Archive by Author

My New Addictions

July 29, 2010 in Culture with 1 Comment

As I have indicated here over the past couple of months, I have some new addictions. One of these is The New Yorker‘s fiction podcast. I commend this to you for several reasons, not least is that hearing short stories, and hearing people talk about how to read them, has the potential to help make you a better reader, a better hearer of Story. We need more of that kind of competence.

Another is The Mountain Goats. As I mentioned before, these songs are to me like listening to Flannery O’Connor in song.

But a third addiction is a new one. My friend Mark Traphagen, a.k.a. The Foolish Sage, has begun pod-casting short stories (mostly about his life) in his League of Inveterate Poets Podcast. These are fun, humorous, and entertaining, and often with more than a hint of redemption thrown in.

If you have 9 minutes to spare as you walk about with your iPod (and if you have or would like to develop a category of “Redemptive Use of the F-Bomb” [i.e., consider yourself warned, there is strong language in this (but why do I feel compelled to tell you that about a podcast when I'd commend a movie with F-bombs without a second thought?)]), I commend to you his short story, “The Bus, the Bench, and the Chamber of Doom.”

Pragmatics of Love

July 29, 2010 in Bible Thoughts, Culture with 6 Comments

In something of a follow-up to yesterday’s post on homosexuality and justice, I had a few thoughts on the pragmatic nature of my argument about endorsing civil liberties as an expression of love. To be sure, there was a bit of a theological component as well, an appeal to Jesus’ commands to love our neighbor, but when it came right down to it, I argued that people know, to a certain degree, when they are being met with love and when they are being met with… well… something else.

Yesterday I alluded to the Good Samaritan story as one depiction of the pragmatic nature of love. But I think the thread is even more extensively woven through the Gospels narratives.

When we see Jesus encountering the world around him, we find him willing to respond to and rectify the ills of the felt needs of the people around him.

We cannot love without pragmatism. What we see in Jesus is that, for all that he was advancing an agenda to proclaim and inaugurate the reign of God, he was ever submitting himself to the agendas set by the people who came to him.

What this tells us about the Kingdom of God is that it is more extensive than the agenda of proclamation and conversion that we as Christians will always, to some extent, carry with us. Once we recognize that the Kingdom of God is not just about the saving of souls, or the sanctification of the church, but the wholesale reordering and rectification of the cosmos, then we realize not only the possibility but the responsibility to work for holistic restoration of the space within which we find ourselves.

Or, to put it more simply: I am as much an agent of the Kingdom of God when I work for accessible healthcare and when I proclaim that Jesus died for our sins.

When the gospel is big enough to rectify not only the sinful and enslaved condition of individual human hearts but the brokeness of human bodies and the corruption of human systems then we can see that the gospel itself gives us space to act as agents of the good news even where those who would benefit are not interested in bowing their knees to the resurrected Lord.

It’s when we apprehend the breadth of the gospel that we are free to serve and to love–being willing to respond to the needs of the people around us rather than leading with an agenda of conversion.

It’s then that we can see that holding onto a gospel call to faith and repentance is no enemy of agitating for the civil liberties of those who do not affirm the Lordship of the one who is giving them liberty.

More on Justice…

July 28, 2010 in Humor with 3 Comments

… this time, a little more light-hearted. It seems that not everyone is pleased with our decision to buy into a quarter of a steer this summer.

Homosexuality and Justice

July 28, 2010 in Bible Thoughts, Culture with 16 Comments

A few days ago I posted a few thoughts about why I don’t find parallels between slavery debates and homosexuality debates to be persuasive. In short, when it comes to the issue of homosexual practice, I am not persuaded that the issue within the church is an issue of realizing the justice and liberty that are ours in Christ.

But as I have mulled this over, I have feared that I may have done wrong in merely stating that much and no more.

Here’s the more: the same Christian story that compels me to deny the church’s blessing on same-sex unions also compels me to fully support the civil rights of homosexuals.

