Theology for the Masses

Many Christian movements have sought to cut ties with perverted and corruptible human traditions and return to that glorious (and Godly) pristine primitive Christianity described in the New Testament.  However, we don’t live in first century Rome and we aren’t powerless and poor.  The questions we bring to the text are our own and not those of the first believing communities.  If we only reply on the “naked text” we will get only naked answers.  Lints suggests that

Having rejected the aid of the community of interpreters throughout the history of Christendom, we have not succeeded in returning to the primitive gospel; we have simply managed to plunge ourselves back to the biases of our own individual situations.

Lints, Fabric of Theology, 93

So, in essence, by rejecting the wisdom of our elders, we swim in a sea of theological subjectivism  Oh, the irony!

Perhaps we too are scared of what we might find find in the box!

Christians have historically had problems figuring out how they should relate to the political establishments in which they resided. As seen in an earlier post, Christians have been too eager to align themselves with Liberal Democracies, especially the United States.  In Resident Aliens, Hauerwas and Willimon critique this notion, saying that instead of being Christianity Lite™, Liberal Democracies need war to justify and solidify identity:

“States, particularly liberal democracies are dependent upon war for moral coherence.” [1]

Damn, I think that’s true.  I had previously viewed governments as sometimes morally good, often morally evil, but most of all, morally neutral. And here was an explanation that the best of these governments have a vested interest in unjust violence [2] . [3] Their warning from history is particularly poignant:

“if Caesar can get Christians [in 30’s Germany] to swallow the ‘Ultimate Solution’ and Christians here to embrace the bomb, there is no limit to what we will not do for the modern world.” [4]

A Church that was nuked in Nagasaki.  Where do our allegiances lie?  With the USA, or with God Almighty?

1. Stanley Hauerwas and William H. Willimon, Resident Aliens: Life in the Christian Colony, 1st ed. (Abingdon Press, 1989), 35. [↩]
2. if violence is ever justified [↩]
3. Though, we should expect states to act selfishly. [↩]
4. Hauerwas and Willimon, Resident Aliens, 27. [↩]

I came across a wonderful Christian satire site, Tom in the Box News, today.   The Better Bible’s Blog turned me on to it today, aleting me to the plight of some poor missionaries who are having a hard time translating “thees” and “thous”.  Here is a sample of their wonderfulness.

Dr. Simmons lamented along a similar theme, saying, "Our struggle is how to get the language of the King James Version into Luyana. We want these folks to be able to read the pure, undistorted Word of God. We do have plans in the future to teach them English so they can read the Authorized Version for themselves. However, in the mean time we want to get the KJV translated into Luyana. Unfortunately, we can’t seem to get words like thee, thou, ye, hitherto, and goads to translate into Luyana with any meaning for these people. It just doesn’t work. I don’t know what we are going to do. Some well-meaning friends from back in the USA suggested that we use the original Hebrew and Greek to help us, but we certainly don’t want to introduce any false teaching into this tribe. We’re stuck."

Here is some more from Man Can’t Figure Out KJV – Rejects Christianity:

As Jim listened intently, the teacher began to expound on how the KJV is the only true bible because it contains the all-important phrase, “it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.” The teacher looked straight at Jim and said, “This is why we must study the KJV only. All other versions will lead you astray. We may not know what Jesus meant when he said this, but we sure know it is true. Beware the other versions.”

Does the BC position ever use anything from Jesus to support their claims?  If not, what does that mean for their theology?

I was thinking about that this morning as I was wondering about the merits of ESF’s claim that Christianity developed from the Jesus movement into the Early Missionary movement and then into a group which gradually patriarcalized it.

While doing so, I could not think of where BC’s use Jesus for their claims, just some Old Testament and the later Pauline tradition (but, then again, not the early stuff, which would further ESF’s claim about the early missionary movement).

Anyone with thoughts?  Am I wrong here?  There are just musings from a person getting ready.

Meredith and I, along with some friends, will be reading through Ronald J. Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. I just finished reading the prologue and wanted to give my initial thoughts.

My skepticism
I get the need. I do, I really do. My problem is the solution, or lack thereof. I see certain programs that are intended to help these people who desperately need it which fail miserably and actually contribute to worsening the problem. Thus I begin the book with a weary and skeptical optimism. I have been wanting a viable solution, not just money or grain dumping. Something that lifts real people out of real problems. I have come to the conclusion that mere aid is not the way to go forward because it robs from the people the ability to create their own economy and wealth, if the aid even gets to the people in need. Additionally, what I don’t want to do is bring the God of materialism along with the God of Christianity to the Other.

