Theology for the Masses

Patriarchal Early Church Fathers

There is definitely a record of activity and leadership within (though veiled) our canon and in the witness of the early Christians. Despite this strong egalitarian strain, there was a fierce patriarchal strain as well. We see this in the canon in places (mainly the later letters) and in the writings of some of the so-called church fathers.

Of particular note is Tertullian. Now, perhaps he is a bit too late for what we are talking about this week, but he was an early leader who helped shape later (and current) discussions on the role of women in ministry.

In On the Perscription against Heretics 41, he writes:"The very women of these heretics, how wanton they are! For the are bold enough to teach, to dispute, to enact exorcisms, to undertake cures – it may be even be to baptize." While I don’t know to which supposed heretics he was referring, his attitudes what women should not do are clear. Elsewhere in On the Veiling of Virgins 9, he writes:

It is not permitted for a woman to speak in church; but neither to teach, nor to baptize, nor to offer, nor to claim herself in any manly function, not to say in any sacerdotal office. Let us inquire whether any of these be lawful to a virgin … nothing in the way of public honour is permitted to a virgin.

Furthermore, he was very incensed at the Thecla tradition, for it authorized women to baptize. He writes in On Baptism 17:

But if those women who read falsely named writings about Paul adduce the example of Thecla as a license for women to teach and to baptize, let [those women] know that the presbyter who produced this text, as though adding something of his reputation to Paul’s, resigned his position, having been discovered, and having confessed that he did so out of love for Paul.

There is so much importance packed into this last quote. Not only do we see the attitudes at play in the practice of writing in someone else’s name (a very common practice in antiquity and not necessary a bad one), but we see what was at stake for people in the canonical and extra-canonical writings. We also see why the Thecla tradition was actively suppressed and why despite of that, her cult became so attractive. And who knows about that bit about the confession – Tertullian might have made it up, or it might have just been what he had heard. What is important is how he used the story to delegitimize the Thecla tradition that was legitimizing female autonomy at the end of the 2nd century.

Evidence for Women Elders and Bishops

There are some inscriptions (though they are late) that hold up women as Elders and Bishops. Two of them are listed below:

1) Elder Kale, Centuripae, Sicily, 4th-5th Century CE

Here lies Kale the Elder. She lived 50 years blamelessly.

2) Elder Ammion, Ucak, Phrygia, 3rd Century CE

Diogas, the bishop, for Ammion [f.], the elder, in memory.

Now, these are much later than the time period that we are talking about, but I thought they were worth mentioning.

Additionally, we see later in Christian history, people arguing against women as bishops and presbyters. Epiphanius, in his Medicine Box 40, attacks the followers of Quintilla and Priscilla and says that among their followers there are women bishops, presbyters, and prophetesses. He says that they believe there is no difference between men and women’s natures. He closes his attack with references from the pastorals that seem to indicate there is a difference between women and men’s natures.

Shelving the issue of whether or not he is correct in his interpretation of the Pastorals, his writings are another evidence for women bishops and presbyters in the 300’s.

“Just the text, M’am, nothin’ but the text.”  - R.R.Reno :: Recovering the Bible

With these words, R.R. Reno, founder of the Brazo’s Commentary project, hits upon the fundamental contribution of biblical scholarship and its fundamental flaw.  In divorcing a wholistic theology from the study of biblical texts we have unearthed a gigantic mound of new data to process.  We have recovered Paul, we have rediscovered Jewish attitudes on a plethora of subjects, all of which had been lost  2,000 years due to Christologizing and systematizing everything.  With our constant interpretation and reinterpretation with each generation, we built an ossified onion shell around the original context.  Biblical studies has cracked open this steaming shell and allowed us to peer into the distant past with the hopes of understanding “the meaning in the original context.” 

