Likewise, the system is fairly pitiless in eliminating those who never had a very good chance of surviving in the first place: our ancestors on the savannah were not going to survive in their turn if they had a clutch of sickly and lolling infants to protect against predators.”

Abortion is moral because even nature recognizes the need to eliminate the “deformed or idiot children,” whose “lives would have been a torment to themselves and others.” Adolf Hitler said, “Nature is cruel; therefore we, too, can be cruel.” How is this different from Hitchens’ argument? If this is the basis for making moral decisions, what reason do we have for helping people like this man, who, apart from the benevolence of others would be eliminated by the pitiless system?

Hitchens writes, “If religious instruction were not allowed until the child had attained the age of reason, we would be living in quite a different world.” Indeed.

Scot McKnight on Brian McLaren's New Book

2010-02-28T08:47:00.001-08:00

I have appreciated Scot McKnight's approach to Brian McLaren. He gives him the benefit of the doubt, shows him grace and patience, and looks for the good in his writings. This makes his review of Brian's new book all the more damning. He writes, "Unfortunately, this book lacks the 'generosity' of a genuine orthodoxy, and, frankly, I find little space in it for orthodoxy itself."

I'm going to read the book for myself, but, sadly, this feels like McLaren's last credible defender jumping ship.

Churchrater.com

2010-02-11T09:31:00.000-08:00

hotornot.com for churches.

Tom Long on Preaching

2010-02-10T08:47:00.000-08:00

"Sermons on 'Five Ways to Keep Your Marriage Alive' or 'Keys to a Successful Prayer Life' or even 'Standing Up for Peace in a Warring World' may possess some ethical wisdom and some utilitarian helpfulness, but the often have the sickly sweet aroma of smoldering incense in a temple from which the deity has long since departed." (Tom Long, Preaching from Memory to Hope)

Wow.

Long argues instead for the kind of preaching that immerses the congregation in the story of God.

(HT: Scot McKnight)

Sally Jenkins on Tim Tebow, NOW, and the Upcoming Super Bowl Ad

2010-02-03T10:31:00.000-08:00

This is a good article by a pro-choice writer about the absurdities of NOW's opposition to the Tim Tebow ad.

HT: Justin Taylor

Christopher Hitchens on Unitarians

2010-01-27T13:50:00.000-08:00

I ran across this today--a comment by atheist Christopher Hitchens to a Unitarian minister:

"I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian."

How does this relate to 1 Corinthians 2:14?

HT: Justin Taylor

Christopher Hitchens on "Religion as an Original Sin"

2009-12-19T14:49:00.000-08:00

Chapter fifteen, “Religion as Original Sin,” is a series of accusations against religion, painting it not as amoral, but immoral. It is a well-thought-out critique of religion in general and of Christianity in particular. Again, Hitchens is a great writer, and one who has put a lot of thought into his disbelief.

Hitchens has three points of contention: (1) the demand of blood sacrifice, (2) the concept of atonement, and (3) the imposition of impossible tasks with eternal damnation as a consequence for disobedience.

Blood Sacrifice. Hitchens tells the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac—that Abraham was commanded to sacrifice his only son, that he went along with it, that he was stopped at the last second (by an angel, not by God himself), and that he was praised for a type of faith that is willing to shed blood in God’s name without questioning. He then goes on to show how adherents to the three Abrahamic faiths continue the tradition by shedding blood in God’s name, even over the right to worship on the very mountain where Isaac was spared.

Atonement. Hitchens grants, for the sake of argument, the historical accounts of the crucifixion in order to evaluate the theology. He writes:

Let us just for now overlook all the contradictions between the tellers of the original story and assume that it is basically true. What are the further implications? They are not as reassuring as they look at first sight. For a start, and in order to gain the benefit of this wondrous offer, I have to accept that I am responsible for the flogging and mocking and crucifixion, in which I had no say and no part, and agree that every time I decline this responsibility, or that I sin in word or deed, I am intensifying the agony of it. Furthermore, I am required to believe that the agony was necessary in order to compensate for an earlier crime in which I also had no part, the sin of Adam. It is useless to object that Adam seems to have been created with insatiable discontent and curiosity and then forbidden to slake it: all this was settled long before even Jesus himself was born. Thus my own guilt in the matter is deemed “original” and inescapable. However, I am still granted free will with which to reject the offer of vicarious redemption. Should I exercise this choice, however, I face an eternity of torture much more awful than anything endured at Calvary, or anything threatened by those who first heard the Ten Commandments.

The tale is made no easier to follow by the necessary realization that Jesus both wished and needed to die and came to Jerusalem at Passover in order to do so, and that all who took part in his murder were unknowingly doing god’s will, and fulfilling ancient prophecies.

Impossible Laws and Damnation. Hitchens mentions several of the commandments that are impossible to obey (thou shalt not covet, love your neighbor as yourself, etc.) and wonders what kind of god would punish these “crimes” with eternal damnation. He writes, “The essential principle of totalitarianism is to make laws that are impossible to obey. The resulting tyranny is even more impressive if it can be enforced by a privileged caste or party which is highly zealous in the correction of error.”

I think Hitchens correctly articulates the religious beliefs of a lot of people. When this theological system is combined with a hostile or abusive human environment, I can’t help but sympathize with anyone who walks away from the God Hitchens describes. However, my views of God, His laws, and damnation are a bit more nuanced than what Hitchens describes.

First, on blood sacrifice. Why does God demand blood sacrifice? Why did the ancient Hebrews have to slaughter an animal to atone/expiate for their sins? Why couldn’t money suffice, or some other form of penance? The writer of Hebrews wrote, “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins” (Hebrews 9:22). Why not? Surely an almighty, omniscient God could have thought of some other plan that didn’t involve escalating violence.

I think sacrifice is an object lesson. The death of an animal is a picture of our own death and the death of humanity, for which sin is to blame. The Apostle Paul wrote, “sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Romans 5:12), “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), “if you live according to the flesh you will die” (Romans 8:13), and “The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law” (1 Corinthians 15:56). Paul saw a cause-and-effect relationship between sin and death—we die because of sin. Death is not a part of God’s creative intent, but an alien element brought in by humanity itself.

When sin is considered something that brings death to the individual and society, then the requirement of blood sacrifice is a little bit more understandable. It was a reminder of the severity of the offense. As Hitchens himself demonstrates throughout his book, we underestimate the effects that sin has on our humanity. It defaces the image of God within us, and it leads us toward death. Animal sacrifice, as horrible as it is, is nothing compared to the effects of sin. Sacrifice is a ghastly reminder of this for our benefit, not something that God enjoys because He is sadistic.

Second, on atonement. Hitchens’ objection to atonement seems more like an objection to original sin. He doesn’t object to people laying their lives down for others, but that things had to play out this way with Jesus. He doesn’t feel that he is that bad of a guy or that Jesus should have had to die for his sin. If he were in charge, he would have found another way to do it.

Did God’s plan of salvation have to play out the way it did? Yes and no. On the one hand, God foreordained before the foundation of the world that it would play out that way, so in that sense it had to. But philosophically, did it have to? I don’t see why it had to.

Again, I think that Jesus death on the cross and subsequent resurrection was a picture of the work that God is doing in individuals and humanity. Jesus’ grisly demise was a picture of the effect that sin has in our hearts and in our lives. His glorious vindication through resurrection from the dead is also a picture of the believer’s destiny. Thus Paul talks about us being “united” to Christ’s death and resurrection in baptism. Jesus died because we’re dying. Jesus rose so that we might rise.

While satisfaction of God’s wrath is certainly one description of what happened on the cross, we can’t downplay the other pictures. Jesus’ death and resurrection is also described as a victory over sin and death (1 Corinthians 15:20–28, 51–57). Death was already a given. The cross made resurrection a part of the picture.

Could God have chosen another way to rescue humanity? Perhaps. But He didn’t.

Finally, on impossible laws and eternal damnation. Hitchens’ seems to understand the doctrine of original sin, but he also seems to forget it at times. No one is condemned for coveting; we are condemned along with Adam for humanity’s rebellion in the Garden of Eden. Our subsequent rebellion is evidence that sin is working in our lives and that we are guilty together with Adam. Thus, the very existence of “impossible” laws testifies against us—they are impossible because we are sinful.

I don’t want to downplay the thoughtfulness of Hitchens’ critique of Christianity in this chapter. Some of the nuances of atonement theory are a little squirrely to human reasoning. But we are reminded that our thoughts aren’t always God’s thoughts (Isaiah 55:8), and God’s wisdom sometimes appears foolish to mere men (1 Corinthians 1:18–25).

Ultimately, I believe that God is not arbitrarily offended by sin, but that He has created us to live in a way that is truly good, just, and beautiful. Sin is a rebellion against such a life and thus it is abhorrent to God. It’s not that God is a fascist and wants us to fall in line with his commandments; it’s that He wants the best for us, and tells us how to live to attain that best. The problem is that we have inherited corrupted minds and corrupted hearts so that we don’t always know what’s best, and when we do know what’s best we don’t always do what’s best.

We’re dying.

God wants to save us from that through Jesus.

Christopher Hitchens on "There Is No 'Eastern' Solution"

2009-12-16T13:48:00.000-08:00

In chapter fourteen, "There Is No 'Eastern' Solution," Hitchens turns his sights on to eastern religions and finds that they are no better than the western ones. I am not interested in defending eastern religions, so I am not going to respond.

Hitchens modus operandi is the same with eastern religions as it is with the western ones--pick out a few anecdotes and use them to discredit an entire religious system. The victim here is Buddhism by means of a guru named Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh. Hitchens' main complaint is the eastern notion that religion is a means of escape by checking one's mind at the door. Fair enough.

I loved this:

"Make me one with everything." So goes the Buddhist's humble request to the hot-dog vendor. But when the Buddhist hands over a twenty-dollar bill to the vendor, in return for his slathered bun, he waits a long time for his change. Finally asking for it, he is informed that 'change comes only from within.'

Church Movements and Rhetoric of the Spirit

2009-12-14T14:27:00.000-08:00

I'm reading a book on house churches, or what some people might call "liquid churches," "simple churches," or "organic churches." Much of the information is good, but it is difficult for me to get past the authors' language. You'd think it was rebellion to church any other way. Here is a sample of what I am talking about. In talking about the cultural move from large churches to house churches, the authors write:

But it does appear that God is also doing something new. There is no location, no city or town to which one can travel to find the center of this movement. There is no superstar whose conference we can attend. But all across the nation, the Holy Spirit is speaking to His people. And everyone seems to be hearing the same thing: church as we know it has changed. Many believe this current move of God will prove similar in scope and impact to the Reformation of the sixteenth century.

Now, I like the philosophy of ministry that the authors are describing. I am drinking the Michael Frost/Alan Hirsch Kool-Aid (with some helpful correctives found in Jim Belcher's Deep Church). But do you see the implications of the above quote? God is doing something new. . . .The Holy Spirit is speaking to His people . . . . [C]hurch as we know it has changed. What, then, of all the faithful followers of Jesus who are not operating according to their philosophy of ministry? Are they not following the Spirit? Is God not speaking to them, or is He keeping His new plans a secret from them?

And why is it that when God is doing something "new," it is always going back to Acts? Why not go back farther? Why doesn't anyone ever say, "God is restoring us to the original church like we saw in 1 Corinthians. There are contentious divisions. People are having sex with their step parents. They're suing each other. They're getting drunk on the communion wine. They're visiting prostitutes, forbidding each other from getting married, and denying the resurrection. It's just like the early church!"

I like the house church movement. But let's keep it in perspective. God works in a variety of ways. The Spirit has been at work for 2000 years, not just for a couple of hundred early on and a hundred more recently. Today's "movement of the Spirit" is tomorrow's "remember when churches used to . . . "

Christopher Hitchens on "Does Religion Make People Behave?"

2009-12-10T16:14:00.000-08:00

I am reading God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. The purpose of his book is not to eradicate religion, but to bolster the atheist position in public discourse. Religious conversation, writes Hitchens, is “the beginning—but not the end—of all arguments about philosophy, science, history, and human nature. It is also the beginning—but by no means the end—of all disputes about the good life and the just city."

