Theology for the Masses

tom May 10th, 2008

Whatever brand of Judaism he espoused, it was one that saw the early Christian movement as a heretical sect of Judaism – a sect that needed to be violently put down. Violence was considered a justifiable action. Violence, moreover, was the manner in which the true community of Yahweh remained pure. His justification of violence was not merely out of hatred, but more out of righteous anger. His actions were, indeed, justified by the Torah. He was, after all, going to kill those people who said they had experienced Yahweh in the flesh. If there were ever a justifiable reason for violence it would be the protection of the community of Yahweh.

This violent streak changes after Paul’s conversion. While seeing himself in line with the prophets of the Hebrew Bible, Paul does not act in the manner of Elijah in his interaction with the prophets of Baal. Paul does not see pagan peoples as undeserving of life – even those ones who were oppressive to him and his Christ. Rather, Paul takes the position that through his suffering at their hands, he will “fill up that which is lacking in Christ’s sufferings” (Colossians 1:24). That is, he will be a living example of Christ’s unjust suffering at the hands of violent, sinful people. He fully expects this witness (same Gk. word as martyr) to be a living narrative of the death of Christ, and His love for unbelievers.

What I find particularly interesting here is that Paul’s position on violence has a dramatic shift. Before his conversion he sees violence as a justifiable action – especially against heretics. In fact, his Hebrew Bible justifies violent actions against non-Jews as well*. But when Paul converts we find no desire or justification for aggression and violence. As I noted before, even in relationship to Rome Paul command submission as a means of overcoming “evil with good.”

This dramatic change in Paul, combined with other arguments, demonstrates for me that the violence justified and even commanded by God in the Hebrew Bible is not an option for the Christian. Even the Canaanite genocides were performed in order to take the Promised Land from the pagans. Now, for Paul and Christians in general, there is no Promised Land. The kingdom of God transcends a Promised Land.** A people who have no/limited nationalistic identity, a people whose new law of love has surpassed the divinely instructed violence, and a people whose chief example (besides Christ) Paul forsakes violence have no justification for violence.

Paul’s letters are filled with his comments that say something like, “formerly you were {insert something bad}, but now you are {insert something related to being saved by Christ}.” I think his life expemplifies this: Formerly: Righteous Zealot. Currently: Apostle of Peace.

*Yes, I am aware the Torah also provided means of accepting non-Jews. However, I am primarily responding here to the genocides of Joshua.

**Dispensationalists have got it backward.

• Dispensationalism , Ethics
• Comments (1)

Honzo May 1st, 2008

Late April and early May are desolate times around here.  There are finals to be prepared for, papers to write, and papers and finals to grade - not a lot of time for posting and commenting.  Today’s post won’t have a ton of substance, but should make for some fun if people have the time.  I came across the following on a facebook message board.  The postee laid outsome ground rules and then asked a series of questions.  Here is the post and my reply.

Rules:
1) No looking up in dictionary or any other source.
2) Answer must come from your own opinion.
3) If you have no idea, just guess. (it doesn’t matter)
4) Feel free to ask about some terms you don’t know.

Here’s some terms that can be discussed as to what they actual refer to:

1) What are Doctrines?
2) What does “Holy” mean?
3) Sanctify? What’s that?
4) Love is… wait…ummm…idk what love really is.
5) Predestination/Election. what’s the dif?
6) Open theism. yep.
7) Salvation…yeah, I went there.
Day. Oh, that’s an ez 1. or a trick Question…

My reply:

1) Doctrines - the statements of purported fact that a faith community constructions from its sacred texts.

2) Holy, as best as I can understand it, simply means “separate from.”

3) Sanctify - to make holy - to separate out

4) Love is relating to another with the full recognition of the image of God within that person.

5) A Christianized version of the free will/determinism debate. I experience life and God as if I have free will to choose or reject his offer, so I lean towards the arminian side of things.

6) Open theism is an honest attempt to deal with problems that arise out of our sacred texts and their pain-spoken descriptions of God and his reactions to events recorded in those narratives. I think this approach ultimately fails, but I won’t sever relationship or deny inclusion within my faith community because someone thinks this approach interprets what they see going on with God in the Bible.