Then, in the hopes of not repeating past… “mistakes,”  they stop everyone in their tracks, and shout – “You shall not pass!” (lest you put words into the author’s mouths).  As Reno says:

We can point to many remarkable intellectual achievements in modern biblical scholarship, some of service to the Church. But on the whole the results have been disastrous. The “meaning in the original context” approach has made the Old Testament into the Hebrew Bible. To read forward to fulfillment in Christ is the unforgivable sin of modern biblical scholarship.

There is tremendous value in the above.  As a separate discipline, their hesitation is needed; as keepers of good method and great results, their work should be foundational to theologians.

On the other side of the coin, we have theologians who do an amazing job lifting out the overarching story of God out of our sundry scriptures.  There is narrative, there is parenesis, there is apocalypse… there is even some history thrown in there too.  The good theologian links these distant points of scripture with little wormwholes, crafting doctrine and translating it into the language of today. 

However, they sometimes approach scripture with creeds in hand, placing their polarizing filters over the text and interpreting today in light of yesterday’s interpretation instead of the text itself.  Their greatest accomplishment is their greatest folly, traditional interpretations become their foundation.  Luther’s theology [1] of the 1500’s is the only method of looking at the scriptures, or the background of the Scottish Enlightenment is the only philosophical framework to be applied to the scriptures [2]   – another layer of onion.  As Reno puts it:

We should not be terribly surprised by the tendency to push Scripture into the background. Theologians are in the business of making arguments, and the rough and ready variety of Scripture can seem unpleasantly unstable. We want sharply drawn truth-claims to feed into our syllogisms. We find conceptual clarity in doctrine, and the upshot is a temptation to neglect Scripture. Furthermore, in the abstract realm of concepts we can formulate pallid, pseudo-orthodox notions such as “Incarnational worldview,” or “sacramental imagination,” or “Trinitarian ethos,” and thus convince ourselves that our capitulations to the latest intellectual fashions are really grand theological achievements.

This tension between the two disciplines is inherent in the nature of their endeavors.  I both sympathize and are frustrated with both sides.  As person who applied to both theological and biblical studies programs and will soon have to choose between the two, I can really empathize with Reno.   I think that theology must be primarily informed by a good biblical studies background.  However, there is so much to learn, so much to consider.  As I lamented over at Hank’s, my theology is stunted (purposely) while I try to sort out the basics. 

R.R. Reno does an excellent job of navigating this divide and imploring the need for this wall to be torn town and replaced with a bridge.  I highly recommend reading this thoughtful and respectful editorial.

R.R.Reno :: Recovering the Bible

1. and political and social setting which tremendously influenced his theology [↩]
2. I don’t want to pick on any particular tradition as they are all guilty of it, I am most familiar with the reformed and restorationist branches of theology [↩]

Only three nights from Tarsus, in Isauria, is the martyr shrine of Saint Thecla. Since it was so close we were pleased to travel there… Around the holy church there is a tremendous number of cells for men and women… There are a great many cells on that hill, and in the middle a great wall around the martyrium itself, which is very beautiful… I arrived at the martyrium, and we had a prayer there and read the whole Acts of holy Thecla…

- Egeria, writing in her travel diary during the late 4th century CE [1]

By the early fifth century CE the city of Seleucia in southern Turkey had become home to an international pilgrimage site Hagia Thekla dedicated to Saint Thecla, heroine of the Acts of Thecla. [2] [3]   The Acts of Thecla was written in the middle to late second century CE and was nestled in the middle of the Acts of Paul.