In chapter 13, “Does Religion Make People Behave Better?” Hitchens answers the objection that atheism encourages immorality. He begins by attacking some of religion’s success stories. He argues that the advances made by Dr. Martin Luther King and other abolitionists came more from their familiarity with humanism than it did their Christian conviction. He continues that Ghandhi’s work has been overrated and that it has even done more harm than good.

Hitchens then turns the argument and recounts examples of how religion has made people worse—specifically in the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur.

Hitchens grants that some religious people are moral, but that religious people are a mixed bag. He received death threats from Muslims who disapproved of his refusal to join their campaign against Denmark, and he witnessed a Muslim cab driver show extraordinary honesty and piety by returning a large sum of money to his wife that she left in his cab. “Which of these to versions of faith,” asks Hitchens, “is the one to rely on? . . . [I]f all Muslims conducted themselves like the man who gave up more than a week’s salary in order to do the right thing, I would be quite indifferent to the weird exhortations of the Koran.”

While Hitchens might be more tolerant to religious people if they were moral, he disagrees that morality can prove religion. People do things with all kinds of strange motivations. Just because a story motivates someone to act morally, it doesn’t mean that the story is true.

The most poignant part of the chapter is in Hitchens recounting a debate between the atheist A. J. Ayer and a Bishop Butler. When Ayer said that he saw no evidence for the existence of any god, Butler responded, “Then I cannot see why you do not lead a life of unbridled immorality.” Hitchens doesn’t defend all of Ayer’s lifestyle decisions, but insists that calling him immoral would be a “travesty of the truth.” On the other hand, Butler’s comments reveal that if Butler didn’t see evidence of god, that he would have led a life of unbridled immorality. Hitchens notes that this is why “When priests go bad, they go very bad indeed, and commit crimes that would make the average sinner pale.”

While there are some good points in this chapter, Hitchens’ argument fails. First, while he may be able to see humanistic principles that could have explained Dr. King’s behavior, this is certainly not the explanation that King himself would have offered for his behavior. The same has to be said for other Christian abolitionists and humanitarians.

But Hitchen’s failure to do Dr. King justice is not the main reason his argument fails. Hitchens’ biggest error is in reading his own atheist worldview into the argument from morality. To Hitchens, the morality argument is only one of motivation. To Christians, the morality argument is one of ability. In other words, Hitchens interprets the morality argument as “The Christian stories we tell motivate us to do good because we are afraid of divine retribution and eager for heavenly rewards.” In reality, the Christian argument is “The Holy Spirit works in people of faith enabling them to do good deeds.” Our faith doesn’t just motivate us to do good; it enables us to do good.

Hitchens’ response to his own argument from morality holds up. Just because someone is motivated by a story doesn’t mean that the story is true. However, his response does not defeat the real Christian argument from morality. If central tenets of Christianity include “The one true God Yahweh is at work in the world through the Holy Spirit,” and “The Holy Spirit enables moral living in the community of faith,” then the presence or absence of morality in the community of faith is evidence for or against the truth of Christian dogma. I’ve mentioned before on this blog that this is part of Wolfhart Pannenberg’s argument for God.

Does religion make people behave better? No. But the Holy Spirit does.

So, what about Hitchens’ question of which examples to choose from? Well, therein lies the rub. Does the Rwandan genocide disprove Christianity? Yes and no. Were those participating Christians? How would we know? They certainly claimed to be. But not everyone who claims to have faith actually has faith (Matt 7:21). Does that mean that no one who participated in the genocide was a Christian? Wouldn’t that reduce the argument from morality to tautology? (God is real because Christians are moral, but only the moral Christians are real Christians.)

The sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit is not complete this side of resurrection. There is a sense in which we are still awaiting our redemption. Thus, while the Spirit makes people of faith more moral, He does not make them perfect. Ultimately, I cling to the sanctifying work of the Spirit as evidence for God. When I see Christians behaving badly, my faith in God is diminished. But, I see far more good than bad in the Christian community and the argument from morality holds up to me.

Garfield Minus Garfield

2009-12-08T13:10:00.000-08:00

Here is a site in which a guy has photoshopped Garfield out of a bunch of Garfield comics to show how neurotic Jon is. It's quite funny.

Writers of the Bible by Denomination

2009-12-07T11:53:00.001-08:00

John Mark Reynolds at Evangel has divvied the books of the Bible by what denomination their author came from. Good stuff.

First Corinthians and Other Goodies

2009-11-19T09:50:00.000-08:00

This is my 300th post.

I haven't posted links to sermons in a long time, so I will have to play catch up.

You can hear my sermons on The Sower, The Mustard Seed and the Leaven, and the Wheat and the Tares here. That finished out our summer series on the Parables of Jesus. It was a great series, but I'm glad its over.

Gary and I have started a new series on 1 Corinthians. A few weeks ago I taught on 1 Corinthians 1:10–17. I opened by recounting the sad story of a recent church split in Florida, and then we talked about what the passage had to say about dividing versus trying to maintain unity. We are called to divide from those who teach error. But we are also called to maintain unity in the church.

At Believers Fellowship, we appreciate diversity within the body of Christ. We are united with all of those who affirm the Nicene Creed, and separate from those who don't. We have beliefs beyond what is written in the creeds. We cherish these beliefs--they make us who we are. But we recognize that these beliefs are not bases for division.

Find the 1 Corinthians series here.

"Evangel" on First Things

2009-11-18T09:37:00.000-08:00

First Things, a Roman Catholic publication, has a new blog dedicated (mostly) to evangelical writers. It is a noble ecumenical act. I've been following it for the couple of weeks that it has been in existence, and I have to say it just might be my new favorite blog. It gives evangelical perspectives on theology, ecumenicism, culture, politics, etc. The contributors span the spectrum of evangelicalism (and there are a few Roman Catholics, too), and they seem to be able to disagree without yelling at each other. Some good lines from posts you will see on the front page of today:

"Ah, Dallas: the epicenter of evangelical awesomeness. ;-)"

"As I look toward 2012, I realize that as a Romney guy I often feel like the kind of person who would have a party for Windows 7 . . . my candidate is very attractive, but safe as an Osmond.
But then I realized that if I become an Obama guy, I would be one of those people who buy Apple computers: vain, proud of a small market share, and desperate to look like I am young."

"I think this is largely true — the only 800+ page non-thriller novels I’ve read tended to be old and Russian. The bite/byte-sized culture in which we operate today makes our attention spans struggle to hold beyond 140 characters, much less 140 pages ."

Scot McKnight's Top Books on Leadership

2009-11-06T19:26:00.000-08:00

Scot McKnight suggested the following books as his favorite for leaders:

Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle
The Odyssey by Homer
The Aeneid by Virgil
The Divine Comedy by Dante
Confessions by St. Augustine
Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
On Walden Pond by Henry David Thoreau
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Dymer by C.S. Lewis
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
"Leaf by Niggle" by J.R. Tolkien
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemmingway
I and Thou by Martin Buber

He concludes, "Not your usual list of books on leadership, but I wonder sometimes if leadership might best be described by those who are intellectual and cultural leaders instead of by those who talk about it." You can read the whole article here.

Interesting take on leadership. I have to agree, especially with his conclusion. If you want to be a leader, you don't need to read a book on 10 leadership principles by some guy who will be forgotten in 20 years. You need to read the books that changed the world.

Jared Wilson on "Evangelicalism with More Cowbell"

2009-11-05T16:20:00.000-08:00

Jared Wilson has a great post at Evangel about the new building project at First Baptist Dallas. He links to some impressive videos that show you just what $130 million will get you.

I predict that this campaign will be an epic failure. I went to FBCD for a number of years. I almost quit the ministry after my time there. They need a new building, but their problems run much deeper than that.

Christopher Hitchens on "How Religions End"

2009-11-05T10:37:00.000-08:00

In chapter twelve, “How Religions End,” Hitchens recounts the story of Sabbatai Sevi, a seventeenth century messianic claimant who was pressured by authorities to either renounce his messianic claims, or submit to a trial by ordeal. Archers would shoot at Sabbatai Sevi, and if God deflected the arrows he would be vindicated as messiah. He did not accept the trial by ordeal, but instead he renounced his claims, embraced Islam, and was deported. His followers, distraught at his apostasy, responded in ways varying from arguing that his conversion was a ruse to claiming that he had ascended into the heavens.

The parallels with the messianic claims of Jesus are noted. Hitchens speculates that had Sabbatai Sevi been executed, we would have another world religion on our hands.

Perhaps. But Hitchens speculation remains just that—speculation.

In The Resurrection of the Son of God, N.T. Wright points out that Jesus was not the only messianic claimant of his day. In fact, even the New Testament attests to others (Acts 5:35–39). Wright argues that people typically did not respond in the way that they did to Jesus’ claims, execution, and supposed resurrection. In most cases, the death of the leader led to the dissolution of the movement. But with Jesus, something else happened. Why?

Whatever happened to Sabbatai Sevi, his disappearance led to the dissolution of his movement. We can speculate about what would have happened had history taken a different course, but that kind of speculation will always be fanciful.

I would refer back to my previous post on “The Tawdriness of the Miraculous and the Decline of Hell,” that the empty tomb and resurrection appearances are necessary but not sufficient grounds for faith. Yes, there are reports that Jesus rose from the dead, and these reports are integral to our faith. But they are not the only grounds of our faith. The continuing work of the Holy Spirit validates the message of the Gospel.

Christopher Hitchens on "The Lowly Stamp of Their Origin’: Religion’s Corrupt Beginnings"

2009-10-29T10:30:00.001-07:00

What interests me and always has is this: Do the preachers and prophets also believe, or do they just ‘believe in belief’? Do they ever think to themselves, this is too easy? And do they then rationalize the trick by saying that either (a) if these wretches weren’t listening to me they’d be in even worse shape; or (b) that if it doesn’t do them any good than it still can’t be doing them much harm?

I am curious about Hitchens’ church background, because he repeatedly returns to the accusation that religious leaders use faith as a means of deceiving people into taking their money. I don’t get that. Either he drastically overestimates how much money people like me make or he is from a radically different tradition than me. If I wanted to make money, I definitely would be in a different career. (Not that my church doesn’t pay me well—they do. But I could definitely make more doing something else.)

This criticism from Hitchens is curious coming from someone who does something almost exactly the same as someone like me. Hitchens reflects on life, writes his thoughts down for people to consider, and receives a pay check from people who read his work. Incidentally, I am willing to bet that Hitchens makes considerably more money than most religious leaders. Are we to suppose that Hitchens is making everything up and that he's only writing what will make money, or is it possible that he actually believes some of what he writes about? Is it possible that he believes that his readers might be happier and more enlightened having read his work? If that's not too much of a stretch, than why is it so hard for him to believe that some religious leaders are genuine in their beliefs and ministry?

Are there bad people who use religion as a means of manipulation? Of course. But do a couple examples of fraud prove that all religions are fraudulent? Of course not. Hitchens even admits, “Jesus, it is true, shows no interest in personal gain.”

The question that Hitchens doesn’t ask (at least not in this chapter) is why people are so drawn to religion. Why does over 90% of the world believe in a god of some kind? Why are educated people drawn to things like Scientology? Could it be part of the human makeup to be “religious”? What might that mean for humanity?

I believe that God has created us with an innate need to know Him. When that part of us is out of whack, we look for other things to replace it. Does it surprise me that religious fraud is a money-making endeavor? No. It would surprise me if it weren’t.

Christopher Hitchens on "Revelation: The Nightmare of the 'Old' Testament."

2009-10-27T12:26:00.000-07:00

I am reading God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. The purpose of his book is not to eradicate religion, but to bolster the atheist position in public discourse. Religious conversation, writes Hitchens, is “the beginning—but not the end—of all arguments about philosophy, science, history, and human nature. It is also the beginning—but by no means the end—of all disputes about the good life and the just city.

In chapter 7, “Revelation: The Nightmare of the 'Old' Testament,” Hitchens addresses religion’s claim to authority based on supernatural encounters between God and special men. He reminds the reader that the three major western religions all trace their roots to the Hebrew Bible, and subsequently attempts to debunk the Pentateuch as divine revelation. He uses three main arguments: (1) the laws in the Pentateuch are obviously man-made, (2) the teachings of the Hebrew Bible are immoral, and (3) arguments (1) and (2) don’t matter because none of it happened anyway.

