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John Schneider Resigns from Calvin College

August 25, 2011 in Academia, Bible Thoughts with 12 Comments

Last year there was a bit of a storm over some articles published by John Schneider and Dan Harlow of Calvin College. The issue they raised was what Christians might do in the face of mounting scientific argument that there was no Paradise, and no single human pair from which the rest descended.

John Schneider has now resigned.

The Grand Rapids News ran an article about the resignation. They then ran a follow-up story about Dan Harlow being unhappy with how Calvin is portraying the matter. The latter seems to be following up on an article in The Banner.

The views of Schneider and Harlow were recently cited in an NPR story on Evangelicals and Adam and Eve.

If you’re interested in reading the essays that created the storm, you can download a PDF of Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith.

This is the sort of controversy that always lurks in the back of my mind as I wrestle with how we conceive of our Christian identity and thus what it looks like to act Christianly, and read the Bible Christianly, in our world. I don’t claim to have any easy answers.

Generally, however, I wish we were more patient and had better practices of wrestling with new and controversial ideas. The questions raised about human origins by various sciences are only getting more pressing and complex. Now more than ever we need people who are willing to ask hard questions without presupposing we come with the answers in tow.

Word of God and Theological Interpretation

August 25, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 8 Comments

Yesterday’s post probed a bit of Karl Barth’s doctrine of scripture. Today I want to think a bit about what such a view of the Bible as the Word of God might mean for how we conceptualize theological interpretation of the Bible.

The conference I attended in New Zealand last week was on theological interpretation. In short, the movement is designed to muster Christians to read the Bible as Christians, and not as ostensibly detached historians.

Scholarship has been mired by the idea that our goal is to use scripture to find a history behind the text that is the actual history we are concerned with. In general, scholarship has worked to assess the human hands’ work in inscribing the Bible, setting God entirely to the side.

So what does it look like for Christian scholars to embrace our conviction that this scripture is the means God has chosen to speak to the world in order to reveal, ultimately, the redemption offered in Jesus Christ?

I typically approach this question with a hermeneutical type answer: we read the Bible Christianly when we read it as a witness to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. A christological reading strategy keeps our readings focused rightly on Christ and on the fact that our calling is to live faithfully after him and in him.

An interesting question that was raised at the Colloquium last week, however, had to do with the fact that many of us spoke as though theological interpretation is an ecclesial practice. What does it mean to read the Bible as something written in, with, and for the church?

Many of us used such language in our presentations. But all of us were academics. Ok, there were one or two folks who were also ordained ministers. But we were engaging in a decidedly academic task.

All of this (Barth plus the Colloquium) got me wondering: if theological interpretation is predicated on the notion that the Bible is the word of God, is it viable to think that we can read the Bible theologically in the academy at all? If the Bible as the word of God depends on the fact that God chooses to take quite humans words and make himself known afresh through them, does that make academic study of the Bible, by definition, the wrong kind of practice for hearing the Bible as the word of God?

I think academic study of the Bible is crucial. And my seminary classroom regularly becomes a place where that academic study confronts the church with a demand for more faithful practice.

Moreover, rigorous scholarship opens our eyes to the thought world within which the scriptures made a certain kind of sense and bore various connotations that are too often lost on current day readers. So academic study of the Bible is crucial for hearing what was said. And, such study should help us see more clearly how, in fact, the Bible speaks about God.

But after we’ve said all that, can we expect that the Bible, studied in the academy, will be the Bible as word of God? Or will that experience of scripture depend upon participating in the hearing of scripture with a body gathered to hear it–or at least, listening to it as proclamation?

Or, to put things differently, might we expect that a group that has gathered to study the human hands at work, the human history as such, will be inherently less likely to be confronted with those human hands as “word of God” than a group gathered to hear (and listen!) to and for the word of God?

These really are questions, and I’d value your feedback. At root what I’m trying to figure out is whether Barth doesn’t offer us a doctrine of scripture that offers a helpful way forward in doing historical biblical scholarship without growing anxious that it does not immediately address us as word of God.

Given that the word is spoken in such historically contextualized modes, and that these are what God has chosen to speak through, might the process of shaping understanding of what the scriptures “meant” be the best way forward for Christian academics?

The Miracle of Scripture

August 24, 2011 in Barth Dogmatics Reading, Bible Thoughts with 9 Comments

What is so special about the Bible? Why do we keep talking about it? Why must Christians continually point to it as the way we know what is true about God?