The Acts of Thecla recounts a series of adventures, or trials, that the young, beautiful, and betrothed virgin Thecla, the very picture of Roman femininity, must endure in her pursuit of her goal of being a disciple of Paul. She is constantly tested throughout her journeys – she is often alone, abandoned by her fiancé, mother, and separated from her beloved Paul while facing perilous trials.  [4] In each of these instances she is miraculously saved by God’s intervention as a direct result of her unyielding devotion and virtue. [5]   This series of miraculous escapes reaches its climax when Thecla baptizes herself while being attacked by wild animals. Along her way she befriends and converts the household of Queen Tryphaena, who adopts her to replace her dead daughter Falconilla at the bequest of Falconilla! After the self-baptism she dons the cloak of a man and is finally reunited with Paul, who commissions her for a preaching ministry. The story comes full circle when, after a successful preaching career, she returns home, finds her old fiancé dead, and ministers to her still living mother.  After doing so, she travels to Seleucia and “enlightens many by the word of God” and rests in a “glorious sleep.” This tradition was likely based on oral legends which were in turn likely based on a historical person named Thecla from the area. [6] As evidenced by literary, archaeological, and material culture, the Theclan tradition was popular in Asia Minor and, to a lesser extent, the Mediterranean in during the 2nd through 6th centuries.

What were the driving socio-religious factors that lead to the rapid widespread growth and appeal of this tradition? We will answer this question by exploring the tradition back through time and narrowing our focus from the expressed cult tradition back to the written tradition and ending with the oral tradition. Firstly, we will examine the importance and makeup of the Cult of St. Thecla in Asia Minor. After exploring these social settings we will then turn to the book of the Acts of Thecla, exploring the rhetorical devices it employed and will compare it to Roman romance novels.((Several Acts and martyrdom accounts include variations on the Acts of Thecla. For example, one of the Acts of Xanthippe’s main characters, Polyxena, is a virgin who is thrown to the beasts, saved by a lioness and consequently preaches to a queen and governor.)) Lastly, we will explore the social and theological conditions that the Thecla tradition stepped into.

We will find the Thecla tradition filled an ideological hole which was created in the Greco-Roman socio-religious fabric by Early Christian Missionary movement and its radical egalitarianism. [7] This movement fostered an expectation that females should be on par with males both in terms of authority and function. The Thecla tradition spoke to those needs and expectations and lent them the authority to bolster their claims through efficacious mediums, such as oral tradition and romance novels, which were modified to transmit the desired message with maximum effect.

In my next post, we will take a look at the cult (or devotion) of Saint Thecla in the early centuries of Christianity.

1. John Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels to the Holy Land (Ariel Pub. House, 1981), 120 21. This excerpt is taken from the diary of Egeria, a Christian pilgrim writing in the late 4^th century. [↩]
2. Stephen J. Davis, The Cult of St. Thecla: An Introduction to Women’s Piety in Late Antiquity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 5. [↩]
3. The Acts of Thecla will refer to the earliest version of this work that was inserted into the Acts of Paul. When I am referring to the longer and later version extended, in part, to justify the moving of the shrine by Zeno I will use the title Acts of Thecla-Seleucia. [↩]
4. The use of the term “beloved” is purposefully ambiguous. Because of the nature of the work as an adapted Roman romance novel, it is necessary to have Thecla fall in love with Paul to maintain the standard storyline. [↩]
5. She is saved from a pyre in chapter 22, from a lioness which befriends her in 28, from wild beasts by the same lioness in 33, and by the scents of the woman onlookers in 35 from more wild animals. [↩]
6. The historicity of the Thecla traditions is not being analyzed in this post series. While the legends are definitely not historical in nature, it is likely that they were based and grew up around a historical figure of the same name. [↩]
7. See Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, In Memory of Her (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1989). chapters four through six for a description of these movements. Where pertinent, features of these movements will be discussed in detail. [↩]

Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural (παρα φύσιν), and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error. Romans 1:26-27

Perhaps no two verses have played a larger role in modern Christian discourse over sex and (homo)sexuality than Romans 1:26-27. Certainly, with the recent events in California, many are certainly turning to these verses for support of their angered positions…while others read them with disdain. I come to them now asking what role these verses really should play in our modern Christian constructions of what constitutes “proper” sex and sexuality (according to nature?). To begin, I’ll take a peak into the world of Paul…to see what (homo)sex(uality) meant for his contemporaries…to see how Paul’s words would work within antiquity’s discourse over such things. As it turns out, sex(uality) in antiquity was a performance that reflected and reinforced social hierarchy, which has startling (potential) ramifications for our reading of Romans 1:26-27.