The laws of the Pentateuch are obviously man-made. Hitchens singles out the Ten Commandments as “obviously man-made.” The first three commandments amount to little more than “monarchial growling about respect and fear, accompanied by a stern reminder of omnipotence and limitless revenge.” Then, there is a command “to keep working and only to relax when the absolutist says so.” There is a charge to honor your parents, and then four self-evident ethical admonitions against murder, adultery, theft, and false witness. Finally, there is an absurd command not to desire the things that your neighbor has. We could probably categorize the commandments into three groups: (1) those that put the people in their place, (2) self-evident ethics necessary for a stable society, and (3) and absurd command not to covet that obviously didn’t come from a wise God.

Hitchens reasoning is circular. The premise to be proven is: The Ten Commandments are man-made. The Ten Commandments are consistent with what Hitchens thinks man-made commandments might look like. Therefore, the Ten Commandments are definitely man-made. This is petitio principii, or begging the question.

What would a commandment look like that was definitely not man-made? Love your enemies, perhaps?

The teachings of the Hebrew Bible are immoral. Hitchens cites a number of passages from the Old Testament that are hard for us to read. One will suffice for illustration—Numbers 31:17–18. In the passage, Israel had gone out to battle Midian in retaliation to their leading them into idolatry. The Israelites went out and killed every adult male, and took the women and children captive. Moses was angry with the military officials for sparing the women and male children, and he said to them, “Now therefore kill every boy, and kill every woman who has had sexual intercourse with a man. But all the young women who have not had sexual intercourse with a man will be yours” (NET). Kill the women. Kill the boys. Keep the young girls, presumably as concubines.

Let’s be honest—that’s horrible. But let’s also be honest about war—as General Sherman said, “War is Hell.” Do we think our wars are any more civilized than ancient wars? Is it somehow more moral to bomb innocent women and children than it is to run them through with a sword? Are we really so naïve as to think that there is no collateral damage in modern wars?

Don’t get me wrong, divine ordained Holy War bothers me. It’s one part of the Bible that I don’t “get.” But I accept it as part of our story, even if a puzzling part of the story.

None of the events described in the Pentateuch actually happened. Hitchens writes, “The Bible may, indeed does, contain a warrant for trafficking in humans, for ethnic cleansing, for slavery, for bride-price, and for indiscriminate massacre, but we are not bound by any of it because it was put together by crude, uncultured human mammals.” (A very well written sentence, I might add, and it’s not surprising how well this book has been received.)

Before I get into Hitchens’ critiques of the Old Testament, I do want to mention that theism does not stand or fall with the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy. I believe in the inerrancy of the Scriptures, but if that were to be disproven I would not walk away from the faith.

That being said, the specific event that Hitchens attacks is the Exodus. I would probably include the Exodus as one of the “big” historical events, the historicity of which is necessary for faith. Hitchens even quotes Roland de Vaux, “if the historical faith of Israel is not founded in history, such faith is erroneous, and therefore, our faith is also.” If the Exodus were proven to be ahistorical, one would have to seriously reconsider the truth of the Christian religion.

Hitchens cites a study by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman that has “proven” that none of the events of the Pentateuch—from the Exodus, to the wilderness wanderings and the giving of the law, to the conquest of Canaan—ever happened. I had never heard of the study, so I asked my friend John, who has a PhD in Old Testament (from Cambridge, no less) and who teaches Old Testament at a seminary, what he thought of it.

John told me that while Finkelstein’s work represents the opinion of a large number of Old Testament scholars, it is not universally accepted. He referred me to some studies done by James K. Hoffmeier (Israel in Egypt: The Evidence of the Authenticity of the Exodus Traditions and Ancient Israel in Sinai: The Evidence for the Authenticity of the Wilderness Tradition) that best defend the authenticity of the biblical accounts.

While Hitchens claims that there is “no” extra-biblical evidence for the Exodus, John asks what kind of evidence we would expect to find. For instance, Ramses II of Egypt was defeated in a battle at Qadesh, yet the Egyptian accounts of the battle spin it as a victory. Why would we expect these same Egyptians to agree with the biblical account of the Exodus? Further, much of the archeological material left behind by the patriarchs would have been under the water table, and have thus been destroyed.

I don’t know enough about these issues to offer a definitive opinion, but what John told me is consistent with what I see in issues related to the New Testament—there are some places in which the historicity of the text is disputed, even some cases where it is widely disputed, but questions of method and what constitutes “proof” prevent a consensus one way or the other. After all, history is not a "hard" science.

Hitchens goes too far in saying that the Exodus has been disproven. Are there difficulties with the biblical account? Yes. But are there problems with rival reconstructions? Yes. That’s why we will continue to have historical inquiry. John pointed out that in many cases the Bible gives a better explanation of the data than rival reconstructions, and much of what we know about the ancient near east is consistent with what we read in the Bible.

Our faith is based on real history, and we need to continue studying that history to evaluate our faith. If our faith is true, then we have nothing to be afraid of. I, for one, prefer to acknowledge and grapple with difficulties of this nature rather than sweeping them under the rug and pretending they’re not there. Every time we ignore legitimate problems, skeptics bring them back up in books like Hitchens’.

[I previously reacted to the chapters 8 and 10 of God is not Great. Chapter 9 is an attack on Islam. I’m not going to include a reaction to that on this blog, so I will pick up in chapter 11 next time.]

Thoughts on Peirasmos in James 1

2009-10-20T10:33:00.000-07:00

I am in a Bible study that is going through the Book of James. Last night we covered the first two sections, James 1:1–12 and James 1:13–18.

The Greek word peirasmos and the related words peirazo and apeirastos occur 7 times in James 1 (v. 2, v. 12, four times in v. 13, v. 14). The words are translated either "testing," "trials," or "temptation." Now the Greek word can mean either a "trial" or a "temptation," and most Bible studies differentiate the "trials" James refers to in vv. 2–4 and the "temptations" he talks about in vv. 13–15. Typically, Bible studies say that "trials" are difficult times that we go through and "temptations" are those times when we are tempted to sin.

This has always bothered me. Why do we make this distinction? Isn't it artificial? Why would someone use the same word in two completely different ways in the same chapter?

When I was preparing for the Bible study, I tried reading James 1:2–15 without vv. 5–11. Here is what the text says without those verses:

My brothers and sisters, consider it nothing but joy when you fall into all sorts of trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect effect, so that you will be perfect and complete, not deficient in anything. Happy is the one who endures testing, because when he has proven to be genuine, he will receive the crown of life that God promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted, "I am tempted by God," for God cannot be tempted by evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each one is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desires. Then when desire conceives, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is full grown, it gives birth to death. (NET)

Without looking, can you tell where the break is? It's between the second and third sentences. But the text makes perfect sense without vv. 5–11. Why then, should we suppose a topic change between vv. 2–4 and vv. 12–15, especially since v. 12 seems to say the same thing as v. 2?

Further, compare this new reading of James 1 with what Paul says in Romans 8:5–8, 12–13 (NET):

For those who live according to the flesh have their outlook shaped by the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit have their outlook shaped by the things of the Spirit. For the outlook of the flesh is death, but the outlook of the Spirit is life and peace, because the outlook of the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to the law of God, nor is it able to do so. Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. . . . So then, brothers and sisters, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh (for if you live according to the flesh, you will die), but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live.

Specifically, compare the following statements:

James 1:12, "Happy is the one who endures testing, because when he has proven to be genuine, he will receive the crown of life that God promised to those who love him."

Romans 8:13, "If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body you will live."

and

James 1:15, "Then when desire conceives, it gives birth to sin, and when sin is full grown, it gives birth to death."

Romans 8:13, "for if you live according to the flesh, you will die."

So what is James 1 about? I would read the "trials" of James 1:2–4 as "temptations." James says, "Consider it joy when you are tempted to sin, because such temptation makes you stronger." I think James 1 is about living the way God has created us to live, the way that leads to life that is truly life. Living otherwise leads only to death.

Random Thoughts on Sitcoms

2009-10-15T10:38:00.000-07:00

Last night, after we put the kids to bed and cleaned up the war zone they left behind, I collapsed on our couch and decided to watch some TV before I went to sleep. Confession time--the shows I watched were "Modern Family" and "Cougartown."

Modern Family is about the relationship between relatives in a modern extended family. The dad divorced the mom after the kids were grown and married a significantly younger woman with a ten-year-old son of her own. The grown daughter is married with three pre-teen/teenage kids. The grown son is gay, and he and his long-term boyfriend have adopted a baby from overseas (I missed the first episode, so I can't remember which country). The show is about making the best of family dysfunction.

Cougartown is about a woman who married and had a child in her early twenties, then divorced in her late thirties. Now a mature but still fairly young woman, she is looking to start over. The show is about her misadventures in dating as she hangs out with her young-twenties single friends and her late-thirties still-married friend.

I noticed something about these two shows last night--they both have themes of redemption.

I said to Brooke, "Remember in the nineties we had shows like 'Roseanne,' 'Married with Children,' and 'The Simpsons.' These shows all mocked nuclear families--the kids were bad, the parents didn't love each other, and the unmarried characters were happier. It looks like that has changed. Now the shows are all about people trying to make the best out of non-traditional families."

Just now I remembered that between those two eras was the "Seinfeld," "Friends," and "Sex in the City" era that glorified single living and non-traditional lifestyles.

Has there been a switch between the "Roseanne" era and today? Does that say anything about where we've gone the last 15 or 20 years? How might those changes affect the way we share Christ?

Michael Kruse on Christian Economics

2009-10-14T10:35:00.000-07:00

I know I've linked to this before, but it's worth the reminder. Michael Kruse is doing a series on Christian economics at Jesus Creed. It's fantastic. He has a new post on "wealth."

Christopher Hitchers on "The Tawdriness of the Miraculous and the Decline of Hell"

2009-10-13T10:58:00.001-07:00

Chapter ten, "The Tawdriness of the Miraculous and the Decline of Hell," is about miracles. This is the chapter I expected under "The Metaphysical Claims of the Religion Are False."

Hitchens opens the chapter by recounting the fable of a man who couldn't stop telling this story of a miraculous long jump he performed on the island of Rhodes. Eventually his friends grew weary of the story and one of them said "Hic Rhodus, hic salta," "Here is Rhodes, jump here!" In the same way, religions claim validation by miraculous deeds of the past--events like the Exodus, the resurrection of Jesus, or the flight of Muhammed to Jerusalem. "Has the art of resurrection died out," asks Hitchens, "Or are we relying on dubious sources?"

The Scottish philosopher David Hume was the most devastating critic of miracles. Defining a miracle as a disturbance of what is normal or expected, Hume points out that miracles also involve a decision. When Moses saw the burning bush, he had two possible interpretations: (1) the laws of physics have temporarily been suspended, or (2) I am delusional. Which is more likely? Hume continues that when you consider reports of miracles that you didn't actually witness, you have to adjust the odds accordingly. You must further adjust the odds when you are considering reports of miracles by people who lived thousands of years ago and whose testimonies have been past down in books that may or may not have been corrupted.

Hitchens challenges the reader to compare miracle claims with claims of UFO sightings. On what basis can we reject UFO sightings as the ramblings of lunatics, and yet accept testimonies like Matthew 27:51–53 ESV, "And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many"?

Hitchens' challenge is fair, and my response is in two parts. First, the empty tomb and resurrection appearances are necessary but not sufficient for faith. Second, the continuing work of the Holy Spirit is necessary but not sufficient for faith. The three in tandem (empty tomb, resurrection appearances, continuing work of the Holy Spirit) are sufficient for faith.

The empty tomb and resurrection appearances are necessary but not sufficient for faith. Many Christians may be shocked to read that sentence, but I'll explain. First, the empty tomb and resurrection appearances are necessary for faith. N.T. Wright covers this wonderfully in The Resurrection of the Son of God and (the more readable) Surprised by Hope. He argues that the early church needed both an empty tomb and resurrection appearances in order to believe. If someone presented the corpse of Jesus, the resurrection appearances would have been dismissed as delusions. If there were no resurrection appearances, the empty tomb would have been a mystery, but it probably would have been dismissed as grave robbery. But because there was both, the early Christians concluded that Jesus had been raised from the dead. Paul himself notes that if there is no resurrection, there is no Christianity (1 Corinthians 15:12–19).