In short, the state should have a mechanism for sanctioning homosexual couples as united in one household, and the laws of the state pertaining to spouses should extend equally to all such partners, and exclusion from public office, commerce, housing, and the like should be met with the same recriminations that the state metes out on racial and religious prejudice. And let’s not forget tax deductions, for crying out loud!

What sort of reading of the Christian story would lead me to the conclusion that this is a quintessentially Christian position? Quite simply, it’s the command to love neighbor (together with Jesus’ closing of the “who’s my neighbor?” loophole) as interpreted through the Golden Rule.

What does it mean to love my neighbor? What does it mean to do what I would want done to me?

If someone did not approve of my choice of a spouse, would I still want that person to protect my right to cover my wife on my employer’s health insurance plan? If my wife’s state-funded employer poked around and found out that I work at an institution that discriminates based on religious conviction, would I still want them to allow me to be covered under her insurance and receive spouse survivor benefits should she die–even though my work and life is antithetical to the state’s commitment to non-establishment of religion?

If I were sick in the hospital, would I want the hospital to be legally required to allow the partner I love to come visit me?

There is no way of reading the church’s posture toward the world as “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” and still argue based on our set of convictions that we are acting obediently when we fail to not only approve of but even advocate for full inclusion of homosexuals in civil society.

If all of this seems too far from home, perhaps we should remind ourselves of some of the other things that the NT teaches about sex and marriage, and ponder whether we want those, too, to be the bases of difference in civil society.

Should the state refuse to acknowledge a marriage in which one of the partners has been previously divorced?

Should an insurance company be able to cancel the insurance policy of a spouse who commits adultery?

When the shrewd lawyer attempted to back Jesus into a corner by pinning him down on the extent of this “love your neighbor as yourself” business, Jesus replied with a most unlikely story. A religious outsider, an idolatrous Samaritan, sees a beaten, wounded man on the side of the road and lends assistance where the religious professionals, in order to obey nothing less than the law of God itself, passed by.

Who was the neighbor who loved? It was the person who showed mercy.

Who was not a neighbor? It was the religious people who upheld the Law.

O.k., but Luke was a bleeding heart liberal, chapter 4 and all that. What about the good ol’ Sermon the Mount Jesus?

He is the one who commanded: “Let your light so shine before people that they will see your good deeds and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”

Did you catch that? We are to be acting in such a way that people outside the community see that we are workers for good in way that compels them to glorify the God who is, himself, the source of the light that we shine.

And once again, as an evangelical Christian the question is turned on me: have I shone the kind of light for my homosexual neighbor that would cause him or her to see my good work and glorify my Father in heaven?

Both as an individual and as a member of a community I know that I have failed, that we have failed, to show this kind of love.

Please forgive me.

Hays on Reconciliation & Knowing

July 27, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 2 Comments

So Paul is writing this part of the letter to convince the Corinthians that the death of Christ has abolished the old standards for what counts as power and persuasiveness. That is to say, the standards for knowing rightly have been transformed by the cross. And in light of these new standards — in light of the New Creation that God has brought into being — the Corinthians should stop their rivalry and boasting and conflict. They should be reconciled to Paul and to one another…

Paul is not just saying, “Look at me, my sins have been forgiven, and so I’m now a new creature.” He is saying that the whole world is being made new by the cross and resurrection and that all our relationships have to be re-evaluated in light of that transformation. -Richard B. Hays, “The Word of Reconciliation“

Ever Interpreting…

July 27, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 9 Comments

“A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is.” -Flannery O’Connor

homo sapiens? “Wise man”? Maybe…

human being? “a person who exists”? O.k., sure…

human interpreting? That’s more like it.

Human life is a constant barrage of interpretation. We are always interpreting the world, every piece of data that we perceive, and fitting it into (or rejecting it from) our prior understandings of how things are (or should be).

How we interpret is both determined by and determinative of our identity as people and as members of larger groups. As an American I have a set of interpretive standards (such as being able to say “American” and have the world know that I mean the United States and not the other 20ish countries that are in North and South America, not to mention the Caribbean).