If it was only an issue of money – the problems would be solved. I hear the stat of 8 billion needed to provide the whole world with clean water and how Americans spend that amount on ice cream, yogurt, or blue jeans each year. I am highly suspicious that money is all that it would take. Think about the political instability in the regions that need the clean water. I think you will find that in order to create sufficient infrastructures in a country you also need to build sufficient political and societal structures. Thus, the “if only we gave the money we spend on X to Y, then the problem would be solved” line of thinking seems to be insufficient by itself.

Getting into the ins and outs of providing clean water is not the point of this post, nor it is something that I am sufficiently knowledgeable to talk about in depth. The above paragraph is merely a container of my intuitions on the subject and I recognize that may have my facts wrong.

What I do wanna highlight are some of my thoughts going into this book. I will absolutely support something that I think will work, but I won’t just do more of the same saying “Something is better than nothing” the whole while.

Garnering my Interest

With that said, let me sketch out what Sider has to say in the prologue. He begins saying that free market capitalism lifts people out of poverty and that historically γέ Communism has failed miserably. He says,

“Communism’s state ownership and central planning have proved not to work; they are inefficient and totalitarian. Market economies, on the other hand, have produced enormous wealth. [insert stats on Asia's accumulation of wealth since adopting market economies] … When the choice is between communism or democratic capitalism, I support democratic government and market economies. That does not mean, however, that the Bible prescribes either democracy or markets. Nor does it mean ignoring the problems and injustices of today’s market-oriented economies.”

He had me after that series of statements. I had anticipated an argument centered around a return to a sort of apostolic communism ala the book of Acts. I was weary of such an approach because I just don’t see humans administering that effectively on a large scale. He hints that this willingness to adopt practices rooted in market economies is a departure from earlier editions of the book. I have not seen those, so I can’t comment on that. From the on set, Sider seems be open minded to using practices that work in real life, in the here and now. That is a sticking point for me.

How “Biblical” – and is that a bad thing?

Throughout the rest of the prologue, Sider outlines what he plans on doing in the book. The first goal in part one is get the read to recognize that here is a problem that needs to be addressed, namely that there is a large segment of the human population that do not have the means to provide for themselves and their families and there is another segment of the population, Christians, whose 16 trillion combined annual income could go towards meeting those needs. In part 2 Sider plans to argue that God measures societies by how they care for the poorest among them so that his readers may be convicted and moved into action.

He gives a thought-provoking thesis on biblical economic equality:

God wants every person and family to have an [an] equality of economic opportunity, at least to the point of having access to the resources necessary (land, money, education), so that by working responsibly, they can earn a decent living and participate as dignified members of their community.

I am interested in seeing how he builds that up with biblical support. As of right now, it smacks of modern liberal (historical liberal) economic/political thought more than “biblical” thought. I could be wrong, and I hope I am – just my first impressions. I like the idea, that is for sure.

In part three Sider wants to outline the causes for poverty. He says that “some people are poor because of misguided personal choices and others because of unfair systems.” That is a position that can get the left and the right here at home in a room talking! I am pretty much down with what he is saying there, so left me move on to the most interesting section – the fix.

Giving a way ahead

In part four, Sider seems like he will be advocating micro-loans. Micro-loans are small, usually under $500 dollars, loans that are made to poor families in various parts of the world that enable them to improve their standard of living. This is intriguing. Do they really work? Sider certainly thinks they do, giving and example of a family in India that was able to start a small business because of a micro-loan. Sider says that these micro-loans can “improve a family of five’s standard of living by about 50% within one year.”

More importantly, if this idea works, it may be a way to by-pass the problems I have with current aid programs. It bypasses corrupt leaders, empowers the people to improve their own lives, and diminishes the idea that “the white man should go and save the brown man (who obviously cannot save himself)” both ideologically and structurally.

Despite these promises, I still have questions beyond the practicality of micro-loans. Are there other ways we can or should help? Should we as a political entity pressure our government to pressure other governments into creating fair economic and political structures (there is a question I would like to see answered by someone!!!)? Then there are the details on the micro-loans. He mentions usury being charged on these loans. Is that something we affluent Christians should be charging, or is it more an issue of practicality here. How can we have an organization run if it makes no money to pay for creating and sustaining the structure which provides the service?