To begin, many studies have shown that Greco-Roman conceptions of sex(uality) are quite different from our own. As Stephen Moore states, “the ‘logics of sexuality’ that underpin Romans 1.26-27, on the one hand, and the modern logics or sexuality, on the other, are so drastically different as to preclude any paraphrase of this passage that would attempt to assimilate it to the modern concept of homosexuality.” [1]

Greco-Roman notions of sex(uality) did not run strictly along the male/female dichotomy as many see it today.** While such a divide was strong, when it came to sex(uality), that line was quite permeable. Much more defined is the division between “active” and “passive,” between “hard” and “soft,” between “penetrator” and “penetrated,” and most importantly: between “superior” and “inferior.” While men were always the proper actors of the former categories…not all men could perform those roles. Those of the former categories are “honored,” while those of the latter categories are “shamed.” Here is where “sex” and “gender” become very different things in antiquity, and here is where we see their stark difference from modern times.

In antiquity, not all males were men: youths, slaves, eunuchs, and “sexually passive” males were something else. The highest status one could have was that of a free adult male (esp. rulers, magistrates, heads of elite households, patrons, etc.), everything/one else was considered “unmen” or at least “not fully men,” something less (women, youths, slaves, ‘effeminate’ males, eunuchs, ‘barbarians,’ etc.).

These lines of demarcation brought forth notions of “proper” behavior…behavior that was “according to nature.” While ancient writers often made appeals to “nature” for proper sexual behavior…they were really appealing to the reinforcement of their society’s hierarchical structures. Case in Point: Dio Chrysostom (2^nd c. CE) castigates “the man who is never satiated,” who through repeated sexual indulgences ultimately seduces young men of good families who are destined to hold public office. Dio deems this most offensive deed as “against nature” (Greek: παρα φύσιν) (Oration 7.151). For Dio, this crime “against nature,” is actually the treating of the city’s future leaders as if they were common slaves. It is a crime against class, against social hierarchy, for the young man is dishonored. He is dishonored not because he is damaged goods for his future marriage, but for his future standing in society. The crime here is treating upcoming “men” as “unmen,” making those who should be “active” actors into “passive” actors. Such deeds damage the integrity of the Greco-Roman social hierarchy, and are thus deemed “unnatural.”

Furthering these notions is the Oneirokritika of Artemidoros of Daldis (2^nd c. CE), an itinerant dream analyst who interacted with much more “common” people. It reflects relatively general understandings accepted by the public (free males that is) at large, and is called by some “a kind of ancient Kinsey report.”

The Oneirokritika separates sexual acts into different categories, most important of which are those that are “according to nature” (κατα φύσιν) and those “against nature” (παρα φύσιν). Intercourse “according to nature” is sex with a social inferior, which includes women, prostitutes, and slaves. The prostitutes and slaves can be male so long as they are the passive partner, for “to be penetrated by one’s house slave is not good” (1.78). This is not because of the sexual act itself, or even because of the slave’s maleness…the problem is that a social inferior is represented as a sexual superior.

Intercourse “against nature” in the Oneirokritika encompasses many activities, including (but not limited to) the penetration of a woman by another woman, bestiality, and necrophilia. Since sodomy of prostitutes/slaves/boys was ok, the dividing line of “according to/against nature” certainly is not reproductive potential. Rather, unnatural acts either do not reproduce social hierarchy or run counter to it. Bestiality and necrophilia are not “perversions” in the modern sense, but rather are outside conventional fields of social signification. If a man gains advantage over a sheep or a dead body…so what? Perhaps most telling is the prohibition of women “penetrating” other women. This is not simply “lesbian sex” in the modern notion, but rather a woman (a social inferior) performing the work of a man (a social superior). “Let not women imitate the sexual role of men” warns the Hellenistic Jewish author known as Pseudo-Phocylides (192).