But interpreting the world is not just a matter of “indicatives” (what is true, what is not, what works, what is out of synch) it is also the way in which we determine what is right and wrong, and therefore how we should act. The indicatives of our identity, as individuals and as groups, bears fruit in imperatives that serve to bolster our defining narratives.

In other words, people are inherently story tellers with storied identities.

And this is why I spend so much time as a teacher, professor, and writer begging the church to get its story straight. Because the story we tell ourselves about who we are as followers of Jesus, which is inseparable from what we say about Jesus himself, will determine the things we approve of as truly indicating that we are being faithful to our Christian calling.

And, this is why I think it so important that we continually recapture the narrative dynamic of our defining Christian story, and continually insist that it is the story itself that gives us our identity.

There is an alternative that I constantly rebel against. It is the alternative of using the story as an indicator that our identity is formed by something to which the story points. The alternative of using the deeply contextualized, ever recontextualized story of God as through it’s purpose is to point to the real thing–a set of theological principles or timeless truths or  or boundary marker within which we must live or legal code in accordance with which we must live our lives.

These have been the besetting temptations of the Christian tradition. Temptations to define and by defining to control.

But when we make Christianity into any of these things, we fundamentally change the metaphor of our identity. When we turn Christianity into a statement of faith we transform our identity at its core. No longer are we living out a dynamic, ever contexualized story; no longer are we following a Jesus who continues to go before us into the present; no longer are we part of a new creation that is dawning and whose light we are called to shine afresh in every corner of as-yet-unredeemed while redeemed-in-Christ old creation.

From such dynamic stories of Christian identity we end up retreating to a static frame, and our faithful ethic becomes guarding its borders. Faithful Christian practice becomes digging the trenches of our correct theology, or correct law, ever deeper with each passing generation, making the chasm between “in” and “out” ever clearer, ever broader. Faithful Christian practice becomes ensuring that those who are “out” are made fully aware of their outness–becomes guarding the boarders at all costs.

Preservation of orthodoxy becomes the identity marker of faithful Christianity, and the cruciform, redemptive, missional praxis of following Jesus becomes a nice add-on at best, or, at worst, a condemnable distraction.

Tell the story. And tell the story. And don’t forget to tell the story. This is the “transforming by the renewing of our minds” that allows us to know what the will of God is, and keeps us from conformity to the world.

It’s a transformation of mind that can see the world being turned on its head by the death died in self-giving love, and that can therefore believe that reenactment of that story will continue to change the world.

Cuckoo Redeemer

July 26, 2010 in Media with 4 Comments

We just rewatched One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest last week. It is an amazing, troubling film, worthy of its five Oscars et al.

It is a story of redemption, of deliverance–a story in which Jack Nicholson’s character, R. P. McMurphy, plays a leading role.

But what struck me in the film is that for all of McMurphy’s agitating, and for all this his own death is a a means of deliverance, it is (surprisingly) Billy Bibbit who is the Christ figure in the film.

We’re keyed into this on a couple of occasions when R. P. shoots a “Jesus Christ” exclamation his way. And his own death seems to be the self-giving that truly turns the tide on the ward.

So while R. P.’s own death is, in its way, redemptive, it seems that it’s redemptive as a following in the way of death that truly turned the story, the death of the would-be minor character Billy Bibbit.

Paul and the Pastorals

July 26, 2010 in Academia, Bible Thoughts with 55 Comments

On Facebook yesterday someone asked me if I wouldn’t mind recounting my journey away from affirmation of Paul’s authorship of the Pastoral Epistles (1 & 2 Timothy and Titus). So here goes.

First, the freedom to pursue the question was instilled in me through my pro-inerrancy education at Westminster Seminary (though one going to WTS now would not be given the same freedom). At the time I went, there was a flourishing tradition of carefully distinguishing between the commitment to inerrancy and particular hermeneutical and/or critical conclusions.