I look forward to reading this book and hearing the reactions and reflections from my peers on the subject. If anyone that reads this site wants to read with us, I can give you our reading schedule and shelfit page where we will be posting our reactions.

There is some disagreement over exactly what kind of Pharisee the apostle Paul was before he converted to the Jesus movement on the Damascus road. One thing we do know from the book of Acts is that Paul was a righteously violent one. We read in the early chapters of Acts that Paul was probably quite influential in the stoning of the early Christian martyr Stephen, and that he was on his way to kill more Christians when he met the risen Christ on the Damascus road.

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.

Discuss. What are you impressions about this patient and the chaplain sent to console him in his dying hour? I can’t help but think that there is something to what this patient was getting at. Postmodern “spirituality” and the weak Christianity we see (I am thinking of the Unitarian Universalist I saw with Honzo JR) doesn’t help when it comes down to it and a person needs to know that there is something on the other side and how to deal with their guilt that they have. I think this man points out that our souls cry out to know a transcendent God who is just and righteous as well as loving and forgiving. What do you guys think about this clip? I leave this open to where ever it takes us. It should be fun.

(H/T: Contemporary Calvinist)

Sorry Cheepham, I forgot that you can’t watch videos on youtube. Is there another site you can watch this clip that I can find for you?

When I first began reading feminist theology, Schusseler-Fiorenza and Welch drew my attention to how language, particularly patriarchal language, shapes not only abstract theological concepts, but also the everyday, practical matters of the Christian life. Among other things, we assume male dominance in the masculine pronouns we use for God, even though we classically maintain God is neither He nor She, but Spirit.

Though I could continue to criticize the church’s use of vocabulary in the oppression of certain peoples, the ecclesiastical rhetoric I want to appraise presently is the church’s employment of the vocabulary of the Empire – particularly its economic verbage.

I often hear Christians refer to “investing” in either non-believers or people whom they are mentoring in the faith. The language of investment is procured, obviously, from the economic world referring to putting money to use in order to gain a potentially profitable return. That is, one invests in order to gain a return.

But is the return what Christian friendship is really about? It is supposed to be what I can gain from my time and effort spilled into another person? When we “invest” in a non-Christian, what we often mean is that we spend time with them in order to make them Christian! When we “invest” in a disciple, we mean we spend time with them in order to elicit the return of sanctification!

But is the return at the heart of Christianity? Is my primary agenda in befriending a non-Christian that they might buy into my product? Does this language not dehumanize and objectify our “investment”? Does this language not communicate that this whole Christianity thing is about what I can profit, or God can yield? Being friends with people outside the Christian faith is not about investment, it is about being genuine friends! Genuine friendship, for sure, involves demonstrating God’s love to the other. But this demonstration of love is not artificial and contrived; it is not about reciprocation or return. Consider my friendship with JR.

I would never say of JR that I am “investing” in him. That would entail certain things which are not inherent in sincere friendship. It would imply that I deem him spiritually below me or that he needs me in his life to be spiritually fruitful. It also implies that my agenda is to correct his spiritual imperfections, and because of my investment, I expect that he will provide a certain return. In the end, the language of investment doesn’t appear to be a natural part of genuine friendship.

But, in the end, this is not even the most dangerous aspect of investment rhetoric.

For me, the most dangerous part of the church’s employment of economic language is that we have taken the language of America’s dominant deity (economics, consumerism, materialism), and leaving it unchanged and unchallenged, we have taken it into our communities like a long lost brother. But as long as the economic rhetoric involved in America’s one true religion is warmly accepted by the church, we will never be able to counter the influence of capitalism, consumerism, materialism, or just plain-ole Mammon in our lives.

Now from where I sit, it appears we have two options. First, the church can completely rid itself of economic language. We can completely drop the language like a deflated stock. No more language of investment or any other kind of rhetoric that smacks of capitalism.

The second option, and one that requires a bit more creativity, is to continue to use economic language, but subvert it by investing it with distinctly Christian meaning. This option falls in line a bit more with what we see in the New Testament. The Gk. word we translate “fellowship” often referred to partnership in business agendas in the first century. Also, and more obvious, the word we translate “redeem” means to “buy back.” It too is an overtly economic word.

I like this second option the best, but there are two difficulties with it.

