Archive for the 'Church Fathers' Category

Toothless Lizards Full of Madness

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?

Alvin Plantinga and the Definition of Fundamentalist

Travis Gilmore February 6th, 2008

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).

12 things to remember this Christmas

E. I. Sanchez December 23rd, 2007

  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 ChristmasChristmas Myths

Historical Primer

Honzo August 5th, 2007

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.

If you are bored and you know it

Honzo August 2nd, 2007

Click this link.

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

Regrowing Roots

Honzo July 29th, 2007

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.

The Need for an Aramaic Mass

Honzo July 18th, 2007

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

Paul and Early Christians

Honzo July 12th, 2007

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. [↩]

History in the Eyes of the Ancients

Honzo July 12th, 2007

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. [↩]

Finney on Rev 22:17

Honzo May 13th, 2007

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

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