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On Being Greater Than Angels

March 23, 2012 in Bible Thoughts with 5 Comments

Since yesterday’s post on interpreting difficult OT passages continues to generate vigorous discussion, I encourage you to read that post and jump into the fray.

Spread Good Theology: Click the Pic To Buy the Shirt!

But, not wanting to deprive you of something fresh for today, I thought I’d follow up ever so briefly on the idea that ancient Jewish people might have held idealized humanity to occupy a higher place in the cosmic order than angels.

This time, the indication comes from Paul:

When someone in your assembly has a legal case against another member, do they dare to take it to court to be judged by people who aren’t just, instead of by God’s people? Or don’t you know that God’s people will judge the world? If the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to judge trivial cases? Don’t you know that we will judge angels? Why not ordinary things? (1 Cor 6:1-3, CEB)

First, we need to be aware that Paul has in mind an idealized humanity as those who judge the world for God. Those who are “in Christ” will play this role: “Don’t you know that God’s people will judge the world?”

In other words, this is not about “humanity” as such being higher than angels, but idealized humanity, those who are in the second and last and glorified Adam.

Second, the judgment God’s people exercise extends not merely to the world but also to the angels.

In Paul’s cosmology, redeemed humanity occupies a higher place in the cosmic order than angels. This overflows beyond the talk of judgment into other exalted functions such as ruling over the age to come (Rom 5:17).

Not To Us, And To Us

March 22, 2012 in Bible Thoughts with 97 Comments

I want to keep circling around to Bible here. I hope you’re not sick of it yet. If so, see you tomorrow!

In early January, I mused on some of the pressing issues that would be creeping up in my little corner of the evangelical world. The thought that we still need to figure out a better way to say what the Bible is and what we’re supposed to do with it continues to find traction. (Rachel Held Evans has made this one of her themes for the year as well.)

Yesterday one of my friends was snarking about acquiring for himself a new wife or two.

Image: Michal Marcol / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Apparently, he wants to lead a raid across I-95 and take a beautiful captive home for his efforts:

When you wage war against your enemies and the LORD hands them over to you and you take prisoners, if you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you fall in love with her and take her as your wife, bringing her into your home, she must shave her head, cut her nails, remove her prisoner’s clothing, and live in your house, mourning her father and her mother for one month. After that, you may consummate the marriage. You will be her husband, and she will be your wife. Deut 21:1–13, CEB

How are we supposed to deal with passages like this?

In general, of course, we do not want to build rules out of exceptions. If we meet a strange case, this is not necessarily the starting point for thinking through how to conceive of normal.

But…

When it comes to interpreting and applying scripture, how we think about what scripture is and what we’re supposed to do with it need to be able to handle myriad verses that we do not, and should not, “apply to our lives”–at least, not directly.

In short, we need an understanding of what scripture is, and a reading strategy, that allows us to say, first, “This was not written to us,” and then to say, with equal conviction, “This is written to us.”

The first is an acknowledgement of historical distance, cultural difference, and, most significantly when it comes to the Old Testament, an era of God’s work that applies to us only indirectly because of the advent of Christ.

“Not to us” is an important step in biblical interpretation. We need to have ears to hear how a story would have resonated with Babylonian exiles; we need ears to hear how “Jesus is Lord” might have resonated, or caused dissonance, for a first century Roman.

We need to know that when we read, “Expel the immoral brother!” that it is a word for a first century church and might not be God’s word to us about, say, the man in our meetings with a flatulence problem.

“Not to us” is a significant moment in our biblical interpretation.

But then, the Bible is the witness to God’s revelation; it is the authoritative word for the church. All scripture is inspired, and therefore somehow useful.

The question, of course, is what does “somehow” mean?

In the famous 2 Timothy passage about scripture alluded to above, Paul says that scripture is able to give the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. As we find in Romans as well, there is a Christological hermeneutic that comes with affirming the OT as the word of God. The OT scriptures function as a pointer to a later coming Christ.