Hitchens counters that the resurrection doesn't prove Jesus was God. True. But, we have no other record of anyone else raising himself or herself from the grave, so the resurrection of Jesus at least gives us a reason to consider his claims to be unique. When you put that together with the claims that he made about himself, the divinity of Jesus is not a reach (the Transfiguration perhaps is the tipping point). If he's not God, then he is the most supernaturally powerful human being ever, who for one reason or another decided to deceive millions of people throughout history into thinking he was God. As C.S. Lewis noted, this would make Jesus the most demonic figure in human history.

The empty tomb and resurrection appearances may be necessary for faith, but are they sufficient grounds for faith today? I would say that they are not. I think Hitchens (well, Hume really) nails this. Why do we accept the supernatural claims of the Bible and not those of other religions? Why do we believe in the resurrection of Jesus and not UFO claims?

There has to be something in play that makes Christianity's claim of the miraculous more credible than other religions' claims. Richard Dawkins says that most people don't believe in thousands of gods; some people just go one god farther. Along the same lines, Christians reject thousands of miracle claims made by competing religions. What basis do we have to accept the resurrection?

The continuing work of the Holy Spirit is necessary but not sufficient for faith. Galatians 3:1–6 ESV says:

O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. Let me ask you only this: Did you receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain- if indeed it was in vain? Does he who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law, or by hearing with faith- just as Abraham "believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness"?

Notice in this passage what the basis is for Paul's arguing for justification by faith and not works of the law--they received the Spirit by faith. Reception of the Spirit by faith was evidence that Paul's Gospel was true and the judaizers was false.

In 1 Thessalonians 1:4–5 ESV, Paul writes, "For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake." Paul's preaching was validated by miraculous works of the Spirit.

Finally, in 1 Corinthians 2:3-5, Paul writes, "And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God." Again, demonstrations of the Spirit accompanied Paul's preaching, validating his message.

Christianity needs the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances, and the continuing work of the Spirit to be valid. With just the ancient testimonies, there is no reason to accept its claims over those of other religions. With just the Spirit, it is an existential philosophy with no grounds in history. But with both, it is a valid (and in my opinion, compelling) faith option.

Why do I believe in the resurrection of Jesus and not in UFO's? Because the work of the Holy Spirit in my life and in the life of my church validates the message of the Gospel. Could personal transformation be explained by means other than the Holy Spirit? Perhaps. But I don't think so. Maybe I don't have stone-cold logic to prove that it is so, but everything inside of me says that it is so.

Christopher Hitchens on "The Evil of the New Testament"

2009-10-12T09:25:00.001-07:00

I am reading God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. The purpose of his book is not to eradicate religion, but to bolster the atheist position in public discourse. Religious conversation, writes Hitchens, is “the beginning—but not the end—of all arguments about philosophy, science, history, and human nature. It is also the beginning—but by no means the end—of all disputes about the good life and the just city.

Chapter seven, “Revelation: The Nightmare of the Old Testament,” has specific attacks on the reliability of the Old Testament that I do not know enough to answer. I have asked a much more qualified friend specific questions related to the issue, and I am awaiting his response. More on that later.

Chapter eight, “The ‘New’ Testament Exceeds the Evil of the Old One,” is more up my alley. In it, Hitchens does not discuss the “evil” of the New Testament as much as he does the worthlessness of it. In short, the New Testament documents are late and unreliable when it comes to information about the historical Jesus. He calls it “a work of crude carpentry, hammered together long after its purported events, and full of improvised attempts to make things come out right."

I beg to differ.

The most substantial arguments that Hitchens makes are: (1) the “lateness” of the Gospels, (2) the dubiousness of Jesus’ existence, and (3) tampering charges against the New Testament documents themselves.

The Gospels are late. It used to be theorized that the Gospels were second-century documents written long after the events described in them. This theory has been abandoned by most scholars. The 1935 discovery of P52 showed that the Gospel of John had been in wide circulation as early as the middle of the second century. This means that it could not have been written later than the end of the first century. Most scholars think that the Synoptic Gospels were written between 60 and 90 AD, and John written somewhere in the mid-90s.

The degree of overlap between the Synoptic Gospels and the Jesus material in Paul (1 Corinthians 11:23–26, etc.) demonstrates that accounts of Jesus’ words and deeds circulated early, probably both in written and in oral form. James Dunn’s Jesus Remembered is an excellent source for information on how the Gospels came to be.

Thus, while the Gospels themselves were composed 30–50 years after the events they describe, they were based on records passed down from eyewitnesses. Also, we should not be quick to dismiss the idea that eyewitnesses played a key role in the composition of the Gospels themselves (as tradition tells us they were).

We don’t know that Jesus even existed. There is strong extra-biblical evidence for Jesus' existence. The Jewish historian Josephus mentions him as does the Roman historian Tacitus. These testimonies are especially significant because neither was a follower of Jesus. Josephus says that Jesus was a magician who led people astray. Tacitus says that Jesus was executed by Pilate and that his followers were “hated for their abominable crimes.” John P. Meier’s A Marginal Jew, James Dunn’s Jesus Remembered, and N.T. Wright’s Jesus and the Victory of God are excellent resources on the historical Jesus. They are tough reads, though, and N.T. Wright’s The Challenge of Jesus, Darrell Bock’s Studying the Historical Jesus, and Ben Witherington’s The Jesus Quest may be better introductions.

The New Testament documents have been corrupted over time. Hitchens cites Bart Ehrman’s book Misquoting Jesus to demonstrate that the New Testament has become corrupted. Specifically, he mentions John 7:53–8:11, the story of the woman caught in adultery, which scholars have shown “was not a part of the original Gospel.” Ehrman is right—most scholars do not think that John 7:53–8:11 was part of the original Gospel of John. But just about every Bible says that in the margins. It’s a great story. It probably happened. But it’s not part of John.

Hitchens is slightly deceptive when he says that the New Testament documents have been corrupted. It is true that the thousands of manuscripts that we have all include minor variations (i.e. one manuscript may read “he” when another clarifies “Jesus”), but they are over 95% similar and none of the variants affects Christian theology in any way. John 7:53–8:11 is by far the most significant variant. The longer ending(s) of Mark are also significant, as is 1 John 5:8. As with John 7:53–8:11, most Bibles have notes in their margins as to why these passages are included or omitted.

Text critics weigh the textual evidence to try to discern what the original New Testament documents said and how the variant readings came to be. Sometimes scribes made mistakes. Sometimes they tried to “clarify” the text. Sometimes they made outright edits. Thankfully, we have thousands of manuscripts to compare in order to discern the original. (Here is a simplified example of what they might do: if 9,999 manuscripts read "he said" and one says "Jesus said," can you discern what the original reading was and how the 1 variant came to be? Most text critical decisions are far more complicated that this, but you get the idea.) While we will never have 100% certainty of the original documents, we have far greater certainty about the New Testament than we do any other ancient document. We can be sure that the Bible we read is true to the original.

As I was reading this chapter, I couldn’t help but feel that Hitchens attacks were a workshop in missing the point. Let’s say we grant all of Hitchens’ objections. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, we allow that the New Testament is not a product of the eyewitnesses and that in places it is contradictory. Does this destroy its testimony to the significance of Jesus? After all, something happened. We know that Jesus lived. We know that people thought he was an exorcist and miracle worker, and that he preached the coming of the Kingdom of God. We know that he made specific prophetic actions signifying the start of a new religious movement, and that he prophesied the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple. We know that he was rejected by his Jewish contemporaries for being a blasphemer and that he was executed by Pontius Pilate for claiming to be the King of the Jews. We know that his followers claimed that he rose from the dead—that his tomb was empty and that there were reports of resurrection appearances. We know that typically, when the leader of a messianic sect was crucified, his followers would scatter and disappear, but that this is not what happened with Jesus’ followers. And we know all of this by the historical method, without considering the Bible as anything special.

Even if we grant all of Hitchens’ objections (which I don’t), we have reason to give special consideration to the Apostle Paul's claim that "There is another king, namely Jesus."

Nobel Peace Prize

2009-10-12T07:23:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of people who apparently were not as deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize as President Obama.

HT: BHT

Michael Spencer Writes about a Former Student Leaving the Faith

2009-10-07T11:49:00.000-07:00

This is iMonk at his best.

Christopher Hitchens on "Arguments from Design"

2009-10-07T11:45:00.001-07:00

In chapter six, “Arguments from Design,” Hitchens tackles the Christian assertion that apparent design in nature proves that there is a Designer, namely God. Personally, I think David Hume and Karl Barth killed this horse, but Hitchens gives its corpse quite a beating.

Though argued throughout history, the argument from design was most famously articulated by William Paley in his fictional account of a primitive person finding a watch washed up on shore. Even though he has never seen a watch before, nor does he know its function, he concludes that there has to be a watchmaker—that the pieces did not randomly come together and form a watch. In the same way, we look at the delicate balance of life-sustaining forces in the world, and how each species seems perfectly designed to thrive in its environment, and conclude that someone must have designed this place we call earth.

Hitchens turns this argument on its head, pointing out all of the flaws in the world—vestigial organs, natural disasters, and adaptations that favor one species over another. God may have designed gazelles with the ability to outrun lions and thus survive, but why didn’t he just design lions vegetarian?

Hitchens writes in response to the inventions argument:

We know the answers in all cases: these were painstaking inventions (also by trial and error) of mankind, and were the work of many hands, and are still ‘evolving.’ That is what makes piffle out of the ignorant creationist sneer, which compares evolution to a whirlwind blowing through a junkyard of parts and coming up with a jumbo jet. For a start, there are no ‘parts’ lying around waiting to be assembled. For another thing, the process of acquisition and discarding of ‘parts’ (most especially wings) is far from a whirlwind as could conceivably be. The time involved is more like that of a glacier than a storm. For still another thing, jumbo jets are not riddled with nonworking or superfluous ‘parts’ lamely inherited from less successful aircraft. Why have we agreed so easily to call this exploded old nontheory by its cunningly chosen new disguise of ‘intelligent design’? There is nothing at all ‘intelligent’ about it. It is the same old mumbo-jumbo (or in this instance, jumbo-mumbo).

I see three major arguments in this chapter: (1) design does not demand a Designer, (2) our imperfect world would have to have been designed by an imperfect or inept Designer, and (3) the theory of evolution more accurately explains the world around us than does intelligent design.

I want to say up front that the evolution/creation debate is not one that I enjoy. I think Christians spend way too much time on it and my interests lie elsewhere.

Design does not demand a Designer. Hitchens’ first point is true. The argument from design is not the best Christian apologetic. In his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, David Hume points out that analogies are only as strong as the things compared are similar. Analogies comparing dissimilar objects are not as strong. For instance, when older students lament “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” I always tell them, “But you’re not a dog and you’re not learning tricks.” Dissimilarities between objects compared make analogies weak.

The question David Hume asks is, How similar is a watch to the cosmos? Therefore, How strong is the analogy of the watch? Not very.

Another weakness of the argument from design is the holiness of God. God is unlike anything else in creation. What can we possibly learn about a holy God from what is created? Even Romans 1:19–20 limits “natural theology” to “eternal power” and “deity.” (And nowhere does Paul say that “design” is the basis of this knowledge.) Karl Barth argued that God is only known through Jesus Christ—God made flesh. I wouldn’t go that far—I think God reveals himself in other ways, too—but I do not think that the Christian God is intuitive from nature. We need special revelation.

The theory of evolution more accurately explains the world around us than does intelligent design. I think this is a bit of a non sequitur, since evolution and design are not mutually exclusive. Plenty of Christians accept the theory of evolution as the means by which God differentiated the species. The question of origins and the question of the differentiation of the species are two distinct questions. I am not a scientist, and like I said, I really don’t care much about evolution, but I don’t think its incompatible with my worldview and I’m not losing any sleep over it.

Our imperfect world would have to have been designed by an imperfect or inept Designer. This point is the most interesting—does an imperfect creation demand an imperfect god? On one level, I would have to say yes. I actually talked about this last Sunday. If this world is all that there is, than we have to conclude that an all-loving, all-powerful, all-knowing God does not exist.