Is there something miraculous about scripture? If so, what?

The answer that many of us encounter, and many of us cling to, is that the miracle is the perfection of scripture itself. Some might express this in terms of “inerrancy”: we believe the Bible, at least in part, because God has kept it perfectly free from error for us. Others might more generally refer to the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, majesty of style, and consent of all the parts.

No really. Some people do. I swear.

Such lofty exaltation of scripture can come at a price, however. For example, if someone holds scripture in high esteem based on a valuation of its inerrancy and then discovers that there are historical mistakes (e.g., Luke 2), unfulfilled prophecies (Haggai, Revelation), theological disagreements (Gen 1 & 2; Mark & John), or scientific problems (all the animals in the whole world on that Ark?), this can come with a loss of confidence in God, Christianity, the church, and one’s personal faith.

Might there be another way forward?

Karl Barth argues quite strongly that, yes, there is another way forward (Dogmatics §19).

The miracle of scripture does not consist in the fact that God kept the Bible free from taint of humanness, and especially of human limitation or sin.

Instead, the miracle of scripture consists, as in the salvation of humanity more generally, in the fact that God makes himself known through what is all too human, all too limited, all too often mistaken.

… the prophets and apostles as such, even in their function as witnesses, even in the act of writing down their witness, were real, historical men as we are, and therefore sinful in their action, and capable and actually guilty of error in their spoken and written word.

To the bold postulate, that if their word is to be the Word of God they must be inerrant in every word, we oppose the even bolder assertion, that according to the scriptural witness about man, which applies to them too, they can be at fault in any word, and have been at fault in every word, and yet according to the same scriptural witness, being justified and sanctified by grace alone, they have still spoken the Word of God in their fallible and erring human word.

And finally, this, which probably ends up going further than I’m entirely comfortable with, but by and large sums up some things I’ve been dancing around for years:

If God was not ashamed of the fallibility of all the human words of the Bible, of their historical and scientific inaccuracies, their theological contradictions, the uncertainty of their tradition… but adopted and made use of these expressions in all their fallibility, we do not need to be ashamed when He wills to renew it to us in all its fallibility as witness, and it is mere self-will and disobedience to try to find some infallible elements in the Bible.

In other words, this is the Bible we actually have. To demand another, an inerrant one for example, is to demand of God what God has not seen fit to give. It is to spurn the gift given and demand something better.

If God is not ashamed of an all-too-human Bible, we should not be either. This human collection of documents is the actual Bible that is the Word of God.

Christological Exegesis [for Trinitarians]

August 22, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 15 Comments

At the Colloquium on Theological Interpretation this weekend, the issue arose as to whether hermeneutics that strives to be Christian hermeneutics should be Christological or Trinitarian–or whether saying one means you’re doing both.

I argue for Christological rather than Trinitarian. And no, they are not the same thing. Though Trinitarian exegesis will have some Christ in it, and Christological exegesis might lead you to say Trinitarian things about God, in practice they are two different ways of reading the Bible.

The primary reason I attempt to read with and develop a Christological hermeneutic is that the story of Jesus is the hermeneutical grid for reading scripture that the NT writers articulate when they tell us what the scriptures are about.

Whether it’s Luke saying that the suffering, resurrection, and exaltation are what scripture is all about (ch. 24) or John’s Jesus telling the Jewish crowds that the scriptures in which they think they have life testify about him (John 5) or Paul’s declaration that the crucified and risen Christ who is Lord over all including Gentiles (Rom 1) or 1 Peter’s claim that the prophets spoke of the Messiah’s coming suffering and glory–the NT’s Bible-reading hermeneutic is to see that the scriptures tell the story of the suffering and exalted Messiah.

In other words, to read the Bible Christianly is to read it as a story of the crucified and risen Messiah–to read it as an indication of what God is going to finally do within the story to save and deliver God’s people.

The challenge with Trinitarian readings is that they read to insert into the story the Triune identity of God. This means both that the Bible becomes less about the story unfolding on its pages than the God who is “out there,” and that the person in whom the story is finding its resolution is less importantly Israel’s Messiah and more importantly God incarnate.

While the narrative of the suffering servant tells us a great deal about Israel’s God, it does so through the story of the crucified and risen Messiah. In fact, I would argue that we know what we are saying about God is true because when God is read aright God, too, is interpreted through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

That is to say, we do not read the story of Jesus through our prior understanding of God, but we understand God through the revealed story of the saving work of Christ.