Sex “according to nature” thus becomes a game of active/passive, penetrator/penetrated, and most importantly: social superior/social inferior. The act of penetration “reproduced” the societal notions of honor and shame, of status and class. To be the penetrator was to be the social/sexual superior (adult free males in all cases), and to be penetrated was to be the social/sexual inferior (women, prostitutes, boys, slaves, etc.). Any sexual activity that violated this social hierarchy could thus be categorized as “against nature.

So What?
What does this mean for Romans 1:26-27? Well, being that we can never truly lock down “authorial intent,” we can see how one’s language would fit into the discourses of their day. Given the very specific language of Paul, especially in comparison with his near contemporaries (esp. παρα φύσιν)…it seems that Romans 1:26-27 reflects/participates in particular notions of superior vs. inferior, of penetrator vs. penetrated. The “sexual logic” of Romans 1:26-27 thus comes from a societal hierarchy entirely different from our own. With this in mind, Stephen Moore offers an “amplified” version of these verses (based on the RSV with his own notes in parentheses):

Their women exchanged natural relations (of domination versus submission, designed to display social hierarchy, they themselves assuming the inferior position by accepting male penetration) for unnatural relations (in which no display of domination or submission occurred and consequently no social hierarchy was exhibited, because no penile penetration took place), and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women (the male assuming the dominant position, penetrating the woman and thereby exhibiting and reaffirming his social superiority over her) and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men (in which one partner would necessarily end up the loser in the zero-sum game of honor versus shame, passively accepting penetration and thus defeat at the hands of another). [2]

So, what does all of this mean? It means that Paul’s condemnation of these acts comes from a cultural logic that simply does not work for us. Sex and sexuality in Paul’s world was based on a very particular social hierarchy (free adult males “on top” with women, slaves, boys, etc. below). The question becomes, if we have a very different notion of society and what sex(uality) represents…how do we read Paul? Can we simply adopt his prohibitions wholeheartedly, despite the fact that the Greco-Roman societal/sexual logic behind them contradicts and offends our own? Should we, as Christians, uncritically conform ourselves to a 1^st c. CE worldview? What role, if any, should verses such as this play in our own formations of proper sex(uality)?

1. “the notion of homosexuality is plainly inadequate as a means of referring to an experience, forms of valuation, and a system of categorization so different from ours. The Greeks did not see love for one’s own sex and loves for the other sex as opposite, as two exclusive choices, two radically different types of behavior. The dividing lines did not follow that kind of boundary.” – Michel Foucault. The Use of Pleasure. [↩]
2. From Moore’s article “Que(e)rying Paul: Preliminary Questions” in: Auguries: The Sheffield Jubilee Volume. Much of the references and the argumentation here comes from this article (in an admittedly abbreviated form), which is an excellent read and comes highly recommended. Moore gives far more examples and presents them in a much more eloquent way than I ever could. [↩]

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?

So I found this quote by Alvin Plantinga taken from his magnum opus “Warranted Christian Belief.” To give a little context to the quote, Plantinga had been talking about his Calvin/Aquinas model for the necessity of the “internal instigation of the Holy Spirit” due to the noetic effects of sins. For fundamentalists like Plantinga (and myself) it offers some humor and insight.