On another level, I have to say no. Christians also believe that the world is not as it should be, and that God is in the process of reconciling it. We have a theological category for “things not operating according to divine intent.” Imperfections and even atrocities are to be expected in the current state of the world (see Matthew 13:24–30 and Jesus’ Parable of the Wheat and Weeds).

While I usually don’t use the argument from design in explaining to people why I am a Christian, I do think it has some value in apologetics. I have heard (but again, I am not a scientist, so I can’t properly evaluate these claims) that the probability of matter randomly coming together to create life is so remote that it is a scientific absurdity. This is why most scientists do not think that there is life on other planets—the probability of it happening randomly is too remote. Further, Hitchens laughs off arguments from irreducible complexity, but they are a damaging critique of the theory of evolution. The best counter I have heard from a scientist to the argument from irreducible complexity is “just because we don’t know how it happened doesn’t mean we won’t know some day.” Fair enough.

Christopher Hitchens on "The Metaphysical Claims of Religion Are False"

2009-10-06T09:53:00.000-07:00

I wrote earlier that we never again have to confront the impressive faith of an Aquinas or Maimonides (as contrasted with the blind faith of millennial or absolutist sects, of which we have an apparently unlimited and infinitely renewable supply). This is for a simple reason. Faith of that sort—the sort that can stand up at least for a while in a confrontation with reason—is now plainly impossible.

After spending a few pages recapping natural phenomena explained by scientists that priests and shamans previously wrote off as “acts of God.” He says that “There would be no such churches in the first place if humanity had not been afraid of the weather, the dark, the plague, the eclipse, and all manner of other things now easily explicable.”

Finally, Hitchens warns us of Ockham’s razor, “Do not multiply entities beyond necessity.” We don’t need the god hypothesis to explain the world, so we need to stop pretending that he or she or they are there.

I was prepared for some philosophical discussion in this chapter, but I was let down. Hitchens doesn’t argue the impossibility of miracles—he simply dismisses them. God is not Great is an atheistic book unlike any other I have read. There are no philosophical arguments. There are no attacks on the accuracy of the Bible. Hitchens doesn’t fight with logic or reason; the primary weapons in his arsenal are wit and ridicule.

And he’s effective.

I had to stop and reflect on Hitchens’ attack on the metaphysical claims of religion before offering a response. His argument is, “I don’t need God, so I don’t believe in God.” Do I want to respond to that by saying we need God? Well, in one sense I do think that we need God. But if I am honest, I am not sure that that is why I am a Christian. I am not sure that I am a Christian because I would be in despair if there were no God. It’s not so much that I think there has to be a God, as it is that I think that there probably is a God.

In his book, Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton compares materialists to the insane. (Chesterton uses the word “materialist” to describe someone we might call a naturalist—someone who doesn’t believe in God or the supernatural.) He writes:

The madman’s explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this may be observed specially in two or three commonest kinds of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours. Or if a man says that he is the rightful king of England, it is no complete answer to say that the existing authorities call him mad; for if he were King of England that might be the wisest thing for the existing authorities to do. Or if a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ’s.

Nevertheless he is wrong. But if we attempt to trace his error in exact terms, we shall not find it quite so easy as we had supposed. Perhaps the nearest we can get to expressing it is to say this: that his mind moves in a perfect but narrow circle. A small circle is quite as infinite as a large circle; but, though it is quite as infinite, it is
not so large. In the same way the insane explanation is quite as complete as the sane one, but it is not so large. A bullet is quite as round as the world, but it is not the world. There is such a thing as a narrow universality; there is such a thing as a small and cramped eternity; you may see it in many modern religions. Now, speaking quite externally and empirically, we may say that the strongest and most unmistakable mark of madness is this combination between a logical completeness and a spiritual contraction. The lunatic’s theory explains a large number of things, but it does not explain them in a large way.

Later he writes:

His cosmos may be complete in every rivet and cog-wheel, but still his cosmos is smaller than our world. Somehow his scheme, like the lucid scheme of a madman, seems unconscious of the alien energies and the large indifference of the earth; it is not thinking of real things of the earth, of fighting peoples or proud mothers, or first love or fear upon the sea. The earth is so very large, and the cosmos so very small. The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.

Finally:

If the man in Hanwell is the real God, he is not much of a god. And, similarly, if the cosmos of the materialist is the real cosmos, it is not much of a cosmos.

In his book, Simply Christian, N.T. Wright writes about four things that a naturalistic universe cannot explain: our longing for justice, our sense of beauty, our desire for community, and our need for the spiritual. Ockham’s razor may imply that Hitchens is right, but his cosmos, the cosmos that cannot explain justice, beauty, love, or the spiritual, looks more like the conspiracy theory of a madman than it does the real world that we live in.

100 Years of Visual Effects

2009-10-02T19:19:00.000-07:00

HT: Once Upon a Win

Christopher Hitchens on "Religion Can Be Hazardous to Your Health"

2009-10-02T13:43:00.000-07:00

In chapter 4, “A Note on Health, to Which Religion Can Be Hazardous,” Hitchens crucifies the major world religions for the harm they have done to humanity. This is certainly the most powerful of the early chapters of the book. Hitchens recounts some Muslims’ opposition to polio vaccines, the Vatican’s opposition to the distribution of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS, Jehovah’s Witnesses’ refusal to give their children life-saving blood transfusions, the Roman Catholic Church’s protection of abusive priests, and religious oppression of women and homosexuals.

Why are religions so hostile to health and human rights? Hitchens says:

The attitude of religion to medicine, like the attitude of religion to science, is always necessarily problematic and very often necessarily hostile. A modern believer can say and even believe that his faith is quite compatible with science and medicine, but the awkward fact will always be that both things have a tendency to break religion’s monopoly, and have often been fiercely resisted for that reason. What happens to the faith healer and the shaman when any poor citizen can see the full effect of drugs and surgeries, administered without ceremonies or mystifications? Roughly the same thing as happens to the rainmaker when the climatologist turns up, or the diviner from the heavens when school-teachers get hold of elementary telescopes.

In summary, because religions aim to retain power, they will always oppose scientific and sociological advances that undermine their authority. In many cases, scientists and sociologists have offered better explanations of the world than have their religious counterparts.

Again, Hitchens is right about a lot. (For those of you keeping score, this makes me three-for-three in at least partially agreeing with Hitchens.) There are a lot of religious authorities that feel threatened by scientific and other advances that undermine their authority. Many of Hitchens’ examples are valid.

But, as I was reading this chapter, I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of exposure Hitchens had to mainstream religions. I will in no way defend the people Hitchens assaults, but I will say, That looks nothing like my religious experience.

How many hospitals in the United States are run by the Roman Catholic Church or other religious organizations? (If the name of your local hospital begins with “Saint,” be careful about rejecting religion’s involvement in health care.) How much work have organizations like World Vision done globally to combat hunger and preventable diseases? Has Hitchens heard about how much Rick Warren and Saddleback Community Church has done to alleviate the destruction caused by AIDS in Africa? Has he heard of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Bishop Desmond Tutu, or Mahatma Gandhi, whose faiths compelled them to champion human rights and racial reconciliation? Has he heard of the International Justice Mission? Where are their stories?

I have seen first-hand the benefits that Christianity can have to society. The local food bank is faith-based and supported mainly by donations and volunteers from local churches, including my own. My church also supports (with money and volunteers) a youth center that recently opened in Tillicum, one of the poorest neighborhoods in our community. Now kids and that community have something else to do rather than wander the streets and get involved with gangs. They have a safe place when they can do their school work or just hang out with adults who care about them. I could go on.

I do not deny that there are some bad apples in the bunch who call themselves “religious.” I won’t even deny that some of those bad apples are of the same variety as me. But there are also some really good apples, and you can’t argue the bad without accepting the good as a counter-argument.

Christopher Hitchens on "Why Heaven Hates Ham"

2009-10-01T11:51:00.000-07:00

Christopher Hitchens on "Religion Kills"

2009-09-30T12:42:00.000-07:00

I am reading God is not Great by Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens is one of the so-called “New Atheists” who have written bestsellers in the last five years. The purpose of his book is not to eradicate religion, but to bolster the atheist position in public discourse. Religious conversation, writes Hitchens, is “the beginning—but not the end—of all arguments about philosophy, science, history, and human nature. It is also the beginning—but by no means the end—of all disputes about the good life and the just city.”

I thought it might be neat to offer my reactions to Hitchens’ book as I read it, chapter by chapter. I am reading the book to better understand Hitchens and those who think like him, not so that I can fight with him (as if he cares I am writing about his book).

Chapter two of God is not Great is titled, “Religion Kills.” (Chapter one is an introduction.) Hitchens notes that most religions speak of a benevolent deity who created us and has a wonderful plan for our lives. He protects us in this life and offers us eternal bliss in the next. “Why,” asks Hitchens, “does such a belief not make its adherents happy.” He offers his own psycho-analysis:

The level of intensity fluctuates according to time and place, but it can be stated as a truth that religion does not, and in the long run cannot, be content with its own marvelous claims and sublime assurances. It must seek to interfere with the lives of nonbelievers, or heretics, or adherents to other faiths. It may speak about the bliss of the next world, but it wants power in this one.

He then goes on to remind us of the atrocities committed in the name of religion—from violence between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland, to the events of September 11, 2001. Hitchens concludes that “The true believer cannot rest until the whole world bows the knee.”

In conclusion, Hitchens compares religion to racism. Even though it speaks of heavenly rewards, etc. it is really a tool that the powerful use to promote tribalism and secure more power for themselves and for their clan.

Hitchens is right.

Powerful people use religion as a tool to promote tribalism and secure more power for themselves and their clan.

But does that make religion itself bad? (Perhaps this conversation is not unlike the “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” discussion.) Shouldn’t we say instead that religion is one thing among many that bad people use to manipulate others to do what they want? (As C.S. Lewis remarked, “Of all bad people, religious bad people are the worst.”) Could we add nationalism to this list? How many wars or acts of violence can be sourced to one person’s pride in their own nationality? Does that mean we should eliminate nations, because national distinctions promote nationalism, which has been shown to lead to violence? What about greed? How many wars have been started because one nation has encroached on what another nation supposes to be its rightful property? Does that mean we abolish private property? What about love? How many people are killed every year in lovers’ quarrels? Should we abolish love, since it drives people to violence?

Hitchens asserts that religious people “may speak about the bliss of the next world, but it wants power in this one.” Really? All religious people? Kip Dynamite would respond to Hitchens, “Like anyone could know that.”

Ultimately, I think we have to say that people kill for whatever they are passionate about—and people are certainly passionate about religion. But if we want to eliminate everything that people use to justify violence, we will have to eliminate everything that makes us individuals or that gives us passion for living.

I’m not interested in a world like that.

I will never deny or justify terrible acts of violence done in the name of religion—even in the name of Christianity. In some cases, violence is inherent to a religious system. In the case of Christianity, it is not. While Hitchens could spend 20 pages recounting acts of violence done in the name of religion that he has personally witnessed, I am sure he could spill just as much ink recounting acts of love done in the name of religion. You can’t point out one side of it without mentioning the other.

The final irony of chapter two is that accusing religious people of tribalism is in itself tribalism. We could summarize chapter two, “Religious people are crazy and prone to violence." Implicit in this judment is a call for them to be eliminated or at least marginalized. Otherwise, why write the book? Is it too far-fetched to imagine that such rhetoric could provoke violence?

Mad Men

2009-09-30T10:36:00.000-07:00

I am appalled at my grandparents' generation . . . and yet I cannot look away. The smoking, the drinking, the sexism, the kids without seatbelts--it's all wrong. This is definitely the best show on TV (or on DVD--the way I have to watch it).

My favorite line so far has been when Don went to the underground poetry reading with his girlfriend, and he had the following exchange with a beatnik poet:

Beatnik: So, you're one of the Madison Avenue advertisers that's responsible for creating this culture of consumption. How do you sleep at night?

Don: On a bed made of money.