7) Salvation - we have sinned and a a result of this is judgment by God. God has provided a way out and all we need to do is to accept his offer. (short and dirty version)

Day -? I am not sure what you are talking about here. Are you referring to the use of the term “day” in Genesis? If so, I have a two pronged answer. Firstly, when I survey God’s creation, boy it sure seems old. The best scientific minds (chrisitan and secular) seem to think that it is really old. This not only goes for the earth, but also the universe as well. So interpreting day as a long period of time seems to work well. Another approach is to say that It took God seven days to pronounce these things and long and overlapping periods of time for them to enact themselves. Now, leaving aside all of the ambiguities with the word for Day in the hebrew, we could look at ancient near east creation literature in comparison with the two accounts of creation in Genesis and say that maybe we are dealing with an absolutely true mythological account of God creating the earth, one that tell us the whys and hows.

• Uncategorized
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Travis Gilmore May 1st, 2008

I wanted to write a post on how some movies can provide spiritual edification for us, despite their origins from Hollywood. Like any great art, God has provided us with the medium of film which carries with it beauty, catharsis, sublimity, and powerful emotional realizations that would be difficult to replicate in other mediums of art.

Right now, I am re-watching There Will Be Blood, the masterpiece from Paul Thomas Anderson, and, in my humble opinion, the best film of last year. For those who have not seen this movie, Daniel Day-Lewis gives a perfect performance as Daniel Plainview, an oil-man at the turn of the century who wants nothing more than wealth and power, and who descends into madness getting exactly that. The film has been called “Biblical” by many critics, and rightly so. There is a feel to this movie that is both epic, and yet very personal; and it is this “personal side” of the movie that kept me in much tension, and left me extremely moved in the end. Throughout the movie, you are asking yourself, “Who is this guy?”, “What is he going to do?”, and “What won’t he do?” I think that the brilliance of this film is that these questions should be asked of ourselves. We are truly no better than Daniel Plainview, for the sinful nature that drives his choices and ambitions is the same nature the drives all of us. For example, consider this dialogue between Plainview and his brother Henry:

Plainview: Are you an angry man, Henry?
Henry Brands: About what?
Plainview: Are you envious? Do you get envious?
Henry Brands: I don’t think so. No.
Plainview: I have a competition in me. I want no one else to succeed. I hate most people.
Henry Brands: That part of me is gone… working and not succeeding- all my failures has left me… I just don’t… care.
Plainview: Well, if it’s in me, it’s in you. (emphasis mine) There are times when I look at people and I see nothing worth liking. I want to earn enough money that I can get away from everyone.
Henry Brands: What will you do about your boy?
Plainview: I don’t know. Maybe it will change. Does your sound come back to you? I don’t know. Maybe no one knows that. A doctor might not know that.
Henry Brands: Where is his mother?
Plainview: I don’t want to talk about those things. I see the worst in people. I don’t need to look past seeing them to get all I need. I’ve built my hatreds up over the years, little by little, Henry… to have you here gives me a second breath. I can’t keep doing this on my own with these… people.
[laughs] (courtesy of IMBD)

Even Plainview knows that this nature is pervasive throughout all people; none of us is exempted. Even though Henry is done with “that part of him,” “that part of him” is not done with him, and Plainview knows this. For me, there is the Gospel here. Though many do not know Christ and the grace that He bestows, many know Man and the awfulness that Man is capable of. This should lead us to a humility about ourselves, and a fervor to further the Good News of Jesus Christ.

What do you guys think? Do you know of movies that has made you feel that way? For those that have seen TWBB, did you see this too in the film?

• Uncategorized
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cheapham April 24th, 2008

I heard an interesting quote the other day that I found interesting. I think I’ll present it without any context or commentary and see what sort of comments/responses in evokes. I have my own thoughts, but I think this quote could provoke very interesting (and hopefully fruitful) discussion. It’s short, so here it goes:

I’d rather do violence to a text than violence to a person.