A good theology will understand God’s identity as tied to and shaped by the Christ event. Mike Gorman can say that Paul discovers that God himself is cruciform: the interpretive key is the story of Jesus.

6,000 Words

August 21, 2011 in Culture, Humor with 3 Comments

Since it’s Sunday for most of my loyal fans, here’s a little lighter fare for your weekend enjoyment: 6 pics from Auckland that, I hope, will produce the same sense of wry amusement within you that they did within me.

First, I knew it was going to be a good trip from the first morning, when I saw the following posted over a toilet in the men’s room:

Potty Guidance

Helpful instructions, however, were not to be limited to those benefiting the cleaning staff. They also extend to your personal safety:

Stair Safety

Some of what I saw, however, caused me great concern. For instance, if I were your ancestor, I’m not entirely sure I would consider this visage to be an honoring remembrance:

Honored Ancestor

On the other hand, this god was clearly known for his extraordinary… um… “gift”… and is no doubt proud of the statue in his honor.

Serious Game

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words because it captures a few dozen words that are, themselves, more telling than they know. Not only does alcohol, it seems, have tremendous purchasing power. It appears to have gone to the head of this sign’s would-be editor:

Gin fro (sic) Guns

Finally, there is now a definitive answer for all those inquisitive children of ours who ask the big question that inevitably flusters the unsuspecting parent. “Papa, where do babies come from?” Funny you should ask…

Where Babies Come From!

Colloquium on Theological Interpretation: Reflections

August 20, 2011 in Academia, Bible Thoughts, SBL with 19 Comments

After the second day and closing ceremonies of the Colloquium on Theological Interpretation at Laidlaw college, I have a few overall thoughts about the enterprise of theological interpretation.

One of my thoughts is about theological interpretation as a discipline unfolding in the biblical studies academy. In short, I realize that I perceive the academy differently from my senior colleagues who feel the need to fight for space for theological interpretation, because I see them as the academy.

In conversations with several senior colleagues I’ve seen that the academy that they see themselves needing to try to survive in is the world you catch a glimpse of whenever someone writes a letter to the editor at SBL and decries the presence of people who think the Bible is scripture.

For me, the academy is the place that has always had a Pauline Theology group. It’s the place where the Richard Hayses and Michael Gormans and Joel Greens and Tom Wrights and Stephen Fowls and AKMAs and Jimmy Dunns are presenting papers that have significant theological weight to them.

In other words, I’m spoiled, and I tend to take for granted that the biblical studies academy is a place where I can do the kind of work I want to do–whether that be the boring stuff of Pauline chronology (I’ve got a riveting paper on my hard drive) or the more theologically engaged discussion of the beauties of the hermeneutics of Christological revisionism.

So: thank you to the generation of senior scholars who have created this space in the biblical studies world, especially in Pauline studies.

The second reflection is more about the substance and practice of theological interpretation.

In general, a wide gulf continues to exist between biblically generated theology and the theology of theologians, and this gulf will continue to stymie the vision of bringing together the fields of biblical studies and theology.

There were only a couple of hints at this over the weekend, where in general the conversations seemed to be unfolding on the same playing field.

But there were hints. One paper that was reflecting on T. F. Torrance’s reading of scripture talked about Torrance’s assertion that Mark indicated a virgin birth, for instance. In the Q & A afterward, this presenter talked about the annoyance of students coming from their intro to the Pentateuch course into his theology course and not having anything significant to say, theologically, about Gen 1-3. The “throat clearing” has taken place, but they’ve not yet spoken.

I began to wonder if the problem wasn’t with what the students were reading in Genesis, but that theology, in general, has not yet learned to listen to the theology of scripture, how ancient pre-Patristic texts theologize; or, even more importantly, that the texts simply do not speak of, support, or presuppose the theology that the theologian demands of them.

In a side conversation with one of the presenters (whose paper I very much appreciated and whose overall position on theological interpretation I find quite congenial), I made a brief case for why Christian hermeneutics should be Christological rather than Trinitarian.

He sees these working together. And I get that. But in trying to situate my point I asked, “Was Paul a Trinitarian?” He said, “Yes.” End of conversation.

That’s a small picture of where a biblical scholar can’t say what a theologian presumes, and why scholarship’s Bible will continue to be an enigma to the church. Beyond whether scholars are approaching their exegetical task as Christians, theologians (and church people) often want the Bible to say what it does not say, to support what it does not speak to.