John P. Meier on the Holiness of God in the OT

2009-09-17T09:53:00.000-07:00

In explaining the purity laws of the OT, and why things like touching a corpse or menstruating made one ritually unclean, John P. Meier writes:

To breach this God-ordained separation between flesh in an unclean state and the holiness of God would be as dangerous to the ancient mind as mixing unstable, explosive chemicals or removing shields from around a nuclear reactor would be to a modern mind. The chemicals and the nuclear reactor are in themselves good, even useful, when properly handled--just like the processes of birth, sex, and death. But a lack of proper separation, a failure to cordon off things meant to be kept separate, could have disastrous results. It was precisely to protect his people and prevent such disasters, and not because natural biological processes are evil, that the God of Israel commanded that his realm of the holy, especially the temple, be kept separate from the realm of human birth, sexual activity, and death. (A Marginal Jew, 4:345.)

In other words, God isn't born, He doesn't reproduce, and He doesn't die. Those are fleshly things. He is a holy thing. The two need to be kept separate.

In addition to ritual impurity, Meier also sees categories for moral impurity, genealogical impurity, and impurity as a result of eating the wrong food.

Michael Kruse on Christian Economics

2009-09-16T09:33:00.000-07:00

Michael Kruse is a guest blogger on Jesus Creed discussing Christian economics. It's fascinating stuff.

His first article was on the concept of scarcity--the basis of economic theory. Economic scarcity is the idea that there are not enough resources in the world for everyone to have everything they want. (Note that this is different than what most people mean by the term "scarcity," i.e., "rarity." Economic scarcity does not mean that there are not enough resources for everyone to survive, but not enough for everyone to have as much as they want.) The discussion revolves around whether ecnomic scarcity contradicts Christian belief in God's provision, so that theology and economics are against each other from the start.

The second article is on the distinction between "positive economics" and "normative economics." Positive economics deals with the system as it is. Normative economics deals with the system as it should be. Kruse says that too often theologians enter the discussion wanting only to discuss normative economics, so that they are written off by economists as impractical idealists.

I will definitely be following this series.

Are We Sure This Isn't a WIN?

2009-09-10T08:38:00.000-07:00

see more Fail Blog

The Parables

2009-09-06T14:40:00.001-07:00

Two more of my parables have been uploaded to the church's website. You can listen here. My latest additions are the Parable of the Sower and the Parables of the Mustard Seed and Leaven.

In related news, I think I might try to turn the parables (and the one that I am doing on October 4th) into a book. This was not my original plan, but I have been encouraged by many people to do it.

One change that I will have to make is adding longer explanations. In the sermons I only spent about five minutes explaining the parables, but in the book I would expand these sections to be as long as the parables themselves. I think I will divide the book up into an introduction, conclusion and five sections. Each section would be on a topic and would consist of two chapters--a parable and an explanation. Here are the titles of the sections, all related to the kingdom of God:

I. Good News (The Parable of Great Banquet)

II. Awaiting Redemption (October 4th Parable)

III. Transformation (The Parable of the Good Samaritan)

IV. Faith (The Parable of the Sower)

V. Grace (The Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard)

The Parable of the Mustard Seed would go in the introduction.

John Meier on Jesus and the Law

2009-09-06T14:17:00.001-07:00

All too often in the past, Christian questers for the historical Jesus have created an opposition between the 'ritual,' 'cultic,' or 'legal' elements in the Law on the one hand and the 'moral' or 'ethical' elements on the other. One can see the problem immediately. This sort of distinction usually carries with it implicit value judgments that owe more to the European Enlightenment of the 18th century and American individualism of the 21st century than to Jewish views on the Law in 1st-century Palestine. To many modern minds, as they evaluate matters religious and spiritual, what is external, ritual, ceremonial, public, legal, or institutional is of little importance, is easily dispensed with, or is downright dangerous and to be avoided. In contrast, what is internal, private, personal, spontaneous, emotional, or unstructured belongs to true religion or spirituality, and it is in this sphere that true morality is to be found.
...For the ancient Near East, human beings were not Platonic souls entombed for a while in bodies; human beings were bodies enlivened by a vital force having a mind, will, and emotions. A religion that remained locked up in the inner recesses of the psyche, a religion that had no bodily expression in visible and communal actions, was quite literally non-sense.
...To sum up: an implicitly hostile opposition between 'cultic,' 'ritual,' or 'purely legal' elements of the Mosaic Law on the one hand and the 'truly moral' or 'ethical' elements on the other would have been alien to the mind-set of ordinary Palestinian Jews of Jesus' day. For such a Jew, what was 'moral' (if we may use that term) was to do God's will and to walk in his ways as laid out in the Torah God had given to Israel. (John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, 4:43–45.)

Put that in your theological pipe and smoke it.

A Marginal Jew and the Quest for the Historical Jesus

2009-09-05T13:45:00.001-07:00

For the past few months I have been plowing through John P. Meier’s monumental A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. Originally slated to be four volumes, Meier has written four books totaling 3040 pages and still has to cover the parables, Jesus’ self-designation, and his arrest and crucifixion. But, his work will no-doubt survive as the authoritative work on the historical Jesus.

The purpose of Meier’s project is to find out what a hypothetical “unpapal conclave” consisting of a Roman Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew, a Muslim, and an agnostic would say about Jesus if they were locked in the library basement at Harvard University and were not allowed to come out until they had produced a document on which they could all agree. On what can everyone agree about Jesus, regardless of their faith?

Meier is careful to distinguish this “historical” Jesus from the “real” Jesus. Just as there was more to George Washington than what is available to us through the historical method, there was more to Jesus than what we can recover through historical investigation. Meier is a Roman Catholic priest and a professor at the University of Notre Dame, so he has beliefs about the real Jesus that go beyond what he can prove through historical investigation. He would call these beliefs “Christology,” a sub-discipline of theology, not history.

For example, the unpapal conclave would be able to affirm the line from the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed that Jesus “was crucified under Pontius Pilate and suffered death” because this statement is verifiable by historical inquiry. However, they could not affirm the full version of the statement, that Jesus “for us human beings and for our salvation . . . was crucified under Pontius Pilate for our sake, [and] suffered [death].” The above italicized phrases are theological claims not verifiable by the historian.

Is work like Meier’s valuable to the evangelical community?

First, there are some reasons why it is not.

Meier’s method rejects the inerrancy of the Scriptures. You may wonder how Meier has managed to write 3040 pages on Jesus, when the Gospels only take up about 100 pages of most Bibles. In addition to interacting with relevant extra-biblical materials, Meier spends a lot of time discussing which biblical statements about Jesus are authentic, and which are inauthentic or unverifiable. For instance, Meier accepts that Jesus was a miracle-worker, but rejects the story of Jesus walking on water. He claims that this story was invented by the early church. Because evangelicals believe in the inerrancy of the Scriptures, they cannot agree with this conclusion. So, given the evangelical presupposition that the Scriptures are inerrant, Meier’s project is doomed to fail before it begins.

Meier presupposes a distinction between “the Jesus of history” and “the Christ of faith.” He writes, “the quest for the historical Jesus is by definition a strictly historical endeavor. Of its nature, it prescinds or brackets Christian faith. This does not mean that it denies, rejects, or attacks such faith. The quest simply prescinds from Christian faith in the way that a world-class astronomer who happens to be a believing Christian would prescind from a theology of God the Creator when she is examining the outer reaches of the galaxy.”

However noble Meier’s motives in making this distinction, it is methodologically problematic. What if the Christ of faith and the Jesus of history are one and the same? Does presupposing their distinction compromise the investigation? In distinguishing between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith, are you adopting a worldview alien both to Jesus himself and to his followers? It may be outside of the realm of historical investigation to prove that Jesus is the second member of the Trinity, but the truth of that theological claim influences the way in which one approaches the historical Jesus.

Second, there are some reasons why Meier’s work is valuable to the evangelical community.

Apologetics are only valuable when they are meaningful to those outside of the community. I had a professor in college who used to say, “I can prove everything I believe if you grant me two presuppositions, neither of which can be proven or disproven: (1) There is a God, and (2) The Bible is the Word of God.” Now, it’s great to be able to defend your beliefs, but who would you be defending them to with those presuppositions? Does anyone accept those two presuppositions without also accepting the claim that “Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God”? If not, then you are limiting your dialogue partners to those who are inside the community of faith. If you limit yourself in that way, are you truly doing apologetics? No. In order for evangelicals to have a meaningful apologetic, we have to be able to defend our beliefs without presuppositions like “there is a God” or “the Bible is inerrant.”

The Christ of faith is the Jesus of history. We are not Docetists. When we worship the second member of the Trinity, we are worshipping a Jew from Nazareth who walked the earth 2000 years ago. Belief in God only makes sense if that God intervenes in history. (Why would it matter if there were a God if He didn’t intervene in our reality?) We believe that God intervened in history in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. To reject the Jesus of history is to become a Gnostic or a Deist.

Evangelicals’ belief in inerrancy should not continue uncritically. Note that I did not say that their belief in inerrancy shouldn’t continue, but that it shouldn’t continue uncritically. If you’re going to believe something that the rest of the world rejects, you should have a good reason for doing so—not just because it makes you more comfortable. If the Scriptures are inerrant, then we have nothing to fear from people who claim they’re not. If they’re not, then we need to be alerted so that we can wake up from our delusion.

Personally, I find Meier’s work to be fantastic. I love the skeptical approach. I have written here before that I find Wolfhart Pannenberg’s apologetic to be the most satisfying. The truth of any god’s existence is directly related the “truth” of the god’s religious claims. If a god claims to be able to raise the dead, and the dead are not raised, then that god is not the true god. In theological dialogue, the prophets of Baal call down fire, Elijah calls down fire, and whichever god brings the fire is the true god.

The God of the Bible claims to be able to raise the dead. He promises victory over sin and a kingdom of justice and peace. He claims that these things are coming about through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. The extent to which we can prove that Jesus lived, died, and rose from the dead is the extent to which we can prove that God exists. Meier’s research on the historical Jesus is a huge leap in that direction (although he might cringe at my using it to that end, as he wrote in A Marginal Jew 4:6).

What Is Good Preaching?

2009-08-31T13:38:00.000-07:00

I’ve been forced to reflect lately on what “good preaching” is. It’s funny how two people can talk to me after a sermon—one saying, “that sermon was your best ever” and the other saying, “that sermon was fruitless.” What is good preaching? What makes a sermon good? Here are some things to consider: (by the way, don't read into the picture placement)

How much does delivery matter? Most people prefer a good speaker to a bad one. Can we justify this? Jonathan Edwards read most of his sermons, and he is considered by many to be the greatest American preacher of all time. Paul contrasted himself to Apollos and said that his inferior oratory skills meant that his sermons depended on the power of God for success (1 Cor 2:1–5). On the other hand, Paul may have been speaking tongue-in-cheek in 1 Corinthians. It is highly doubtful that Paul was a poor rhetorician. His speeches in Acts are fantastic, and his epistles are well thought-out and argued.
How much does interpretation matter? Can a good sermon misinterpret a text? If you speak truth, but from the wrong text, can your sermon be good? If you’re a Calvinist, are all Arminian sermons therefore bad preaching? If you’re post-mil, are all Dispensationalists bad preachers? Can a non-trinitarian sermon be good? (I’ll answer that last one—“no.”)
How much does the preacher matter? We see high-profile preachers fall all of the time. The inconsistency of their lifestyles and their message destroys the credibility of their sermons. Are all of their sermons, therefore, bad preaching? I heard John Piper give a sermon on evangelism in which he admitted up front that he was not a good evangelist and therefore this sermon was hard for him to give. He said he was convicted by his own words but that he just wanted to be faithful to what the Bible said. If he wasn’t living his message, was that a bad sermon?
How much does style matter Does a sermon have to be expository (going through the Bible verse-by-verse), or is there room for topical preaching (say, on parenting, or worship, or evangelism, or money)? Do we have biblical examples of either of these? Does a sermon have to be christocentric (i.e. about Jesus), or can we preach on behavior? Do we have examples from the Bible? If I am preaching on Paul’s command to “Flee sexual immorality,” do I have to preach about Jesus, or can I preach about sexual immorality and the reasons we should flee it (as long as my reasons are theological)?
How much does the audience’s response matter? The purpose of a sermon is to change lives. If lives aren’t changed, was the sermon a dud? If the audience hated your sermon, was it bad? If they loved it, was it good?
How much does context matter? Does a good sermon have to happen in church? Can you get good preaching in a chapel or at a conference? Were the Billy Graham crusades good preaching?