“To us” means “to us who are in Christ,” which means that we must read with a Christological lens, and with Christ as the coming climax to the OT narrative (or surprising disruption of that narrative, as the case may be), in order to assert its authority over us.

“Not to us”: yes, this scripture passage told the Israelites they could take wives from their captives. But we may not.

“To us”: we boldly allegorize to fit our saving story of Christ. He defeated the king of the kingdom to which we were enslaved, and took us to be His holy bride. As scripture, to us, this is not a pass to engage in stealing humans for our own, but a veiled witness to the rescue from an enslaving union to the powers of sin and death into the freeing union of grace and life (Rom 7:1-12).

“Not to us” and “to us” is a dialectic that a narrative approach to scripture enables us to develop. It is a story. And in the revelation of the story’s climax, even the earlier moments in the story are transformed.

On Saying No

March 21, 2012 in Bible Thoughts, Spirituality & Prayer with 4 Comments

When we say no to something that we normally say yes to, we create space to examine why it is that we would say yes.

When I’ve decided that, upon returning home from dropping the kids at school, I won’t make another cup of coffee or grab something to eat before heading down to the dungeon to work, it forces me to ask the question: Why do I actually want that cup of coffee and something sweet and bready right now?

I’m not eating because I want to be filled with food. I’m not drinking because I’m thirsty.

When we who instinctively say yes to all we’re asked to do force ourselves to say no, we come face-to-face with the fact that our “yes” is tied to our identity. We want people to like us, to approve of us.

We say no, and we’ve created the space to see that our yes isn’t simply the way it is–it is an indication of who I am.

We give up alcohol or chocolate for Lent, and we discover that “comfort food” is all too real: we’ve chosen numbness over peace, perhaps; or dumped pleasure into our holes of aching and longing.

Listening to people tell their stories about sex and spirituality last week, I heard that saying no to physical intimacy was a road toward self-understanding: how the physical longing for intimacy was tied to a deeper longing to connect with anther person.

Perhaps, upon saying no, we discover that the onions of Egypt are keeping us from discovery in the wilderness–discovery that people don’t live by bread alone; discovery that our God cares enough about God’s people to guide us through the wilderness and provide for us there. (Go get some counsel from Chuck DeGroat on this one. In fact, go buy the book.)

When I’m doing Lent well, my no is making me examine what my yes says about me–and what it says about me and God. I claim in word that what God has given me in Christ is more than sufficient.

But am I looking for more? Or, better, am I looking to less?

Post Script: I just discovered that saying No was on the Sarcastic Lutheran’s mind today as well. Take note, indeed!

Images Are For Worship

March 20, 2012 in Bible Thoughts with 5 Comments

Before I jump into today’s post on The Life of Adam and Eve, I want to say a word to those of you who don’t live in the world of biblical studies.

Often, we use ancient parallel material as part of our research. Here’s the point: often when we read scripture we think we know exactly what it’s talking about. But an ancient reader might not have brought the same framework for interpretation to the text. So, studying ancient literature helps us step outside of our current cultural and religious context in an attempt to hear the Bible with fresh ears.

This means that when I look at a text like The Life of Adam and Eve, I’m not citing it because I think it’s “right,” necessarily, but because it opens up a door through which I might see how early Jewish people understood the cosmos and the place of people within it.

One ongoing puzzle in reading the OT, early Jewish literature, and the NT, has to do with what it means to be human; or, what it means to be God’s elect people.

One thing that I have been working out over the past couple of years is the thesis that humanity, as depicted in biblical and early Jewish traditions, occupies a higher place in the cosmic hierarchy than angels.

This means that people can share God’s sovereignty over the earth, and at times even receive worship, because of the role God has given to humanity: it is God’s image and likeness, ruling the world for God.

Enter, the Devil’s fall from glory according to the Jewish story, The Life of Adam and Eve.