I do wonder if the church’s theology will need to learn to hear what it takes for throat clearing as the song of the Spirit before the chasm will bridged between theology and the Bible.

Colloquium on Theological Interpretation, Day 1

August 19, 2011 in Bible Thoughts, Culture with 2 Comments

I am currently in Auckland, NZ, attending the Colloquium on Theological Interpretation at Laidlaw College.

The environment at the conference is excellent, as have been almost all of the papers.

I won’t bore you with an extended recap of the 8ish papers I heard today, but there have been some common threads that ran through several of the things I heard–common concerns that I take as very good signs for the practice of theological interpretation.

Two of the papers today from OT scholars touched on issues of theodicy–and anti-theodicy. One was focusing on Lamentations and exploring the polyphonic nature of the text–there is dire complaint, there is defending of God, there is a repentant man a complaining woman, a narrator.

The questions the paper was exploring pertained to the ramifications of allowing each voice to stand, without resolving any one perspective into the perspective of another. The paper was pressing the question of what it might mean for communal praxis to embody the type of point, counterpoint; theodicy, anti-theodicy that we find in Lamentations. Similarly, a second OT paper wrestled with the viability of OT theodicy from another angle.

Then, three of the papers that focused on the NT were exploring some aspect of the crucified Christ and/or love as a driving force in our readings of scripture. I was angling for the story of Christ crucified as the controlling identity marker, hermeneutic, and ethic; another presenter used the category of love from John 14 as the essential component to the hermeneutic that leads us into all truth; and a third presenter discussed the Spirit in Galatians as the Spirit of the crucified Christ who, as this Christ-Spirit, leads Jesus’ followers into the life of new creation.

The common thread in all this is that the papers demonstrated a common drive toward a praxis that is both theologically and exegetically viable.

Much of what I’ve heard today represents, to me, the best of what theological interpretation can be. It is not a strong-arming of difficult texts so that they fit preconceived ideas of Christian theology. That caricature of Christian readings of scripture was nowhere to be found today.

Instead, it was a series of demonstrations that what these ancient texts say can be, and should be, life-giving for the communities that receive them as scripture. Faithful exegesis, even when it is somewhat destabilizing of our preconceptions about “how things are” or how they should be, perhaps especially when destabilizing, has the power to draw us to not merely saying the right things about God but acting more faithfully as the people of God.

Bounded or Centered? (Pt. 2)

August 18, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 16 Comments

Yesterday I talked about why bounded set thinking is problematic for the church: It is static and it is self-referential. In particular, I am not happy with a theological statement, such as a creed, defining what a Christian truly is, how we read the Bible, and how we are supposed to act.

As I’ve been thinking about this, however, I have more than once wondered if I might, in the end, have to affirm some sort of “bounded set,” because I do think that what makes someone a Christian is being “in Christ.” Is Christ the boundary on our Christian set?

Enter, once again, Paul Hiebert.

In contrast to bounded sets, Hiebert explains, other ways of conceiving sets include “fuzzy sets” (I’ll bypass this one for now) and “centered sets.”

Here is what he says about centered sets:

…a centered set is created by defining a center or reference point and the relationship of things to that center. Things related to the center belong to the set, and those not related to the center do not. Kingship groups… are relational categories.

Relational categories.

That’s more like it.

We all belong together, not because we are circumscribed by a common speech recited on Sunday mornings that tells us how to read the Bible, but because we are all related to Christ, and to God as God’s children, in Christ.

That is a better way to conceive of our identity.

Centered sets have a couple of advantages over bounded sets in terms of being a conceptual framework for Christianity. There are two variables that this way of conceptualizing relations can account for.

One: some folks will be closer to the center than others. All might be in some sort of relationship, but there are degrees of proximity to the defining center.

Two: people might be in motion toward or away from the center.

Part of the flexibility of this is that individuals aren’t the only ones who might be related to a Christian center (= Jesus). Whole churches, denominations, or even the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic church might at times be closer, at times farther, at times moving toward and at times moving away from Christ.

If Christ is the center of our set, the church resumes its rightful place as people who are always in a dynamic relationship with him rather than being erected as a static framework that, itself, defines the set.

Both in its move from the church as defining agent (Rule of Faith) to Christ (the center of our centered set), and in its recognition of the inherently dynamic nature of all relationships and reality, the centered set more faithfully depicts what Christianity is, and therefore opens up better possibilities for interpreting the Bible and acting faithfully in the world.