How much does relevance matter? Does a sermon have to be contextually relevant? Isn't the Bible timeless?
What does it mean to “Preach the Word”?
What other factors should be taken into account?

Allen Yeh's Review of The Next Evangelicalism by Soong-Chan Rah

2009-08-26T14:29:00.000-07:00

Allen Yeh has written a great review of The Next Evangelicalism by Soong-Chan Rah. He says everything I thought when I read the book but was afraid to say because I am white.

Dr. Soong-Chan's book is important, but I agree with Dr. Yeh's critiques.

War and Peace--I Chickened Out

2009-08-11T09:40:00.000-07:00

I brought War and Peace with me on my vacation, but I never worked up the nerve to start it. I have a thing about starting books and not finishing them, and I knew that was going to be a long road to go down. Maybe next year . . .

Second Skin

2009-08-10T10:08:00.000-07:00

This is a fascinating documentary on MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online roleplaying games). HT: BHT

iMonk on Letting the Church Be Wrong

2009-08-05T22:08:00.001-07:00

Great thoughts by Michael Spencer on churches that are too right for their own good.

Heretic

2009-08-05T10:00:00.000-07:00

I saw a great quote somewhere, and sadly I can't remember the exact wording or who said it. But it was something along the lines of "If your preaching isn't drawing criticism, you aren't preaching the truth." It's easy to fall into the trap of preaching what people want to hear--not what they need to hear.

That being said, I received my first letter of hate mail (from an internet listener who does not attend my church) about one of my sermons.

I almost posted the letter on the blog, but it is long. Essentially, the guy didn't like my sermon on the Parable of the Good Samaritan (which, not coincidentally, I think may have been my best-written sermon ever). The issue was my comparing a Samaritan to a homosexual. He said that the Samaritan was an unlikely hero because of his race, not because of his behavior. In my story, the homosexual is the unlikely hero because of his lifestyle. The analogy "at its best was poor and at its worst, heresy."

Now, I graciously responded to the guy. I thanked him for listening and contacting me, and I showed him that the Samaritan in Jesus' parable was an unlikely hero because of his lifestyle, not just because of his race. The Samaritans were syncretists--blending worship of YHWH with worship of pagan gods. The point of the parable is: "The pagan got it right and the holy men got it wrong." I think my modern analogy was spot on.

But I bring up the issue because I want to say something: It hurts to be called a heretic, regardless of the substance of the accusation. Certain people need to be called heretics--those who teach against the deity of Christ, the trinity, the resurrection, and the other "big" issues. But heretic is a strong word. People get burned at the stake for heresy. Let's not rob it of its power by calling everyone we disagree with a heretic. Let's not call people heretics because they have differing millennial views, or because they teach Calvinism (or Arminianism), or because they question a doctrine like imputation, or because they are postmodern. There is a difference between being wrong and being a heretic. A heretic is grossly wrong.

Then again, maybe language is changing and I just need to get with the times. Chuck Swindoll used to say "God is awesome in the way the word meant before pizza was awesome." Maybe I need to say "Arius was a heretic in the way the word meant before Brian McLaren was a heretic."

The Parable of the Great Banquet

2009-08-05T09:49:00.000-07:00

Gary and I are in the midst of a sermon series on the parables of Jesus. On July 26th, I taught on the Parable of the Great Banquet.

My approach to the parables has been different than what you typically hear in church. Instead of preaching a sermon about the meaning of the parables, I have rewritten them in contemporary settings. I'm not going to use this approach forever (it takes a lot longer than writing a sermon), but it has been a lot of fun to do for the parables.

You can listen to the Parable of the Great Banquet here.

Derek Webb

2009-07-08T09:20:00.000-07:00

I love Derek Webb. What do you think about this song?

There are rumors that his label felt the song to be too scandalous for release. As he often does, Webb uses some colorful language to make a point.

I agree with Jeff Wright's take on it.

By the way, I think I like the electronica direction Webb is going in. I love the folk stuff, but I think he pulls this off. And the album title--Stockholm Syndrome--if he means what I think he means by that it is one of the greatest titles ever.

The Parable of the Good Samaritan

2009-07-07T13:46:00.000-07:00

Gary and I are in a series on the Parables of Jesus. On June 28th, I taught on the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Afterward, several people independently told me, "I will never forget that sermon." No one has ever said that to me about anything else I have ever said. Someone else told me, "That sermon made me SO mad . . . in a good way."

I am trying something different with this sermon series--instead of doing my traditional three points and a poem at the end, I have rewritten the parables for modern ears. It just kind of makes sense to me to explain a story with a story. It's different (and it's not something I will do forever), but I like it.

You can listen to it, my sermon on the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, or any of the other sermons in the series here.

Evangelicalism and Higher Criticism of the Bible

2009-07-06T13:15:00.001-07:00

What are your thoughts on "higher criticism of the Bible" (source criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism, literary criticism)? Is it anathema, or does it have its place in evangelicalism? Have you ever even heard any of these terms?

I am curious to read what your response is to the following "problem" in New Testament studies, dealing with historical agreement between the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) and John.

In the Synoptic Gospels, the cleansing of the Temple occurs at the end of Jesus' ministry, after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem for the last time (Matt 21:12–13, Mark 11:15–19, Luke 19:45–46). In John, the cleansing of the Temple occurs at the beginning of his ministry, right after the turning of water into wine at Cana (John 2:13–22). Which of the following "solutions" to this "problem" are you most comfortable with? Which do you absolutely reject?

Since the Bible is inerrant, and since there are clearly contradictions in the timing of these two events, there must have been two cleansings of the Temple--one at the beginning of Jesus' ministry and one at the end.

The Bible may be inerrant, but these two passages look like they are describing the same event. Perhaps John is not arranging his material chronologically, but theologically. The cleansing of the Temple occurs early in John, not because it happened early in Jesus' ministry, but because John the theologian wanted to make it clear from the start that Jesus was replacing the Temple.

The Bible is not inerrant. These two stories are clearly two accounts of the same event, and the internal contradictions prove that there are errors in the Bible.

I am interested in your take on the proposed solutions to the problem, not because I want to advocate a position, but because I want to get a sample of how evangelicals approach the issue of higher criticism and "problems" in the Bible.

Hit and Run

2009-06-29T17:09:00.001-07:00

Someone hit my car and ran without leaving a note today! Fortunately, a witness whipped out his iPhone and snapped a picture of the truck with a clear shot of the license plate and paint smear. The Gig Harbor PD is on the case. Let's hear it for good Samaritans!

Bulletin Board WIN

2009-06-29T15:19:00.000-07:00

Failblog is often in the gutter. This one made me laugh pretty hard.

Post-Game Interview Meltdown Song

2009-06-27T22:10:00.000-07:00

Someone has a lot of talent . . . and way too much time on their hands. We're talkin' about practice?!

Natal for XBox 360

2009-06-25T10:31:00.000-07:00

Natal was revealed at E3 and a lot of people are buzzing about how "revolutionary" it is. The developer says that it is beyond even what science fiction writers dream about. Critics point out that the demonstration looked scripted and fake (plus, the developer has a history of overhyping the technological innovation of his games).

My question is, Why would I want to play this game? It looks really boring compared to playing with my real son.

(HT: BHT)

iMonk on the SBC

2009-06-24T09:36:00.000-07:00

Michael Spencer has been encouraged by the Southern Baptist Convention so far. It sounds like the younger generation is pushing for a move away from the culture wars and a re-emphasis on missions.

Kiva in Paraguay

2009-06-24T09:22:00.000-07:00

Below is an interview with Martin Burt from the Fundacion Paraguaya, a microfinance organization in Paraguay. If you are unfamiliar with microfinance, Mr. Burt gives some clear examples of its power to lift people out of poverty. The interview is mostly informative, but it's good information.

American Syncretism

2009-06-23T13:52:00.000-07:00

I was a missions major in college. We talked about the importance of expressing Christianity in culturally appropriate ways. After all, Christianity in South America need not look like Christianity in the United States. The process of tailoring Christianity to a particular culture we called "contextualization."

Contextualization especially comes to the fore when it comes to worship styles. Should missionaries translate western worship songs into native dialects, or should they encourage nationals to compose their own worship in their own style? Contextualization encourages the latter. Every missionary has to be conscious of contextualization.

You can even see contextualization in missional churches in the United States. Mars Hill in Seattle may be an example of a church contextualizing itself to the indie-rocker youth of urban Seattle. Willow Creek may be an example of a church contextualizing itself to the corporate-ladder boomers of suburban Chicago. (See below for why I say “may be.”)

Another thing we are conscious of in missions is "syncretism." Syncretism is contextualization gone wild--when you take blatantly non-Christian elements of a culture and try to shoehorn them into Christianity.

For instance, polygamy is a huge challenge for contextualization. Polygamy is acceptable in many cultures. What does a missionary tell a new convert who has 2 wives? Divorce one? Only sleep with one? What if both wives have children? Do you kick one set to the curb? Does Christianity allow for polygamy? How does 1 Corinthians 7 apply?

However one chooses to answer that question, most would agree that it is wrong for an already-converted Christian to marry a second wife, even in a polygamist culture. That would be syncretism, as the New Testament advocates monogamy.

So, the challenge of missions is being "contextual" without being "syncretistic."

I am reading The New Shape of World Christianity by Mark Noll. It's a great book about how American Christianity compares to global Christianity. Ours is an age of a post-Christian West and a post-Western Christianity, and there is no reason for us to assume that American Christianity is normative.

In the book, Noll points out the challenge in identifying syncretism in other flavors of Christianity. He writes, "The contrast between the West and the non-West is never between culture-free Christianity and culturally embedded Christianity, but between varieties of culturally embedded Christianity." Great point! Just because another culture does something different does not make us orthodox and them syncretistic. It could be the other way around!

So, I have a question for you. Let's imagine for a second that you are a first-century follower of Jesus. Maybe you are even the Apostle Paul. You are caught in a time machine that not only carries you into the distant future (2009), but also lands you in the USA in a typical suburban evangelical church. What practices do you label syncretistic, and what do you label contextual forms of orthodox Christianity?

The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard

2009-06-11T11:40:00.000-07:00

Gary and I have started a new sermon series on the parables of Jesus. Gary started us off with three weeks on The Parable of the Prodigal Son, and I followed with a sermon on The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard. You can listen here.

I really enjoyed this sermon. As I reflected on how to preach a parable, I kept coming back to how much of a parable's "punch" is tied to the medium of a story. By changing the medium from story to sermon, we diminish the power of the passage. So, instead of preaching a sermon, I thought I would tell a story.

For this sermon I wrote an original 5,000 word short story and I read it. There is a short introduction and a short conclusion, followed by the reading of Matthew 20:1–16, upon which the story is based.

Despair, Inc on Social Media and Government Bailouts

2009-06-09T10:20:00.001-07:00

I love Despair, Inc. You could probably put blogging somewhere in that venn diagram. Here's some other good ones:

HT: Jeff Wright

Was Mars Hill an Epic FAIL?

2009-06-08T12:37:00.000-07:00

Whenever the subject of Christ and culture comes up, people inevitably point to Paul's preaching on Mars Hill as the argument that Christians should engage high culture.

Acts 17 recounts Paul's ministry in Athens and his sermonizing on Mars Hill. Paul's approach was to start with the religion of the Greeks and show that the God they were looking for was Jesus. He says to them in v. 22, "Men of Athens, I see that you are very religious in all respects." In v. 28, he quotes some of their poets. His sermon is logical, intelligent, and contextualized.

At first glance, Acts 17 seems like strong evidence that the church should be engaged in confronting high culture of its day. After all, that's what Paul did on Mars Hill. But is that what Acts 17 is really saying?

The Book of Acts says a lot of stuff about what happened in the first century church. Some of it is descriptive (i.e. "this is what happened") and some of it is prescriptive (i.e. "this is what happened and should happen"). In Acts 15, Paul and Barnabas get into a heated disagreement so that they part ways. Is this a model of what should happen to ministry teams, or just what did happen to one ministry team?