First, are we creative enough, or even powerful enough, to change the way Christian people generally employ economic rhetoric? Like Wal-Mart in a small town, economic language dominates our American landscape. Completely subverting it and changing it is a nearly impossible task. We may try, but in the end, our use of language is merely a text which is interpreted and misinterpreted by our hearers. Just because I invest economic rhetoric with new meaning doesn’t mean my hearers will observe that investment.

Second, when the New Testament writers reinvested economic language with Christian meaning, they were not using the language of the dominant deity of the Roman Empire. So, even assuming our hearers will understand our new meaning, might we be safer in simply abandoning the language altogether?

So, that’s as far as my thoughts have taken me on this topic thus far. I’m looking for some help getting past this roadblock. What do you think? The bottom line is that Jesus did not heal people for his own glory, and he even healed some who never even thanked him or his Father. It doesn’t seem like his investment in people was only about what he or his religion can get out of it. What about just showing people the love of God for its own sake?

A little while ago, I posted a short bit about Hitchens’ reply to a speech that Romney, a presidential candidate who happens to be Mormon, had given. Wuzzdem had made a nice little parody of Hitchens’ reply that tickled me a bit. During the course of writing that post, I claimed that Hitchens’ had strawman’ed Romney.

Gringo contested this claim in a comment on the post, asking me to clarify how exactly how Hitchen’s strawman’ed Romney.

Notice what Hitchens’ complaint was in the bit that I quoted; [1] it is the claim that God choose to reveal itself to the world via “few illiterate peasants in a barbarous backwater.” By doing so, he is claiming how God should be acting. It is one thing to claim divine revelation, i.e. that something has revealed how it acts; it is another to claim that you know, based on reason, that something must act a certain way. Hitchens is casting onto god, as a proof of its existence, the requirements that it act as Hitchens himself would act, i.e. choose another way to reveal itself to the world than how Christians and Mormons claim it has. This is a classic anthropomorphism, the attachment of human qualities onto non-human entities.

Hitchens’ anthropomorphism is especially ironic because Hitchens and the new atheists often criticize the “religionists”** for anthropomorphizing god. Yet, here Hitchens is doing so and uses this to discredit tenets of Romney’s faith. The question is not whether people of faith anthropomorphize god, but that Hitchens himself will only accept a god that is like him.

Having established that Hitchens is anthropomorphizing god, [2] is there a strawman in his comment? I think that there is. His sarcastic attack on the claims of Romney’s faith (and the claims at hand overlap with mine here) is based on how Hitchens’ anthropomorphism, not on Romney’s claim of a revealed God. In order to avoid a strawman, Hitchens must argue from the claims that Romney’s faith makes when he is critiquing his system of thought. That is to say, one must consider the whole of a worldview, not just take potshots here and there. Romney’s faith, and mine, describe a revealed God that consistently chooses those that are powerless, those that are oppressed, to be recipients of His revelation. Therefore, it would come as no surprise to anyone that actually listens to the claims of Mormonism that God would reveal himself to “few illiterate peasants in a barbarous backwater.”

Because Hitchens argues against the validity of Romney’s faith on the basis of Hitchens’ idea of what god must be like instead of how instead of actually using Romney’s claims of what God is like, he argues about his opponent’s position without actually using his opponent’s position – classic strawman.

[cross posted at H/J]

1. I am only concerning myself here and in the previous post with the bit that I quoted. Neither here nor in the original post did I claim to do a complete treatment of his reply; it was just something that came to me as I was relying the post from Wuzzdem. However, I do think that this comment is indicative of most of Hitchens’ attacks of Christianity. To put it as Stephen Prothero said, “What Hitchens gets wrong is religion itself.” [↩]
2. Notice that any group given an “-ist” on the end, when the group does not designate itself as such, clearly demonstrates that those receiving the suffix are silly, stupid, and generally unworthy of respect. [↩]

Question of the day (this time with an answer):

How do we, as Christians, conceptualize the Other?

How should we treat these people, both to their face and within our communities while they are not present? They think that they know how to best relate to that which is “wholly Other” – whether it be God, gods, the numinous, whatever you want to call it(s). We think we know how to as well. What do we do with such an impasse? Shall we let loose upon them the canon and be done with it? Do we assume all roads generate the same journey?

A good friend of mine and fellow author here at Theology for the Masses, JR Madill, navigated these very issues a few weeks ago in a talk on Christianity and Pluralism. Now, I don’t want to give away what he had to say, but I do want to say that I found his reply to be quite good and worthy of your consideration.

I took this picture a few weeks ago while I visiting my hometown.