This tradition was embodied in the title of a 1988 faculty collection, Inerrancy and Hermeneutic (ed. Harvey Conn). In that collection, Moises Silva says that even the issue of who wrote a letter, which may seem in some ways to be the most obvious conclusion to draw from an “inerrant” Bible (I mean, if you can’t believe the “From” line of the letter, what can you believe?), is an issue that must be decided based on historical evidence. And, if a letter is found to be pseudepigraphical, then our understanding of what it means to affirm an inerrant Bible must be shaped so as to allow for that.

This is reflective of an important factor that drives a lot of my work: that no theology worth holding is going to so exert its control over our reading of the Bible that it will forbid us from saying what good exegesis of the passage demands that we say.

In this case, I don’t find persuasive that there is much theologically at stake for recognizing that Paul did not write these letters. They are scripture and therefore we have them as part of the canon, the rule of the church’s faith and life.

There are a couple of standard arguments against Pauline authorship of the Pastorals that I do not (or, did not) find persuasive:

  1. The difference between the free-form churches of Paul and the highly organized and therefore presumably later churches of the pastorals. The introduction to Philippians addresses the letter to those at Philippi, “including the overseers and deacons.” Paul’s churches seem to have had some organization.
  2. The place of women was not persuasive at first. This has come to bear more weight for me, but I think that the things Paul says in 1 Cor 11, the thing Paul may or may not have said about women in 1 Cor 14, etc. give some room for differentiation of roles in the church, or ways to articulate male-female relations that are not categorically different from the Pastorals. I see the differences as somewhat more significant now, but this was not a major factor for me.

On a few other issues, the differences between Paul’s letters and the Pastorals began to make their weight felt. The weight of these arguments became greater to me the longer I sat with Paul’s letters, not merely doing more in-depth research but getting more familiar with the texts themselves. I don’t think I would feel the weight of these so much if I hadn’t read through Paul’s letters dozens of times in Greek and memorized all thirteen in English. I’m not saying you have to do either of these to argue with me, but in my own story that’s how it worked.

  1. Most importantly for me, the arguments work differently. The way that Paul theologizes is from the Christ event to God, to the community, to himself, to scripture, etc. The death and resurrection/reign of Jesus (and imminent return) shape all of Paul’s theology. But this is not how 1 Timothy and Titus argue. They appeal to principles, trustworthy sayings, etc. I think 2 Timothy has better claims to Pauline authorship on precisely this ground: the resurrection of Jesus shapes a tremendous amount of the letter’s theologizing.
  2. Paul’s letters and the Pastorals talk about God and Jesus differently. Uses of words such as “savior” differ; the idea of whether salvation is primarily seen as past-tense-received or present-progressive-and-future-tense-in-store differs.
  3. The Greek is different. An early twentieth century study (I can’t remember by whom, E. P. Sanders had me read it when I was at Duke) researched the coincidence of the vocabulary from Paul’s letters and the Pastorals, finding that the vocab of the latter that is not found elsewhere in Paul’s letters tends to be found in other Greek manuscripts that date to the 2d century, whereas Paul’s vocabulary corresponds with other Greek writings from the first. This study puts some specifics on what reading the letters in Greek communicates: they not only feel different argumentatively, but they also reflect a different stock vocabulary.
  4. Theologically they are different, especially the ways that 1 Timothy and Titus reflect on the Law and Judaism.

Finally, I don’t think that 1 Timothy and Titus can fit into the chronology of Paul’s life. Typically, fitting the Pastorals into Paul’s life requires creating a new chapter that includes a release from Roman prison, another set of missionary work, a new arrest and then death in Rome. I find this an unnecessarily cumbersome hypothesis, one likely to be false.

Oops Moments in Biblical Commentary

July 25, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 5 Comments

Here are a couple of my favorite “oops” moments in eavesdropping on people’s characterizations of the Bible:

“We don’t need to obey all that Leviticus stuff, we just need to listen to Jesus and love our neighbor as ourselves.”