“But isn’t this just endorsing a wholly outmoded and discredited fundamentalism, that condition than which, according to many academics, none lesser can be conceived? I fully realize that the dreaded f-word will be trotted out to stigmatize any model of this kind. Before responding, however, we must first look into the use of this term ‘fundamentalist’. On the most common contemporary academic use of the term, it is a term of abuse or disapprobation, rather like ’son of a bitch’, more exactly ’sonovabitch’, or perhaps still more exactly (at least according to those authorities who look to the Old West as normative on matters of pronunciation) ’sumbitch.’ When the term is used in this way, no definition, no definition of it is ordinarily given. (If you called someone a sumbitch, would you fell obligated first to define the term?) Still, there is a bit more to the meaning of ‘fundamentalist’ (in this widely current use); it isn’t simply a term of abuse. In addition to its emotive force, it does have some cognitive content, and ordinarily denotes relatively conservative theological views. That makes it more like ’stupid sumbitch’ (or maybe ‘fascist sumbitch’?) than ’sumbitch’ simpliciter. It isn’t exactly like that term either, however, because its cognitive content can expand and contract on demand; its content seems to depend on who is using it. In the mouths of certain liberal theologians, for example, it tends to denote any who accept traditional Christianity, including Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, and Barth; in the mouths of devout secularists like Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett, it tends to denote anyone who believes there is such a person as God. The explanation that the term has a certain indexical element: its cognitive content is given by the phrase ‘considerably to the right, theologically speaking, of me and my enlightened friends.’ The full meaning of the term, therefore (in this use), can be given by something like ’stupid sumbitch whose theological opinions are considerably to the right of mine’” (Warranted Christian Belief, pp. 244-245).

1. December 25th is not Jesus’ birthday
2. January 6th is also not Jesus’ birthday
3. The Bible doesn’t tell us how many magi/wisemen visited Jesus
4. Christmas was created to cancel out the pagan holiday – Saturnilia
5. 125 AD, is the first recorded mention of a celebration of Jesus’ birth and it comes from a note from, Telesphorus, the 2nd bishop of Rome declaring that church services should be held to memorialize the nativity of Jesus (Collins, 12)
6. 320 AD is the year when Pope Julius I chose December 25th as the official day to celebrate Jesus’ birthday (Ibid, 13)
7. 325 AD is when Constantine made December 25th the official day for Christmas (ib., 13)
8. Clement Carke’s A visit from St. Nicholas (1822 AD), also known as, The Night Before Christmas, and Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol (1843 AD) gave us our modern day Christmas celebration (ib., 100).
9. Writing “Xmas” instead of Christmas is orthodox.
10. The virgin birth is true.
11. Jesus is the reason for the season
12. Love one another and they will know we’re his disciples

If you know other historical facts, leave us a comment.

Resources
Stand To Reason Podcast. Greg Koukl. The Origins of Christmas. December 9 2007.

Collins, Ace. Stories Behind the Great Traditions of Christmas

For those of you that are interested in understanding the current view of what has come to be known as “Gnosticism,” I would invite you to read several posts over at The Forbidden Gospel’s blog. DeConick is trying to answer why the Nag Hammadi texts aren’t used as must as the Dead Sea Scrolls to studies of early Christianity. DeConick is quickly becoming one of my favorite scholars. She has a wonderful ability to frame and phrase issues that really capture the essence of what she is arguing about.

(1) Why Nag Hammadi texts aren’t as interesting to scholars of early Christianity as the Dead Sea Scrolls

(2) Is Gnosticism Perverted Christianity?

(3) Is Coptic a hindrance to serious study of NH texts?

(4) Are Gnostics fringe believers?

Please note that neither DeConick or I am talking about religous matters, such as what is the correct doctrine, she is merely exploring the development of Christianity, winners and losers.

Click this link.

It is an early paper that serves as a beginning point of exploration of my master’s thesis on Syrian Christianity.

One of the many books I am reading right now is They like Jesus but not the Church by Dan Kimball. It was recommended to me by Brad Andrews of Missouri Baptist and relevintage. I can’t say enough good things about this book. It acts primarily as a diagnosis of the Church in the eyes of the un- or de-churched. It also recommends how to reach these people outside of the established church. I am reading the on part 2, “What Emerging Generations think about the Church.” I came across this nice passage on politics and the church:

We also need to remember that many of the founding fathers of our “Christian nation” were deists, didn’t believe in the inspiration of the whole Bible, and had slaves. Since some American Christians are vocal about getting back to our “Christian roots” politically, we need to be careful not to forget this. When you examine them, some of our roots turn out not to be that Christian. So making a case for a “Christian America” comes across as the church mixing religion and politics. (P. 78)

A particularly poignant point. Rather than playing Old Testament Prophet, Christians should win over their communities the old fashion way by being good servants of Christ – and as a result being selfless servants of everyone around us. As I read more and more histories of the early Christians, the “pagan” communities were enamored with the Christians moral and selfless behaviors, and no mention is made about the Christians going Jonah on the pagans.