Discuss.

• Ethics , Hermeneutics , The Bible
• Comments (1)

Honzo April 22nd, 2008

I have just discovered the wonders of the BibleWorks Blog.  They have all kinds of free addons for the amazing software suite.  One of the nice finds is a free module for Smyth’s Greek Grammar.  Smyth is the grammar to consult when dealing with classical Greek texts.

Links:

• BibleWorks Blog
• Post on Smyth’s Greek Grammar with links to database file
• Instructions on creating and adding a resource in BibleWorks

• translation issues
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Hank April 18th, 2008

From time-to-time, some LDS missionaries visit me at my aunt’s house here in KC-MO. Instead of shutting the door on them I sit down with them and to discuss the differences in our theologies, hoping to share the good news of Jesus Christ as is found in the Bible. If anyone who wishes to dialog with Mormons, here is an amazing site by two former members of the LDS church: Utah Lighthouse Ministry. Another ministry that originally began as an outreach to Mormons and has since become an apologetics ministry in the fields of Roman Catholicism, Mormonism, Watch Tower theology, Textual Criticism, and most recently, Islam: Dr. James R. White’s Alpha and Omega Ministries (Although I will warn you, he is very much a Calvinist–and I like it!). In fact Dr. White wrote a book called Letters to a Mormon Elder and it is available online here. I really recommend these resources if you wish to engage in an apologetics ministry with Mormons in a loving way.

I want to present an argument or presentation that has come to mind that I am thinking about presenting to the Mormon missionaries next time we meet. However, I wish for the authors here to read this argument and let me know if it is valid and usable. Here is my thought.
Continue Reading »

• God , Nature of God , The Bible
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jr. April 17th, 2008

here’s a thought I had a few days ago…

…rough and unexamined, off the top of my head.

your thoughts/critiques?

“The Kingdom of God is the only state that will endure eternally. Thus, any war undertaken by any other state to preserve itself is unjust because that state will not endure anyway. The only kingdom we can justly defend is the Kingdom of God, and the final, decisive battle for that kingdom was fought at the Cross. We already won. Thus, any war we undertake to preserve the kingdom of God is also unjust.”

* this does not include, obviously, wars fought to protect the powerless (if that has ever actually happened).

• Uncategorized
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Honzo April 16th, 2008

We, as Christians, are among the world’s best at sweeping, dismissive judgments. All one needs to do is subscribe to the Worldview Weekend newsletter to see that. This is not a new trend, however, as evidenced by the following quote by Epiphanius:

Passing this judgment [on them is like passing judgment] on a toothless lizard full of madness, I will go on to the next things, beloved, calling upon God to help our inadequacy and to enable us to fulfill our promise [i.e. to write this book] (Medicine Box, 49)

As dismissive judgments go, likening your opponent to a “toothless lizard full of madness” is pretty sweet. In this case the lizards in need of dentures were the Quintillians and they were dismissed because of their allowance of women as clergy and prophetesses.

I keep wondering how Luke 6:37 fits into all of this, if not in the 4th century, then in the current postmodern context in which we find ourselves.

Do not judge others, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn others, or it will all come back against you. Forgive others, and you will be forgiven.

Here’s the rub: how can I actually not judge and still maintain myself?

I consider myself to be a collection of definitions.  I am 6′1” tall.  I like basketball; I hate baseball.  I follow Christ.  I determine that which I am. Well, the things that I can choose - I can’t choose to be a white male, for instance.  I determine this by means of judgment.  I judge for myself that baseball is three minutes of action crammed into three hours.  I determine that math is a good way to use numbers.  I determine that there is nothing sweeter than a drop step or a juke+spin+hook-shot in basketball.  How am I not to judge, which is a command from the One that I follow when judgments necessarily make up an individual?  In other places in the Bible, we are commanded to test the spirits, to determine what is right.  How do we reconcile this?

As best as I can understand it, there is a distinguishment between moral and factual judgments.  We are to make so-called factual judgments about matters and hold them over and above the judgments of others.  On the other hand, we are to refrain from making moral judgments about people and their positions.

