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!

I have a question to ask you folks:

Me? Its gotta be the violence of God in the Old Testament. I can handle textual composition problems. I can handle problems of causality and God’s power, and I can deal with contradictions between the narrative of the Bible and what we can tell about the world through science and history. But when I look at the God of the New Testament and the God of the Old Testament, I can understand how some early Christians opted to ignore or reject the Old Testament completely. I am no where near close to doing that, but I am just saying that I can understand the impulse.

So, what does this for you? Be honest. There’s gotta be problems that you are struggling with (or you are probably ignoring implications of certain things).

Update: There is another question that I run into when I study the New Testament period. It has the potential to reshape the way I look at the canon we have constructed. I’ve wrestling with it for some time. I hope to be able to articulate it well sometime soon in the future.

In an upcoming post series I am working on, I am going to take a look at all the specific women mentioned in the undisputed letters of Paul.  The basis of this series will be the essay entitled “Real Women through the Undisputed Letters of Paul” by Margaret MacDonald found in Women & Christian Origins edited by Ross Kraemer and Mary D’Angelo.  We will be looking at all the women mentioned by name in the undisputed one by one.  It is hoped that after we look at this body of real women and see how Paul viewed and treated them, we can then move on and address the larger issue of women in New Testament Christianity.

I love to read reviews.  I come by this honestly.  Contrary to what some think about grad students, we don’t have all the time in the world to read books.  I therefore must reply on the judgement of reviewers to help me select books for consumption and integration into my life and thought processes. 

Enter Pagan Christianity.  This controversial book by Frank Viola and George Banna suggests that “[m]ost of what present-day Christians do in church each Sunday is rooted not in the New Testament, but in pagan culture and rituals developed long after the death of the apostles.” A very bold claim to make.  I have not read the book (see 1st paragraph), but I have a good friend that has and from talking to him about the book, Pagan Christianity tries to be very careful with the research it utilizes to bolster the bold claims that it makes. 

Last week I happened upon an ongoing review of Pagan Christianity by Ben Witherington (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4).  He is a good biblical scholar who currently teaches at Asbury Theological Seminary, a good school and one at which I am looking for my next stage of studies.  Witherington is in a good position to speak on the specific claims made by Pagan Christianity.  The manner though which I does this is a different matter entirely. 

The strong point of his review is his knowledge of early Christianity and his interpretation of the New Testament on matters of the church as an institution.  As I was telling Scott, the weak point is his almost flippant treatment of the book.  He will at once give the writers and their ideas credit and at the same time dismiss their research and claims in cursory terms.  In addition to this, the very way he refers readers to [his books] is flippant as well.  The way he lists himself as an authority through referencing the fact that he wrote a book on it does not do it for me.  What I want is actual and dispassionate interaction with the claims.  Witherington does this in part, but he often does not and this weakens his review.  He comes off as polemical at times – and polemics only serve to whip up the choir.  With that said, I am not dismissing this review in the least, only saying that it needs to be read with a critical eye.

Typing of which, Witherington’s reviews should not be the last word on the matter.  Jon Zens evaluates and “reviews” Witherington’s review.  He has worked up responses to three of Witherington’s posts and is working on a fourth.  Anyone who is navigating through this book and it’s reviews should take a moment (ok, 20-30 minutes) and digest what Zens is saying there.  There is some healthy criticism of Witherington there. 

What this boils down to is not merely looking to see if Pagan Christianity gets a “TRUTH” checkmark or not, but instead an opportunity to navigate the various positions on how to conduct Church and to evaluate the claims of people with obvious stakes in their positions.

With all of the above said, I look forward to reading Pagan Christianity and then revisiting the above reviews later this summer. 

1. What translation of the Bible do you like best?
Depends on what I am doing. For personal use, I like the NLT because I am a vernacularist. When it comes to indepth academic study, I go with the NRSV and the NASB.

2. Old or New Testament?
While the correct answer is both, in reality, I go with the New Testament. I am a Christian and not a pre-rabbinic Jew, so the NT gets the nod when I am asked.

3. Favorite Book of the Bible?
Romans, hands down… and Genesis and John.

4. Favorite Chapter?
John 3

5. Favorite Verse?
Romans 8:1

6. Bible character you think you’re most like?
Depends on who you ask – I am sure some ’round here and other parts would liken me to those pesky prophets of Baal. But, self identification? Lamech, because when I have lived 182 years I want to become the father of a tike named Noah. That, or I am skirting the question because I don’t like throwing myself onto those people.

7. One thing from the Bible that confuses you?
Paul and the Law – What gives?

8. Moses or Paul?
Paul, all the way.

9. A teaching from the Bible that you struggle with or don’t get?
The stuff that the people writing in Paul’s name tell women to do.

10. Coolest name in the Bible?
Not in the Bible, but the coolest renaming of anyone in the Bible is God himself, when certain Gnostics equate the OT God with the demiurge and name him Yaldabaoth. I know he becomes the evil creator of matter and is holding all of us back and that we need to gets that knowledge, but I still want to name one of my children after him.

The sometimes funny WuzzaDem looks at Hitchens’ reply to Romney’s Mormon speech: Shocker: Christopher Hitchens Bashes Mitt Romney Speech.