While I am content to let Catholics do what they will in their pursuit of God, I think this is a bitting turn of phrase by the ever-popular Dominic Crossan, speaking on the recent Latin Mass controversy.

. . . . In terms of Roman Catholicism, our ancestors in faith began with Aramaic, changed to Greek, then tried Latin, and finally, moved into the various vernaculars. If we wish to revert to our linguistic origins, why just to Latin, why not to Aramaic with Jesus or Greek with the New Testament? . . .

HT :: NT Gateway Weblog

A good friend of mine gave me a most interesting gift card to Barnes and Noble. I was able to turn it into the following books:

What Paul Really Said About Women I am curious about this one. A straight forward reading of some of Paul’s letters seem to slap women in the face, or at least they seem to put them in a box under the feet of men. [1] This book seems to challenge that reading of Paul. I wonder if it is a strong book or if it will rely on weak biblical arguments in its argumentation.

A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs This is a very cool and exciting reference. Did I just type that out? An exciting and cool reference? Is there such a thing? It contains all the early proto-orthodox Christian writers on 700+ topics. What did Justin Martyr say about free will? [2] What did Irenaeus have to say about the book of Revelation? It is in here.

1. Yes, I am being overly dramatic for the sake of effect, but I would ask all male readers to pause and think about it for a second. [↩]
2. “For if it is predetermined that this man will be good and this other man will be evil, neither is the first one meritorious nor the latter man to be blamed. And again, unless the human race has the power of avoiding evil and choosing good by free choice, they are not accountable for their actions. [↩]

In preparation for some posts I am working on, I want to talk about history in Antiquity. It is very easy to import modern ideas and standards of history writing onto Ancient texts. However, to do so, will skew one’s reading of the text in a way that the author did not intend. The following are several concepts to keep in mind when reading ancient texts. [1]

1) Lost in Translation Often the only copies of texts that we have today are copies of copies. Furthermore, they are often translations of the original text. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas was probably written in Syriac, but the earliest copy we have is written in Greek. On top of this, sometimes the original texts were translations of the speeches being recorded. An example of this last point are Jesus’ speeches recorded in the Gospels. Jesus spoke Aramaic; the Gospels were written in Greek. [2] It is important keep this process in mind when the exact order of words is being scrutinized.

2) History was for instruction, not for tracking details Ancient histories were not designed to be modern ones. Their primary focus was not on keeping track of historical minutia, nor was it designed to show a character’s development throughout time. Instead, it was designed to illustrate lessons to be learned by the reader. There was “… great freedom with which many ancient writers adapted their materials to achieve such goals…” [3] This frame of mind should be accounted for when when studying ancient texts of all origins.

3) Look – Peter wrote this; hence it must be true Ancient authors had no problem with attributing works to authorities in order to give their work credibility. Christians have not been immune to this phenomenon. As early as the middle part of the first century, Christian leaders were complaining about letters being written in their name that contradicted with their positions. [4] The problem for “Christian texts” only got worse as the years went on. Robin Fox writes:

In the period c.400-600, “aggressive forgeries” added false letters to the collection of almost every early Christian Letter writer. These fake texts of theology helped to enlist the great authorities of the past on this or that side of a contemporary schism or unorthodoxy. [5]

Imagine someone finding a letter from Paul where he argues quite clearly for each of the five points of Calvinism. The problem was so bad that it was not until the 1500s that people could begin to sort the forgeries from the authentic letters. [6]

4) Good Forgeries Even when people were not outright co-opting authorities for the sake of their own positions, there is the problem of attribution. It was common in Classical and Hellenistic Greek culture for a student to classify their own positions and work as their teacher’s work. For example, there are more texts attributed to Aristotle that he could have humanly wrote. It is hard to determine in some cases where the teacher’s writing ends and the student’s begins. James H. Charlesworth has delineated the above idea into seven rough categories: [7]