While this seems almost self-explanatory, I know I often need reminding of this.  Just look through the archives of masstheology.com, hundiejo.com, or brendoman.com as evidence of this.

What do you do with Luke 6:37?

• Church Fathers , Unity , Women in Christianity
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Travis Gilmore April 16th, 2008

Currently, I am reading more of Alvin Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief. In part 4 of his book, Plantinga considers possible defeaters to basic Christian beliefs, including historical criticism, postmodernism, pluarism, and atheological arguments concerning suffering and evil. (The formal definition of a defeater is rather abstruse, but a rough-and-ready definition for a defeater could be: D is a defeater for S’ belief that P just in case S is warranted in believing D and S’ belief in D forces S to give up believing P). Plantinga first he gives to be, what I think, a very good and cogent definition of postmodernism. Of course, this definition of postmodernism is not to be taken exhaustively, nor should the conjuction of each of these veiws provide a necessary condition for being a postmodern, although many of these views taken singularly could be called “dogma” in the postmodern community. On pages 422-423, Plantinga states that postmodernism propones:

1. A rejection of classical foundationalism.
2. The declaration that there are no foundations of any sort (classical or otherwise).
3. The claim that there is no such thing as objectivity (and its a good thing too).
4. Deconstruction.
5. The claim tat there is no such thing as truth (or that if there is, it is something totally different from what we thought).
6. The claim that truths are made, not discovered.
7. The claim there are not any objective normative standards and that we somewhoe make whatever standards there are.
8. The claim that all that really matters is power.
9. An opposition to metanarratives.
10. Insistence that God is dead.
11. A sort of exultation or apotheosis of autonomy, so that one feels guilty for not having created the world (cf. Heidegger).
12. A general self-deification and the rejection of all things bourgeois.
13. An idea of historcism, the idea that our historical and cultural setting determines what we think, so that we cannot but think what we do think.

What do you guys think? Is this a fair assessment of postmodernism? If not, why? If so, can we as Christians truly hold to each of these while retaining our core Christian beliefs? If we are warranted in believing these views (i.e. if it is rational for us to believe these views), does that serve as a defeater for Christianity?

• Postmodernity
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Honzo April 13th, 2008

With the new style we somehow lost the ability to comment on pages. The following was a conversation I have consequently moved from our Greek New Testament Page.

Nice. I was just browsing for Luke 11:2. It is too bad that you can’t copy and paste from here. Since I’m here - how is it that we translate hmwn as “our father”? was is there in the sentence that makes us “our father” instead of just “abba” or pater? Is the “our” just part of the context? The Vulgate translation doesn’t say “nostro” or anything that looks like “our father”… Thanks in advance, and remember I don’t know greek so I”m just wondering.

E. I. Sanchez

EI,
I am a novice, but this is how I would translate this verse on its own:
And [Jesus] said to them: “Every time you [all] pray, say: ”Father, may the name of yours [your name] be holy; may the kingdom of yours [your kingdom] appear;’”
When it comes to the word pater (πάτερ) , or father, it is in the vocative, indicating that it is the thing being addressed. The feeling is that if you are addressing someone as father, it is perfectly fine to say “our father.” The NLT, ESV, and NRSV all leave out the word “our.”
For our resident Greek experts, Cheapham and Hank, if I am wrong about any of this, please let me know.

Honzo

I would agree that saying “Our Father” even though is not in the text because this is a model prayer and we can adapt it for a community setting. I am wondering if the imperative mood could come out more in the translation than what Honzo suggested. I’m not sure. When I pray, I also address Him as “My Father” or even “my Daddy.”

Hank

Hank, Which imperative? Aren’t there three imperatives here: say, be holy, and arrive? The last two are third person singular imperatives - I know to translate those as “lets” or “mays”.
How else can you do them? With that 2 person plural imperative “say” I thought about saying “[you all are to] say…” to capture the imperative flavor a little more. However, Jesus telling us to say something is technically just as imperative.

Honzo

• in translation
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