Bounded or Centered? (Pt. 1)

August 17, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 19 Comments

As I have been in my grudge match to the death with the Rule of Faith as a “rule,” one critique I regularly find myself bringing is that it creates a bounded set. My instinct has been that so conceptualizing the Christian faith is not only a category mistake but ethically disastrous.

In short, once we have defined Christianity as a set of beliefs that must be maintained in order to be faithful Christians, then Christian ethics boils down to maintaining “the faith” that is so delineated.

What should Christians do? Defend the borders.

I have recently stumbled upon the work of Paul Hiebert. Here is what he says about bounded sets:

  1. The category is created by listing essential characteristics something must posses in order to belong to the set
  2. The category is defined by a clear boundary
  3. The objects form a homogeneous group
  4. “Bounded sets are essentially static sets”
  5. Within Western conceptual categories, bounded sets tend to be ontological sets, reflecting an absolute, unchanging nature of reality.

Two things strike me here: the quote, point 4, is the one that I most often rail against here. Christian theology is not a static set, but something dynamically in process in the ongoing story of the church. See yesterday’s post: The church has to grow up to the fact that things are not simply givens, so we cannot take an 1800 year old statement as the defining marker of who we are and what we should do.

But here’s the other problem, as Hiebert lays it out. On point 2, the category is formed by a clear boundary.

What does this mean in practice? He says:

Most of the effort in defining the category is spent defining and maintaining the boundary. Not only must we say what an apple is, we must also clearly differentiate it from oranges, pears, and similar objects that belong to the same domain but are not apples. The central question, therefore, is whether an object is inside or outside the category.

The ethic entailed in a bounded-set system is defining and maintaining the boundary.

When we envision Christianity as a bounded-set, we are consigning ourselves to a lifetime of boundary guarding. Absent from all this, of course, are other measures of Christian fidelity–such as embodying the self-giving love of Christ or even walking in accordance with the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount.

Christianity bounded the “Rule of Faith” becomes, throughout Church History, a self-referential religion, concerned with keeping itself together, and keeping out the heterodox.

This is not to say, of course, that it is without biblical precedent.There were, after all, the disciples who bravely fended off the would-be intruders upon their bounded world: “Lord, we saw a man casting out demons in your name, but he was not with us, so we forbid him!”

So what is a centered set? Stay tuned…

Theology Doing Away with Childish Things

August 16, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 8 Comments

In yesterday’s post, I waxed… um… something… about life being dynamic, and not simply a set of givens. Where I had intended to end up was this: the church once upon a time had the luxury of thinking that Christian faith was a set of givens, and that accepting these givens was a necessary and sufficient expression of Christian faith.

The content of this childhood dream was The Rule of Faith.

It wasn’t a bad dream. But it was a child’s dream.

The Hobbit wasn’t a bad story, but it was a child’s story. It was a there-and-back-again tale. The story of Frodo was no child’s story, but a tale of death from which there was no “back again,” even if one was fortunate enough to arrive back home.

After 2,000 years, we know that the world, and the philosophy through which we assess it, is not simply a set of givens.

We, as Christians, are part of the dynamic process through which the church’s faith continues to be articulated. We live in a world that is changing, and the transformed context of knowledge and experience changes what we must say and how we must say it. And, God is still at work in the world, and so we must allow that God, too, is a dynamic participant in this ever-changing process.

These are some of the realities behind the failure of a rule of faith to bind the church as one. When Irenaeus said to his opponents, “You are wrong because the church has always said…” He was, in essence, claiming, “You disagree with us–because you disagree with us! Hah!”

There comes a time when we have to recognize that the continuance of the church itself cannot lean on the given of two millennia ago. Perhaps that church needs, now, to be disagreed with.

Perhaps what we thought was a given needs to be reaffirmed, restated given that the parties in the agreement (the church and its members) are both completely different now.

The idea that one statement, or a cluster of like statements, can continue to define the relationship for two thousand years rests on a static view of the world that does not measure up to reality. The church did not “arrive” when it articulated the rule of faith. It said what needed to be said circa AD 200.

But this does not answer the question of what is necessary or sufficient to be said or done in AD 2000. We must regularly say afresh what needs to be said. This is not only because the world is dynamic and in flux, and not only because the church is dynamic and in flux, but also because God continues to be dynamically at work in both the world and the church.

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