1. Writings not by an author, but containing some of the author’s own thoughts
2. Writings by someone who was influenced by another work whom the work is attributed
3. Writings influenced by someone who was influenced by the earlier works of another author to whom the work is assigned
4. Writings attributed to an individual, but actually deriving from a circle or school surrounding that individual
5. Christian writings attributed by their authors to an Old Testament personality
6. Once anonymous writings that have been incorrectly attributed to another individual
7. Writings that intentionally try to deceive the reader into thinking the author is someone else

Quite naturally, the accuracy, dependability, ect, depends on which category the text being examined falls.

5) Recording Speeches There were not any tape recorders or stenographers around in Antiquity. Because of this, not all of the speeches recorded in ancient texts are verbatim copies of the original works. As a matter of fact, people recording the speeches often either gave abridged or paraphrased versions of the speech in question. Sometimes, the speech was elaborated on for the sake of effective rhetoric. Thucydides, an ancient Greek historian, admitted as much in his History of the Peloponnesian Wars.

I have found it difficult to remember the precise words used in the speeches I have listened to myself and my various informants have experienced the same difficulty; so my method has been, while keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used, to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for in each situation.

After about 300 B.C.E speakers issued written copies of their speeches to combat this problem. [8]

6) Say it enough, and people will think it is true Remember Hitler’s idea of the “Big Lie?” Same principle at work. If an author had a agenda to push, there was nothing to keep the author to fudge the facts to push their version of history. In a less deliberate manner, if errors crept into the historical record and subsequent authors relied on erroneous accounts of history for their facts, the resulting account will carry or perhaps magnify the original error, intentional or not.

Despite these difficulties, it is still possible to sift through historical manuscripts to uncover the most likely account of history by our modern standards of accuracy. My next post will deal with how to correct for these errors.

1. The above list was taken from Novak. Christianity and the Roman Empire: Background Texts. pp 3-7 [↩]
2. The Canonical ones were all written in Greek. There is a slight chance that the Gospel of Matthew was written in Hebrew, but it is most likely that it was written in Greek like the rest [↩]
3. Novak. Ibid. p.4 [↩]
4. See Second Thessalonians 2:1-5 [↩]
5. Novak. Ibid. p.4 [↩]
6. Fox. Ibid. p. 154. [↩]
7. James Charlesworth. “Pseudo-Epigraphy”. Encyclopedia of Early Christianity. p.765-767 [↩]
8. Novak. Ibid. p.6. [↩]

Since I apparently identify with Finney, allow me to quote him on one of his sermons on Rev 22:17:

But, let me say, further, that you are every one invited to drink. You need not hesitate to drink, because you think you are not invited. You need not stand there, and say, “Is it for me? I am so thirsty, to be sure, but is it for me? Am I one of the elect?” Why hesitate? Take it, take it freely. You need not stop to decide whether you are one of the elect or not, or if it is for you. It is for you, if you thirst. Surely it is. There is plenty of it. There is no need to restrict it to the elect. There is nothing here about any restriction. You need not fear to invite all around you to partake, lest they are not the elect. “Whosoever will, let him come, and take of the water of life freely.” Who? Why everybody, to be sure. You need not hesitate, and stumble.
From The Freeness of the Gospel

You scored as Charles Finney. You’re passionate about God and love to preach the Gospel. Your theology borders on pelagianism and it is said that if God were taken out of your theology, it would look exactly the same. Charles Finney 87% Anselm 80% Karl Barth 67% Friedrich Schleiermacher 60% John Calvin 53% Jonathan Edwards 47% Jürgen Moltmann 40% Martin Luther 40% Augustine 33% Paul Tillich 20%

Which theologian are you?
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Who are you? (Can you tell by my postings that I am not wanting to work on my last two papers for the semester?)