In the same way, is Acts 17 what should be our approach to culture, or what was one approach to culture? Does Luke give us any clues?

It's interesting to note that Luke never praises Paul's approach as a model for ministry. In fact, he even subtly mocks the Athenians for wasting their time philosophizing (17:21). Paul's sermons don't lead to thousands converting to Christ. In fact, the crowd mocks him when he's done (17:32). Only a few believe (17:34). We never see the city of Athens featuring prominently in church history, nor do we have a letter from Paul written to the church there. If Paul on Mars Hill is a model for ministry, it’s a mediocre model at best.

But note what happens after Athens. Paul’s next project was Corinth. Paul says about his ministry in Corinth:

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will thwart the cleverness of the intelligent." Where is the wise man? Where is the expert in the Mosaic law? Where is the debater of this age? Has God not made the wisdom of the world foolish? For since in the wisdom of God the world by its wisdom did not know God, God was pleased to save those who believe by the foolishness of preaching. For Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks ask for wisdom, but we preach about a crucified Christ, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. (1 Corinthians 1:18–25)

When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come with superior eloquence or wisdom as I proclaimed the testimony of God. For I decided to be concerned about nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and with much trembling. My conversation and my preaching were not with persuasive words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not be based on human wisdom but on the power of God. (1 Corinthians 2:1–5)

Is Paul contrasting here his ministry in Corinth with that in Athens? Did Paul learn a lesson in Athens? Can we possibly view Acts 17 as a failure in ministry, maybe even an epic one that caused Paul to rethink his philosophy of ministry?

I am not advocating anti-intellectualism. Far from it. But I am not sure we are ever going to win over the popular culture with our message. It is, after all, foolishness. Maybe instead we can focus on being so much like Jesus, so "foolish," that our message becomes irresistible.

Wolfhart Pannenberg on "The Gospel"

2009-06-04T13:24:00.000-07:00

I finished the second volume of Wolfhart Pannenberg's massive Systematic Theology today. Volume 1 is 473 pages long and volume 2 is 499 pages long. I just found out today that volume 3 is 713 pages long. Ugh.

Pannenberg's work is the most difficult I have ever read, but I find it extremely rewarding. He is brilliant.

In volume 2, Pannenberg deals with the creation of the world, the dignity and misery of humanity, anthropology and christology, the deity of Jesus Christ, and the reconciliation of the world. It's all good, but he saves the best section for last. The last section in chapter 5 ("The Reconciliation of the World") is called simply, "The Gospel."

As it turns out, Pannenberg's discussion of the meaning of "the Gospel" overlaps with the back-and-forth that N.T. Wright and John Piper are having. Pannenberg writes:

In Luther's Galatians lectures in 1516–17 the comment on 1:11 is to the effect that the gospel preaches the forgiveness of sins and the fulfilling of the law that has already been accomplished, namely, by Christ. The law says: Pay what you owe, but the gospel says: Your sins are forgiven you. For this definition the content of the gospel Luther had appealed a year earlier, in his Romans lectures, to the quoting of Isa. 52:7 by Paul in Rom. 10:15. The message of salvation is lovable and desirable precisely because of the forgiveness of sins to those made anxious by the law.
But neither Paul nor Isa. 52:7 says anything of the sort. In Rom. 10:17 Paul speaks of the need to proclaim the message of salvation in order to make possible faith in the Lord, who is the content of the message. The reason why this message is a message of salvation is not directly stated but is presupposed: Those who call on the name of the Lord will be saved (10:13). The whole complex of Paul's concept of eschatological soteria is bound up with this thought. But in Isa. 52:7 the reason for joy is the dawning of the reign of God. To relate this message to the promise of forgiveness of sins is at best a very spiritualized exposition. We have here an orienting of the gospel to the promise of absolution in penance as it was practiced in the Western church in the Middle Ages.
What is forgotten is that the gospel has to do with the dawning of the reign of God that brings salvation. The forgiveness of sins abolishes the separation between us and God. Basic here is the presence of the rule of God in the work of Jesus. Where the salvation of God's lordship is present, all separation from God is overcome. For believers, then, participating in God's reign means the forgiveness of sins and the new commandment of love. But to restrict the salvation of God's kingdom that found expression in common meals with Jesus to the forgiveness of sins is not keeping with the message of Jesus and makes sense only against the background of the penitential piety of the Middle Ages. Even the event of reconciliation that is the content of the gospel for Paul does not consist only in the promise of forgiveness. It is a matter of life and death.

I love how he puts this. The Gospel is about the coming reign of God and the reconciliation of humanity to God. Sure, sin is what separates humanity from God, so the forgiveness of sins is an essential part of reconciliation. But forgiveness of sins and the Gospel are not identical. Basic to the Gospel is the reign of God (or, we might say the "kingdom of God") as present in the work of Jesus.

Another strength of viewing the Gospel as the coming reign of God is that it makes room for the work of the Holy Spirit and the existence of the church. If the Gospel is just the forgiveness of sins, why do we need the Holy Spirit? He becomes little more than an afterthought. If the Gospel is just the forgiveness of sins, why do we need the church? It also becomes an afterthought. But both the church and the Holy Spirit are essential in Pannenberg's paradigm. If the Gospel is the coming reign of God, then where is that reign manifested? In the church. If the Gospel is the coming reign of God, then how is it coming about? Through the work of the Holy Spirit.

Pannenberg is hardly an evangelical, but his thoughts are substantial and his arguments weighty. Where I agree wtih him I am encouraged, and where I disagree with him I find myself challenged in new ways. He's given me a lot to chew on.

"Oh My God" by Jars of Clay

2009-06-03T16:39:00.000-07:00

I'm a little late in hearing this song for the first time. It's been out a few years.

Wow.

It's about all the contexts in which the phrase "Oh My God" can be used--everything from a curse to a cry of need for the divine.

Pannenberg on Substitutionary Atonement and Teaching Doctrine

2009-06-03T13:26:00.000-07:00

It's kind of the en vogue thing amidst evangelicals to bash and/or question substitutionary atonement. Some find it "unhelpful" or "not intellectually or spiritually stimulating." Some have suggested moving on in the language we use to describe the effects of the cross.

In contrast, I read a refreshing thought in Wolfhart Pannenberg's Systematic Theology today. About substitutionary atonement he says:

The fact that a later age may find it hard to understand traditional ideas is not a sufficient reason for replacing them. It simply shows how necessary it is to open up these ideas to later generations by interpretation and thus to keep their meaning alive. The problems that people have with ideas like expiation and representation (or substitution) in our secularized age rest less on any lack of forcefulness in the traditional terms than on the fact that those who are competent to interpret them do not explain their content with sufficient force or clarity.

I like these words. But it surfaces the tension I face as a preacher: Who is my target audience on Sunday morning? Do we discuss the intricacies of doctrines like substitutionary atonement and talk over non-Christians who have gathered with us to hear from God? Or do we keep everything at street level? The former option excludes outsiders but grows insiders. The latter option includes outsiders, but leaves insiders wanting more.

Dr. George Tiller (August 8, 1941–May 31, 2009)

2009-06-01T09:30:00.000-07:00

I obviously disagree strongly with Dr. Tiller's line of work. What he did was apalling. But violence is not the answer. As a supporter of the pro-life movement I want to condemn the actions of those reponsible for Dr. Tiller's death in the strongest way possible. And what's worse, he was shot in church.

Our country has a great legal system. It's laws can be molded and shaped by voting citizens. There are peaceful and responsible ways to work for social justice. Let's not allow our beliefs to be associated with hate and violence.

James Dunn on the Appeal of the Early Church

2009-05-26T12:49:00.000-07:00

In chapter 30 of Christianity in the Making, James Dunn tackles the issue of Paul and his churches. Specifically, he seeks to indentify how people in the first century would have categorized this new group called a "church" compared to the existing social groups of the time. Dunn compares the church to associations, cults, schools, and synagogues and concludes that the church had similarities and differences to all of these groups.

At the end of the chapter, Dunn has a great section on what would have drawn people to the church as opposed to other contemporary groups. He lists nine reasons people would have been drawn to the early church:

1. The transformative power of Paul's message. People's lives were being changed as a result of their encounter with God in the early church.

2. Striking experiences of the Spirit and of power. God was at work in new and amazing ways in the early church. People were getting healed, demons were being exorcized, and the poor were being provided for.

3. The promise of eternal life. The Christian hope is one of resurrection from the dead.

4. The draw of union with a man who conquered death. Jesus stood out as unique among men.

5. Religious devotion. People are always looking for a serious religion. Christianity provided this without demanding judaizing.

6. The completeness of the religion. Christianity is a sound faith that adequately answers many of mankind's most difficult philosophical and religious questions.

7. Good food. Many of the early Christians were poor and would have looked forward to the communal meals.

8. Community. Then as now, people struggled with loneliness and anxiety. The church provided them with a sense of belonging.

9. Openness to members of varying social status. The church was a place where Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free, rich and poor could all eat and fellowship together.

These are great insights from Dunn. How many of these could be said of our churches today?

The End of the Spiritual Life

2009-05-21T08:51:00.001-07:00

No, not my spiritual life. Just the ten-week class I taught. Tuesday was the last day of the class.

Teaching this class has been one of the most valuable things that I have done in recent memory. I think the reason that I enjoyed it so much was because it forced me to get out of theoretical models of spiritual growth and into what has worked for me. I had to wrestle with questions like, "How does God really work in my life?" and "How do people really change?"

Sometimes I feel that churches are a lot like the Land of Oz and pastors are like the Wizard. All my life I had this notion that the spiritual life was about "victorious Christian living." I read in the Bible and I heard in church that Christianity was this dynamic relationship with God. Everyone in church talked about how wonderful Jesus was and great it was to have a personal relationship with him.

Now, I had a nagging sensation that God was out there, but I didn't experience anything close to what most of the people in my church were talking about. I assumed it was my fault. Maybe I wasn't praying enough. Maybe I wasn't reading my Bible enough. Maybe I needed to witness more and buy more Christian trinkets.

So I did all that stuff.

And it didn't work.

Then I went to college and seminary and studied Reformed theology. It was new and different and exciting and intellectual. It had Bible verses for everything. It was air-tight. What's that? You're an Arminian? You must not read your Bible! What's that? You had a spiritual experience? Everyone knows our experiences are subjective. You can't base your faith on that! Come, read this Bible verse and find out what your faith experience should look like.

Now, I have a lot of respect for Reformed theology and theologians. I give it a hard time, but I do it in the same way that Jeff Foxworthy makes fun of rednecks.

But my main beef with Reformed theology is that it doesn't work. Sure, they have a Bible verse for everything and a fantastic explanation of God's sweeping purpose for the universe and how that should play out in my personal life. But I find that their explanations of the way the spiritual life should work have no correspondence to the way life does work. Or at least the way my life works.

Going to seminary was like peeking behind the curtain at the Wizard of Oz. When I say that, I don't mean the part about going to class; I mean the part about living with other seminary students. These people were to be leaders of spiritual communities across the globe, and yet they acted like everyone else. I guess I had always thought that even if I wasn't experiencing spiritual bliss, even if I wasn't living victoriously, there was someone out there who was. Most of the time, I thought that person was my pastor. When I lived with 1000 other future pastors, I realized that a lot of the stories we told about normative Christian living were fantasies. The Wizard of Oz wasn't as great and powerful as everyone made him out to be.

I don't want to use smoke and mirrors to promote a fantasy. I don't want to preach a message that isn't true to my life. I don't want my sermons to be what Caedmon's Call refers to as "an expensive ad for something cheap." So, as I put together the curriculum for the Spiritual Life class, I was forced to wrestle with the question of what was normative for the Christian experience. I found my answers in N.T. Wright, James Dunn, Gordon Fee, Philip Yancey, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and others.

Ultimately, I think the Christian life boils down to a couple of things--read your Bible, pray, hang out with other Christians, and take the kingdom of God to the world. I have found that people change when they do two things: (1) they decide they really want to change (i.e. repentance), and (2) they find accountability (i.e. confession).

Is God active in our world in our lives? Absolutely. Does e really change people? Without a doubt. Is the Christian life one of "victory" and "bliss"? Not in my experience. That's why I hope for something more (1 Corinthians 13:12).