Theology for the Masses

In a previous post I argued that everything is sacred. That is, all aspects of our lives are sacred because the Spirit permeates all things. Taking a bath is sacred. Baptism is sacred. Doing the laundry is sacred. The Eucharist is sacred.

What I unwittingly communicated in that post, however, was that taking a bath and getting Baptized are sacred in the same way and to the same degree. And though Luther says that every time we wash our face we should think of our Baptism, I am convinced that this reasoning is flawed. There is something distinctively set apart about the sacraments. That is, the sacraments are holy in a different way and to a different degree than taking a shower is holy.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I think I was on the right track in that post, I just think there were implications of that line of reasoning that I hadn’t explored. In this post, I want to suggest that the problem with the previous post wasn’t so much that I uplifted the bath (which was the intent), but that in doing so I unfortunately drug Baptism down to the level of a bath.

Instead of positing an “everything is equally sacred” model, I want to continue to suggest that everything is sacred, including a bath, but that all things are not sacred in the same way or to the same degree. While a bath is sacred because the Spirit is present with us during that time, there is a very real sense in which the church has always held that Baptism is a time and ritual which invokes the Spirit in a special way. The sacraments of the church invite the presence of the Spirit in a distinct way. So, yes, my bath might be sacred because the Spirit communes with me there – indeed, some of my best times of worship and fellowship with the Spirit have been while showering – but it is not sacred in the same way as Baptism.

To illustrate this I want to pull from the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. Under the Old Covenant, the people of God worshipped and met with Yahweh at the Temple. The Temple and its objects were all considered “holy” or set apart from common use. But within the Temple there was a “Most Holy Place.” The existence of the Most Holy Place didn’t negate the holiness of the other spaces and objects, it merely suggested that there is a continuum of holiness. Everything in the Temple was holy, but this particular space and the objects within that space were more holy and holy in a different way.

So too it is with the Spirit’s activities in the life of the church. Mundane things such as eating and drinking can be made holy by the presence and activity of the Spirit of God. But there are some things which are Most Holy. Baptism, the Eucharist, the gathering together of the community on Sunday – these things are Most Holy. Common time, which is never common because of the Spirit, becomes increasingly holy. Common objects, such as bread and wine, become Most Holy during the Eucharist. And common water becomes Most Holy during Baptism.

Everything is still sacred. But some things are more sacred and in a different way.
And what was once routine was now the perfect joy – Switchfoot

Our very own Hank, from Think-Wink, linked to בלשנות (balshanut), which is a biblical linguistics blog, on the topic of loan words in the Hebrew Bible.  There the claim is made that:

Some scholars have argued that Biblical Hebrew was never a fully spoken language, but was an artificial literary language created by post-exilic scribes. For instance, Ullendorff’s paper “Is Biblical Hebrew a Language?” BSOAS 34 (1971): 241-55, Knauf’s “War ‘Biblisch-Hebräisch’ eine Sprache?” ZAH 3 (1990): 11-23, and North’s “Could Hebrew Have Been A Cultic Esperanto?” ZAH 12: 202-17. In this article, Eskhult argues that if BH is an artificial language created only in post-exilic times, then loanwords ought to be fairly equally distributed throughout the various books and genres contained in the Bible… 

[However], the Akkadian, Egyptian, and Persian loanwords seem to follow the pattern of the political history described by the biblical texts. It is difficult to explain such a connection if the language was artificial and late. Further, Perisan loanwords abound within the books that are obviously late, but do not appear at all in the Pentateuch.

For those of you following along at home, this is important because it suggests the tradition behind the biblical text dates to the periods and cultures from which the text itself claims to be writing, compared to being composed entirely as an after-thought. 

Good morning peoples.  I am relatively unschooled in the issues of Hebrew Bible literary formation.  Danny, over at Personman, references a History Chanel documentary which claims a rather uninspiring view of book and canon formation in hist post entitled :: The Bible Unearthed.

I felt like I had good things to say over there about issues surrounding the edge of history and the edge of faith, but am ignorant as to the claims made in the documentary.

If you are knowledgeable in these areas and wish to comment, please do over there. (And I am pretty much asking/begging you to).

Perhaps the best argument leveled against Judaism and Christianity is the angry child of a god that people construct out of choice samples of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. These criticisms should not be taken lightly nor should the texts they reference be whitewashed. 

To this end, I came across an article via the Codex that I plan on reading tomorrow (for it is 2:11AM and early evening naps should be avoided, no matter how crappy one feels) entitled Is Yahweh a Moral Monster?:The New Atheists and Old Testament Ethics which takes a critical look at the claims of the “New Atheists” and attempts to construct and honest and workable Christian reply to such criticisms.  Take a look online via the link in the preceding paragraph, or download the 30 pages of textual goodness in this pdf. 

While you are reading that article, I recommend you also read the one which referenced it over at the Codex entitled Yahweh – a Moral Monster?, which begins a discussion on the Canaanite genocide.

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.

In one of the more misunderstood passages dealing with the life of Jesus, the Son of God encounters a gentile woman who seeks his assistance in casting a demon out of her daughter. The gospel of Mark provides her pedigree for us: “a Greek, born in Syrian Phoenicia.”[1] Before we get to hear Jesus’ response to her request, Mark supplies us with the three strikes against her from the average Jewish standpoint. She was A. a woman, B. a gentile woman, and C. gentile woman who hailed from the insufferable Syrophoenician region, a region filled with people who should have been destroyed in the Canaanite genocides – their very presence a continual reminder to the Jews of their failure to fully obey Yahweh. Even the most hated woman in the Hebrew Bible, Queen Jezebel, hailed from this region. But as we shall see, our narrative redeems the Canaanite people and our woman serves as a reminder that Yahweh’s mind has changed about the decedents of Queen Jezebel.