The devil replied, “Adam, what do you have to say to me? It is for your sake that I have been hurled from heaven. When you were formed, I was hurled out of the presence of God and banished from the company of the angels.

“When God blew into you the breath of life and your face and likeness was made in the image of God, Michael also brought you and made (us) worship you in the sight of God; and God the Lord said: ‘Here is Adam. I have made you in our image and likeness.’

“And Michael went out and called all the angels saying: ‘Worship the image of God as the Lord God commanded.’ And Michael himself worshipped first; then he called me and said: ‘Worship the image of God the Lord.’ And I answered, ‘I have no (need) to worship Adam.’

“And since Michael kept urging me to worship, I said to him, ‘Why do you urge me? I will not worship an inferior and younger being. I am his senior in the Creation, before he was made was I already made. It is his duty to worship me.’” (LAE 13-14; modified Charles translation)

The image of God is made for worship: the worship of the heavenly host.

This opens up some interesting avenues for exploring the identity of Jesus as exalted and worthy of worship. What if the early Jewish followers of Jesus heard his claims to be “son of man,” “the Human One,” as the CEB rightly renders it, and understood that he was playing this role?

What if they thought, at least in part, that he was restoring humanity to that exalted place from which he fell? What if this embodiment of God’s image and rule accounts for his authority to cast out those fallen angelic host we meet under the rubric of “demons”?

One of the most popular explanations of Jesus’ exalted status, as put on display in the NT at various points, is “angelomorphic”: Jesus takes the form and glory of an angel.

There may be something to that.

But what if there’s another strand of Jewish teaching they’re drawing from? A strand in which “angel” is an insufficiently high category, a more exalted role is needed, and so, they depict Jesus as the idealized human being that Adam was created to be, and whose likeness God intends for all God’s children to one day reclaim?

And Give You Peace

March 18, 2012 in Bible Thoughts with 6 Comments

“Grace to you and peace.”

And peace.

Peace between a hostile heart and a loving Maker.

Peace that passes understanding and overcomes misunderstanding.

Peace that calms an anxious heart.

Peace that overwhelms the waves of anxiety.

“My peace I give to you—not as the world gives.”

Peace from the reconciler.

Peace from the Spirit-Giver.

Spirits receiving the peace of the Spirit.

Peace of unity, that we begin as one.

Peace of unity, that our factions are overcome.

“If there be a person of peace, your peace will rest upon her.”

Peace to love.

Peace to thrive.

Peace to seek first the Kingdom and not my little empire.

Peace to give.

Peace of faith.

“The Lord bless you and keep you, make his face shine upon you, and give you peace.”

And give you peace.

And give you peace forever.

Reading the Bible Like Twelfth Graders

March 15, 2012 in Bible Thoughts with 9 Comments

Yesterday, one of my students pointed me to the State of California’s Common Core Standards for reading for students in grades 11-12.

Here are a couple of them:

RI.11-12.2. Determine two or more central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to provide a complex analysis; provide an objective summary of the text.

RI.11-12.3. Analyze a complex set of ideas or sequence of events and explain how specific individuals, ideas, or events interact and develop over the course of the text.

What struck me as I read over this was, in short, that I’m trying to get my students to read the Bible like 12th graders.

Image: vichie81 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This is harder than it sounds. Not just for seminary students, but for all of us.

Our primary exposure to the Bible is in settings where learning to read given books as unified and developing texts is impossible.

In church, we worry about people losing focus if we read more than a quarter or a half of a chapter. For sermons, we focus on a pericope and take years to work through a book the size of Mark.

We memorize verses, but rarely paragraphs or chapters.

The standards I summarize above assume that in a unified text ideas will interact and develop over the course of the document.

Too often, our reading strategies for the Bible assume that we can plop down in any verse or chapter and know what there is to know.