And this one, in a New Testament Intro course, arguing against Pauline authorship of the Pastoral Epistles:

“In Paul’s letters, such as 1 Corinthians, we see that church leadership and worship is charismatic, more free, led by the Spirit; in the Pastorals everything is much more… what was it they used to say at Princeton?… ‘done decently and in order.’”

(If you’re scratching your head: In example 1, Jesus is citing Leviticus 19:18; in example 2, the final quote is from 1 Corinthians 14:40.)

Mark 10: The Heart of the Story

July 25, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 5 Comments

If I had to pick one passage of scripture that encapsulated the entirety of the Christian message, I might very well pick Mark 10:32-45.

I return to this passage repeatedly in my classes and in my reflections on what it means to live faithfully as a Christian, because here the story unfolds to show us not only what Jesus came to do, but also what it means for how we are, in turn to live. But that’s not all. The passage finds much of its power from its unveiling not of Jesus but of the human heart that hears and yet refuses to hear his call.

The first scene is Jesus’ teaching to the twelve: for the third time Jesus is predicting that what awaits in Jerusalem is his own rejection, death, and resurrection.

And, for the third time, the disciples respond in such a way as to show that they do not yet get what Jesus is on about.

James and John come asking for seats of glory: one at Jesus right hand and the other at Jesus’ left in his glory. Jesus then draws them back to his passion prediction: can you drink my cup or be baptized with my baptism?

And here is where we have to keep coming back over and over because it never seems to sink in. To be part of the kingdom that comes by way of the cross is to accept the cross as not only the saving event that occurred to Jesus but also the way of life to which w ourselves are called.

The cross is the narrative of Christianity, and our calling is to play out that narrative in the various worlds in which we find ourselves.

As if the story of James and John were not humiliating enough, the other disciples hear of it and grumble! Jesus’ response indicates that the source of their agitation is not that James and John have so clearly failed to apprehend the call to discipleship; instead, they are angry that James and John sought to edge them out for the prize that all of them wanted.

And so Jesus tells them all, again, that his cruciform ministry, if true, means that a new economy is in play; the way of power and glory as articulated by the Powers of the earth is being undone. Yes, of course, those who want to be great among the gentiles lord their power over others and wield the might of their authority…But…

But…

“But it shall not be thus among you.”

Did you get that part?

“But it shall not be thus among you.”

There’s your half-verse to memorize today.

There is a different way of living, a different way of understanding greatness, a different path of power that comes with the advent of the dominion of God: “Whoever wants to be great among you, that person must be y’all’s servant; and, whoever wants to be first among y’all, must be servant of all.”

On what basis can Jesus make such an absurd claim about power and glory?

On the basis of his own mission: “For even the son of man did not come to be served but to serve…” Note how his own mission forms the texture of the call to discipleship. Jesus is the servant to show his followers what their lives of service should look like.

You might also note the surprise of this claim. In Daniel 7, all dominions serve the son of man. Jesus inaugurates his reign by doing exactly the opposite.

The self-giving service of this son of man, the sacrifice of his life, yields the fruit of a redeemed people, a people ransomed from their slavery to the opposing forces we’ve seen throughout the Gospel. There, at last, is your interpretation of the cross as well: this self-giving service brings freedom.

So why would I pick this passage as one of my short list of possible passages that tell us everything we need to know?

(1) It tells us what Jesus did for us and what that means. He died and rose again–and this giving is an act of freeing, of ransom.

(2) It tells us what that means for our lives. Jesus served unto death, therefore we are to serve one another.

(3) It shows us how our hearts can confess Jesus as sovereign master, acknowledge even that he had to die for us, and yet fail altogether in drawing the conclusion that we are thereby freed to pursue greatness along the road of self-giving service. Instead, that creeping normalcy self-serving “giving” turns even our following of Jesus into an idol for our own selfish advancement.

Page 92 of 114« First...607080«9091929394»100110...Last »