While others would have considered her unclean, Jesus has just completed teaching that uncleanness is a matter of the heart, not the body, “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him ‘unclean?’…What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean.’ For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly. All these evils come from inside and make a man ‘unclean.’”[2]

In context, Jesus puts into practice what he preaches. Even trekking through the region of Tyre and Sidon betrayed an act of rebellion. 1st century Jewish stereotypes considered this an area of “seduction to false gods and hostility to the Jewish people.”[3] Instead of judging this woman based on her gender, ancestry, and the side of the tracks she came from, Jesus addresses her as a person, not a mere stereotype.[4] Interestingly Yahweh, who originally commanded the Canaanite genocide, is, in this text, informing us that power, dehumanization and domination are inadequate means by which to spread God’s kingdom. The superiority of the gospel to violence is a probable ethical principle one could draw from this passage.The Canaanites who were once supposed be destroyed now find a place within God’s redemptive plan. This text, then, is intended to counter the Canaanite genocides – this text, above that one, displays the character of God!

While Jesus response to this gentile woman may seem harsh, he does not respond to her with sexism or racism, for that would be a violation of the sermon he has just preached. Initially the text informs us that Jesus refuses the woman’s request. Jesus notifies the woman that, as a dog (gentile), she will have to wait for the children (Israel) to be finished feasting before she can eat. While this may sound offensive to us, the woman has no such reaction. She does not react as if Jesus has insulted her. More likely, she understands that Jesus is merely stating that the time for ministry among the gentiles has not yet arrived. Demonstrating great intelligence and wit[5], she tells Jesus that sometimes dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table as the children are eating. “Now is a good time for my daughter to be healed, even if the time of the gentiles has not arrived,” she says.

Without regard for her gender or race, Jesus grants the woman’s request. With no consideration for whether or not this woman or her daughter are deemed unclean because of their gender, Jesus heals them both. He casts the unclean spirit out of the daughter, symbolizing that the gentiles by virtue of their race, and women by virtue of their gender, should no longer be categorized as unclean. He shows this woman she is not subhuman simply because of her gender or race. Neither Jesus nor the gospel writers concerned themselves with her gender; they simply marveled at her “great faith.”[6]

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[1] Mark 7:26

[2] Mark 7:20-23 – Interestingly enough, Mark describes the evil spirit within this woman’s daughter as an unclean spirit. While many of our English translations translate the word evil, in context it seems infinitely more appropriate to translate the word as unclean.

[3] Mary Anne Getty-Sullivan, Women in the New Testament. (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2001), 87. Getty-Sullivan also notes that this area was considered profane to the ancient Jews because it represented their own failures. The area was originally given to the tribe of Asher, but they failed to completely occupy it as God had commanded. This was also the area that the most hated of all OT women was birthed: Queen Jezebel, who was the great persecutor of the prophet Elijah, and the great dominator of her puppet of a husband Ahab.

[4] Stereotypes are created by people in order to make sense of an increasingly complex world. The pluralistic world of Jesus’ day and ours is filled with stereotypes simply because people are groping for a simple way to understand their crazy pluralistic world. Unfortunately, this is never neutral. Stereotypes also dehumanize the ‘other’ and keep them perpetually in a state of being sub-human. They are a means of power maintenance.

[5] Intelligence and wit are only a small part of what this woman displays. Her determination to get what she has come to Jesus for is another quite remarkable attribute.

[6] Matt. 15:28 – Matthew adds this praise for the woman in his account of the event. Mark, the earlier gospel that Matthew used as a source for his gospel, does not record Jesus praising her for her great faith. We see, however, in Matthew’s addition, that it was important for him to correct first century assumptions about the faithlessness of women and gentiles.

As Paul draws on narratives from the Hebrew Bible to support his case, and as he considers it authoritative for the Ephesian church, I think it is necessary for us to look at Genesis 2 and 3 over the next few posts. As they are often used to justify patriarchy, and as chapter 2 is (as I argued in my last post) what the redeemed community is to reflect; a detailed examination is needed. The next few posts may ‘fill in’ what some of you felt was lacking in the previous post.

First A Brief Word Study:

It is often argued that the word “helper” in Genesis 2 has an inherent idea of subordination. That is, for the woman to be created as man’s helper, means she is supposed to be subject to him.

What I would like to demonstrate here is that patriarchy is placed onto the text, not drawn from it. The Hebrew word ezer does not have to mean subordination.

Let’s take a few examples:

Genesis 49:25 – where God is described as being an ezer – a helper. Now, what kind of theological problems would arise if we said God was subordinated to anyone simply because he is described as a helper?

Exodus 18:4 – where, again, God is described as helping them ‘escape the sword of Pharoah.’ No subordination implied here.

I Samuel 7:12 – where the word is used in the title Ebenezer – God is my helper.

I could go on, but this will suffice for now. There are many uses of this word in the Hebrew Bible, and most, if not all*, of them have no connotation of subordination of the helper.

In fact, as this word is employed in Genesis – it only refers to two beings – the woman and Yahweh. Would this not, then, suggest that the female gender is an exalted gender – one reflecting Yahweh’s assistance in ways that men need. Who’s the “weaker vessel” in reality? The woman is never said to need the man, he is said to need her. He needs her help, not her subordination. The idea of subordination is read onto the passage unnecessarily. We assume patriarchy, so we see it wherever we want.

If the church is to reflect, as a new creation – a new humanity, the original created order, it doesn’t appear patriarchy is part of that order. In fact, patriarchy is part of “the fall,” which I will examine in my next post.