Those two Core Standards might be another way of articulating what I want for my Narrative Theology project: I want a Christian community that will read the Bible, and help me better read the Bible, as though we are competent twelfth graders. Let’s learn together how the story of Jesus develops in the Gospels, how the argument of Galatians as a whole unfolds, how the cycles of Revelation tell and retell the story of the justice of God in the Lamb.

This is not an anti- or a-theological project, but like all my pleas, is for a better way of understanding our common, rich theological story.

The Core Competencies continue:

RI.11-12.4. Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze how an author uses and refines the meaning of a key term or terms over the course of a text (e.g., how Madison defines faction in Federalist No. 10).

Good readings recognize meanings of important technical words and phrases–in context, and as notions that develop over the course of a document. In Christian parlance, our texts can speak to theological points, but those have to be negotiated through the changing contours of composed arguments and stories.

And, good readings allow the author to speak:

RI.11-12.6. Determine an author’s point of view or purpose in a text in which the rhetoric is particularly effective, analyzing how style and content contribute to the power, persuasiveness or beauty of the text.

I will often say to those who ask for the advice that an undergrad who wants to go into biblical studies should double major in Literature and Classics. Learn how to read, and you will be a good reader of the Bible. Learn your history and you’ll have a better idea of what it’s saying and how it might be heard.

Not all of us (and I include myself in the “not”) are natural readers, who find it second nature to keep tabs on the development of an argument or story. It takes hard work. But it’s the kind of hard work that opens the doors to understanding in fresh ways the power of the stories, letters, and prophecies that comprise the big saving story of God in Christ.

Theology as a Way of Life?

March 14, 2012 in Bible Thoughts with 7 Comments

I hate to get too predictable, but you can imagine how I responded when I saw the following in a recent advert from Paternoster Press:

James McClendon is right to assert that Theology is ‘not merely a reading strategy by which the church can understand Scripture; it is a way—for us, it is the way—of Christian existence itself’.

Disclaimers: (1) I do not know where James McClendon says this, therefore I do not have a larger context for interpreting what “theology” means here. (2) I do not know who this “us” is of whom he speaks.

Image: dan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Let me also say, first and foremost, that there are some ways that I can see myself affirming this sentence. If by “theology” you mean, “Jesus, the crucified Messiah, is resurrected Lord,” then I agree that this mini-narrative of Christian theology provides both the hermeneutical lens for making sense of scripture and provides us with the way of Christian existence itself.

If this is the life of Christ, after all, then we who are dubbed “little Christs” are called to renarrate this life in our own.

But of course, my concern is that this is not what the phrase means at all.

My concern is that it has taken a typical Evangelical mistake (relying on the Bible as though the Bible is THE thing, rather than Christ being THE thing) and pushed it back one further level from the appropriate target, landing on Christian theological articulations as THE things that determine faithful Christian faith and practice.

“The way,” of course, is Jesus.

The Bible testifies to Jesus as the way God has provided for the life of God’s creatures. It is one step removed from the person and his narrative, but is the access we have and the God-given interpretation of the saving story.

Theology in the traditional sense is a second step removed, as it reflects on what the Bible has said about Jesus who is the way and the God who provided Him.

If I’m reading the paragraph fairly, the claim that theology is the way of Christian existence is a door to a world in which theology forms the hermeneutic, identity, and praxis of a community. In such a world, articulating the correct theology becomes its own good–the very faithful practice God hopes for from Christians.

If theology is the way of Christian life itself, then mental constructions and statements of right belief become the markers of Christian life. And in so doing, following Christ along the way of the cross, being ambassadors of the message of reconciliation, feeding the hungry, caring for the parentless, embracing the outsider–all of these become second-order responses, and lie far from the center of faithful Christian practice.

But perhaps we can just agree (hard as it is for my inner 8 to say such a thing):

The theology by which we understand scripture is that Jesus is God’s messiah, given up on the cross and then raised and enthroned at God’s right hand.