According to the admittedly very contradictory scriptures of the New Testament, Jesus of Nazareth warned his disciples and followers that they should expect to be ridiculed and mocked for their faith. After all, how likely was it that God had decided to reveal himself to only a few illiterate peasants in a barbarous backwater?

What better way to make this point than by mocking and ridiculing Christians?

I think what I like the most about this quote from Hitchens (the first part) is that he is completely anthropomorphizing God here; something the new atheists are always complaining about theists doing (and rightly so!). God must act in the ways that Hitchens thinks that God should act, or the God that others posit does not match Hitchen’s imagined God and therefore does not exist (is there a man of straw in there somewhere?).

C/P at Hundiejo.com

Here is an interesting (new?) Bible that is published by the International Bible Society, called The Books Of The Bible. It is very interesting. What it does is it first takes out all of the chapter and verse titles that you would see in a standard Bible. Then it places the books in Chronological order. I think that it is very interesting because it takes away many distractions that are in the Bible and allows for a better reading, because it reads more like a novel. Some differences in order seen is that the New Testament starts with Luke-Acts, two volumes of the same history, the follows into Paul’s letters. The Old Testament ends in Daniel.

While this may not be the best study tool, it appears to be a better read than a typical Bible. It uses the TNIV translation. It may also make it much easier for a new Christian to read and understand. I encourage everyone to check it out.

During the next few posts I will seek your thoughts on a fresh interpretation of I Tim. 2 and the way Paul deals with women in this chapter. Some of the arguments will be stronger than others, but hopefully in the end my arguments will be articulated well. Far from being a proof-text for male-only-pastorates, this passage is in fact a text against female dominance! I will argue that the text is not forbidding women to pastor/preach, but is actually forbidding them to abuse their male counterparts.

Argument #1: the use of authentein.

I Timothy 2:12 – (NIV) “I do not permit a woman to teach of to have (authentein) over a man.”

The first issue I wish to deal with is the use of this Greek work authentein. Some important points concerning this word must be noted:

1. Authentein is a hapaxlegomena. For those of you not familiar with terminology of the biblical studies elites, hapaxlegomena is merely a fancy expression for a word that only appears in the New Testament a single time. The sole time it appears is here in 1 Tim. 2. Hapaxlegomena’s always pose difficulties for biblical translators and interpreters. They are forced to go outside of the biblical text to derive the words meanings and nuances. This becomes especially important for determining the meaning of this word.

2. While I noted that this word is a hapaxlegomena, I must also inform you that 2 cognates of this word appear in the deuterocanonical books. In both cases the context reveals the meaning of this word: In 3 Maccabees 2 the word was used in the context of slaves having their bodies “branded with fire.” Furthermore, the Wisdom of Solomon 12:6 uses authenta as a noun referring to the murder of children in child sacrifice ceremonies of the Canaanite peoples. So, from these two examples, we know that the word was used before the first century in a manner related to the physical oppression of other people.

3. The word was also used in Greek tragedies and was exclusively used in reference to suicide and murder. As we move further into the Hellenistic period we find that the word retains its meaning as “murderer” but it expands to include crimes of violence, master-mind of a crime, and perpetrator.

Since we know the meanings of words are fluid and they change with time, and we have seen that the meaning of this word was modified over time, the question becomes, how was the word used in the first and second centuries?

First, we must recognize there were many words Paul could have used if he merely wanted to denote authority. In fact, Paul uses these other words (especially exousia) throughout his other (non-disputed) letters. Since we know Paul uses these other words, and this word is only used by him once in all his extant writings, then this word must have a specific meaning in mind for ‘Paul’ that is relevant to the Ephesian context.

This is exactly what we find. Authentein is never used in the first or second century denoting simple authority. In the literature of this time this word was used in a similar way to those previously mentioned: to dominate, destroy, murder.

Interestingly enough, the history of translations of this passage is that the dominant translation of this word before WWII had to do with the violent treatment of men in the congregation – ‘usurping authority’ in the KJV is among the least obvious of these and even it has remnants of the idea.

What happened after WWII that shifted the translation to “authority” from something like “dominate”? The women left the home. Once the American/Western women began working outside their homes American patriarchy had to attempt to theologically keeping women ‘in their place.’ As the conservative translations of the Bible presupposed a woman should be in the home, they twisted this word in translation to justify their patriarchal bias.

In the end, what we have here is a word describing, not that women shouldn’t have authority, but women shouldn’t dominate men – implying they did have some rightful authority.

Next post – Toward an Egalitarian Ecclesia Part 2/6 – I Timothy 2 and the Artemis Cult – bringing historical context into our reading of an otherwise difficult passage. And yes, my analysis will eventually explain the ever intriguing “they shall be saved through childbearing.”

The Better Bibles Blog points us this morning to the Kruse Kronicle :: Household: Household Code Lost in Translation: Kephale. Kruse takes a look at the problem of translating/interpreting kephale. I recommend checking it out, especially in light of the nature of some of our recent discussions.

While you are at it, check out his whole post series on the household codes of the New Testament: Kruse Kronicle :: Household of God.