A couple of things leap out at you at first:

1. The American Flag draped around the Cross
2. The lack of any Church officials on the parade, just two service persons.

However, the most striking part of the float is the captions at the bottom:

The Savior and the soldier

paid the price to set us free.

The Savior and the soldier ~

we give our thanks to thee!

This is a haunting image. It animates the term, American christianity.

One of the things I have been rethinking this year is the role of the Christian in a government. This picture serves to remind me that it is a topic worthy of consideration.

At what point does one meld the Christ and the military? Where is the message of peace? How does this function to a) define Christians from other cultures/nations; b) tie our faith to the state; c) link criticism of one to criticism of the other?

On the one hand, military personnel are responsible for the creation and sustention of my political freedoms and Christ has freed me from the bonds of sin. I like both of these things. On the other hand, the float serves to equate the two, to meld them together, to raise up the political (earthly) to the religious (heavenly). Should we, as Christians, be overly concerned with our political freedoms, or should we simply focus on furthering the Kingdom of God and let our political/economic conditions take care of themselves? I can justify the words and the float a variety of different ways. However, I keep coming back to one question:

Why did this church decide to interweave the message of patriotism with the message of Christianity in their singular public statement to the thousands of people that would be watching the parade?

I’d like to get your thoughts on the matter.

As of yesterday, the latest Christian Carnival is up over at Lingamish, a blog by a Bible translator living in Africa.

The Christian Carnival is a great way to a) find some of the best posts on Christianity/theology out there and b) find some of the best Christian blogs. It is a weekly publication consisting of author submissions that are Christian in nature.

Christian Carnival 193: Lions in Africa edition

Some of the highlights:

• Our Tom on I Timothy 2 and the Artemis Cult
• Fighting Despondency with Faith by Light Along the Journey considers modeling Jesus’ way of dealing with despondency.
• Common prayer is far too uncommon by Lingamish – on the corporate worship that is common prayer

A while ago, the BBB had a poll running on headship and submission. Right now they are unpacking the poll and the issues surrounding the headship/submission issues. See part 1 and part 2. I really liked what Wyane had to say in the following quote. I think it is good to reflect how we view our Christianity especially in what parts were emphasize over other parts.
Better Bibles Blog :: head and submission poll results – post #3

From my own point of view, not enough biblical teaching has occurred on what it means for Christians to mutually submit to each other in comparison with how much teaching there has been on wives submitting to their husbands. The larger amount of teaching devoted to wives submitting to their husbands does not align with the fact that the first relationship Paul addresses in this section on submission is that of Christians to each other. That relationship is explicitly stated in Greek. It seems to me that other relationships of submission flow out of the teaching that mutual submission is God’s design for his children. I think that much of scripture tells us, in one way or another, how to submit to each other, and such submission would define what a wife’s submission to her husband should look like. Mutual submission surely involves love (John 13:35), honor, respect, deference, being like-minded, and being one in spirit (Phil. 2:2).

After I read that, I read his conclusions on chapter 5 of Ephesians:

So what does it mean for a man to be the head of his wife? Here is what the Bible explicitly says about this matter. In the Ephesians (chapter 5) context of teaching about the husband as head of his wife, the husband head is to love his wife. The husband head is to love his wife sacrificially, “giving himself for her” as Christ gave himself (died) for the church. As far as I know, this is all that the Bible explicitly teaches about what the husband head does for his wife. Everything else which is said on the matter is, I suggest, application or theological extrapolation. Is the husband to lead his wife? Perhaps, but the Bible does not explicitly say so. Does he have authority over her? Perhaps, but the Bible does not explicitly say so, other than when it refers to authority of one kind, mentioned in one passage which we will discuss below, concerning the statement “A husband has authority over his wife”. Is the husband a priest for his wife? The Bible does not teach this. Does a husband mediate between his wife and God. The Bible does not teach this either.

Update The Better Bibles Blog has now posted their fourth post in the series: head and submission poll results – post #4. The post sums up my thoughts on the subject quite well. Wayne looks at the difference between ὑποτασσω (a voluntary attitude of giving in, cooperating, assuming responsibility, and carrying a burden) in Eph 5:21-22 and Rom. 13:1 and contrasts it with ἐξουσιάζω (to have power or authority, use power) in such places as 1 Cor. 7:4.

Wayne then goes on to look at the Genesis account and comes to much the same conclusions that Dave and I did a while back.