This theology of the Christ is our way of life, because it means that all of our life should be a giving up of ourselves in order that all creation might live under the freedom of the risen Christ’s lordship.

Now that’s a “theology as the way of Christian existence” I can get behind–a theology in which theology itself is eclipsed by the Christ of whom it speaks.

Obeying the Law, Becoming God

March 13, 2012 in Bible Thoughts with 8 Comments

On human divinity in early Judaism:

But the lawgiver of the Jews ventures upon a more bold assertion even than this, inasmuch as he was, as it is reported, a student and practiser of plain philosophy; and so he teaches that the man who is wholly possessed with the love of God and who serves the living God alone, is no longer man, but actually God, being indeed the God of men… (Philo, “Every Good Person is Free,” 43.

The God(s) of John 3:16 and John 3:18

March 13, 2012 in Bible Thoughts with 39 Comments

I have a lot of theologically like-minded friends who are looking to the future and questioning what we’ve grown up hearing. The idea of a final judgment that might go ill for some sits ill with many of us.

Well, perhaps the issue isn’t quite that it might go ill for some, but that it might go ill for many; better: that it might go ill for almost everyone who has ever lived, while a small number, represented by faithful followers of Jesus, will be cleared to enter the age to come.

I am sympathetic.

But my Evangelical conscience calls me back to the biblical story and makes me ask if I’m experiencing sympathy pains for “niceness” at the expense of “love.” Or, to put it differently, when we reject ideas of judgment and/or perdition, are we clinging to the God of John 3:16-17 at the expense of the God of John 3:18?

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him won’t perish but will have eternal life. God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him isn’t judged; whoever doesn’t believe in him is already judged, because they don’t believe in the name of God’s only Son.

“This is the basis for judgment: The light came into the world, and people loved darkness more than the light, for their actions are evil. All who do wicked things hate the light and don’t come to the light for fear that their actions will be exposed to the light. Whoever does the truth comes to the light so that it can be seen that their actions were done in God.” (John 3:16-21, CEB)

The love of God soaks this passage through: here is one of the great Johannine pictures of what love means in the biblical story: God so loved the world that God gave the Son. The Son so loved the world that He gave Himself.

But with the giving of the gift, with the advent of the light, there is also the possibility that people will spurn the gift, that we will choose to walk in darkness.

“Whoever does not believe is already judged.”

This pattern runs throughout scripture, where God graciously gives, people reject, and then God both disciplines and pursues.

But in the face of the great gift, if we reject it, might there not be final word from God that says, “Thy will be done,” without turning God into a cosmic bully?

Without making the mistake of turning the good news into the bad news of “You’re all going to Hell! See how much God loves you!” can we still confess ultimate consequences for the decisions we make on earth with respect to the call of God?

Can the God of John 3:16 also be the God of John 3:18? How?

Discuss.

To Story or Not to Story?

March 12, 2012 in Bible Thoughts, Book Reviews with 2 Comments

Englewood Review of Books has done me the great honor of reviewing Jesus Have I Loved, but Paul?.

The reviewer wasn’t so sure about Jesus and the story of Israel.

Though this is surely an appealing narrative, it is troubled by one problem: Paul never uses it…

While I fully concur with Kirk that stories are necessary because they show and instruct rather than simply tell the truth that we are, indeed, caught up in a grand story, I am not so sure that it is a story so easily narrated.

I’ve replied in the comments section, and would invite you to head on over there to jump in and join the conversation:

One of the recurring issues in NT scholarship has to do with what has been dubbed an “apocalyptic” reading of Paul. Those who look to Ernst Käsemann and J. Louis Martyn as mentors tend in this direction. The point is something like this: God’s act in Christ is a radical in-breaking into the cosmos, not a development from within a continuous narrative.

…But there is an important point of push-back that has to be offered to this dichotomy, and is being offered in various venues; namely, that the dichotomy is a false one. (click here to read the rest)

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