Tag Archives: Christianity

Context for Creeds

From Bo Sanders at Homebrewed Christianity on the creeds…

  • They are not timeless and universal expressions. They are very timely and remarkably located.
  • They are not litmus tests for modern orthodoxy. There is no sense in retreating into ecclesiastic silos, playing pre-modern word games, or burying our head in the historical sand. Too much has happened, too much has changed and there is too much on the line.
  • They are not houses to live in. They are lean-tos (temporary shelters) that were erected along the way. We are still to continue our journey and travel on in our day – in the world that is – and not set up camp in the imagined past.

And further reflection on similar issues at The Image of Fish, asking “Why Theology?”:

God is.

End of conversation.

For many folks, those two words are sufficient, and yet, for such a short declarative statement, the sentence “God is.” has quite a bit of baggage packed into it. Whose god? we might ask. The God who allowed the Crusades to happen? The Shoah? Lynchings and slavery? That god? Is that the God that is? And immediately we plunge into other issues.

In light of this, we will be doing a two-part series on “Religious Experience” this week.  Cheers!

Fear the Lord

…that you may fear the LORD your God, you and your son and your son’s son, by keeping all his statutes and his commandments, which I command you, all the days of your life, and that your days may be long.
(Deuteronomy 6:2 ESV)

The end of the matter; all has been heard. Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.   (Ecclesiastes 12:13 ESV)

Some thoughts on the fear of God or the fear of the LORD:

I’ve read the commentaries and the debates.  Sometimes semantics from dictionaries or commentaries just don’t get you far.  In some ways, thinking existentially helps us here.  Most likely and often, the authors of the Bible mimic the power structures they encounter in real life.

The fear of the LORD probably is reflective of Suzerain treaties and relationships.  Relations between the leaders of unequal city-states or tribes.  You owe your allegiance to the suzerain.  Maybe you pay some taxes, maybe you send some men for his army, you get the picture.  And so the language of fearing the LORD ought to be thought as originating from this political relationship.

Again, to make the ontological move to “the LORD is our suzerain,” is not necessary, and should not be the first theological move.  One reason for this is that mimesis can often be a form of political resistance.

Even though a vassal state may show allegiance to the suzerain in political practice, the vassal’s citizens also enact through cultic ritual the “fear of the LORD.”  This is as if to say, “We may pay lip service to a human, but our true allegiance is to YHWH.”  This may seem contradictory and problematic, and it is, but we need not judge the ancients in our analysis, since we are not much better (if at all).

Instead, the practice is simple.  Pay homage to the human suzerain to survive, materially.  But the cultic homage of YHWH, the “fear of the LORD,” is a communal enactment of identity, and act of resistance against perceived unjust powers.

Therefore, we are not necessarily committed to the theological images of God in the Bible that depict God as suzerain or Caesar, but instead, the Bible in using these images suggests that our allegiance and identity ought to be found in God.

Don’t do that.

One of my favorite emergers, Peter Rollins, says we shouldn’t teach Jesus ethics:

The trick is to create an atmosphere of love, grace and acceptance where people are not told what to do. Where people learn that heresy which claims that, while not everything is beneficial, everything is permissible. In other words, while there are destructive things we do, they can be brought to the light without fear of condemnation. In such an environment ethical acts will emanate from the body just as heat emanates from light. One will not have to be taught that they should look after their neighbour as if it were something that we need to be told, they will simply be more inclined to do so.

While that’s a decent method, I don’t think it’s for everyone.  The problem always comes when we try to decide which behavior to prohibit in our communities.  I think though, we can come up with principles, rather than a list of rules that one must follow.  Jesus favored the disenfranchised.  Jesus condemned abuses of power. Etc.  I think coming up with basic principles, ethics if you will, ought to allow us to say “Don’t do that.”  ”Don’t treat the women that way.”  ”Don’t be a bully.”
If we can’t say things like that, then, I fear for the disenfranchised.

On Lording

Over at Storied Theology there’s some nervousness about anti-Roman studies within New Testament.

Did Jesus resist Rome?  Was Jesus anti-Roman?  Would Jesus have taken up arms against Rome if he had the means?

Take this into account:

And he said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For who is the greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at table? But I am among you as the one who serves.” (Luke 22:25-27 ESV)

In my opinion, Jesus was anti-lordship, anti-domination of others, and in this way, he was anti-Roman.  It’s difficult to say if Jesus would have defended his homeland if he had had the army or weapons.  We’d like to think not.  But one thing is for sure, Jesus wanted to change hearts, and that’s what he did.  Against a Roman way of life.

So, when in Rome, don’t do as the Romans did.

Freedom and the Burden of Proof

Having been involved in some debates in recent comment sections (most outspokenly, here) of blogs, I’ve realized something important about the Bible, Culture, and existence.  When there is a cultural innovation, it is up to Christians to prove that the said innovation is un-/anti-biblical, not the other way around.  In other words, the burden of proof is on those who say an action is “sinful.”

Take the invention of telephones.  Is talking on the telephone forbidden on the Sabbath?  The burden of proof clearly must be on those who say it is unlawful to talk on the telephone on the Sabbath.

Likewise for slavery, same-sex marriage, or female pastors.  Now the obvious objection to this comparison is that the Bible actually discusses these things, while it doesn’t mention telephones at all.  Well, yes and no.  The Bible mentions slavery, and passively (to say the least) condones it.  But we’ve made the arguments against it, and no one in their right mind will now say that slavery is biblical.  For women, the culture is totally different now.  Restrictions against women in the Bible are connected to the patriarchal culture of its time.  So when a new culture allows women to vote or to work outside the home, when they couldn’t before, the culture has shifted, making it possible to become church leaders, especially Senior pastors.  Since the cultural norms have shifted, the burden of proof lies on the one who would restrict such behavior, not on those who would seek to change orthodoxy.  The same goes for same-sex partners who wish to be in life-long relationships.  They don’t have to show that it is permitted for Christians, rather, those who would prohibit it must show biblically that it is sinful.

The reason for this is that over the centuries of the composition of the Bible, culture in the Levant changed, shifted, and evolved.  These tensions can be seen throughout the texts of the Bible, but no more blatantly than in Paul’s letters to the Galatians and to the Romans.

In Galatians, Paul is dealing with Judean Christ followers and gentile Christ followers and the cultural boundaries that centered around Torah, especially circumcision.  Rather than giving a static new law, Paul breaks the boundary, and gives principles for negotiating cultural shifts.  Consider a couple of verses from Galatians 5:

“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit to a yoke of slavery… For you were called to freedom, brothers.  Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.” (Gal. 5.1, 13)

Christ has set (all of) us free from the Torah.  You can follow Torah if you want, but you can’t force another to follow it.  Now, to those of you who won’t follow it, don’t use your freedom to do whatever you want and serve yourself.  The whole gift of your freedom is that you may serve on another in love, freed from the restrictions to do so.

If someone wants to remain uncircumcised fine, and the burden of proof falls on those who wish to force him to do so.  Likewise in Romans, where Paul is negotiating other boundaries between Judean and gentile believers, he concluded:

Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, “The reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me.” For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope. May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.  (Romans 15:2-7 ESV)

The pointing of fingers does no good.  The aim of the work of Christ is that Christ’s followers would “live in such harmony with one another,” in order that they may welcome each other as Christ has welcomed them.  So whether one eats foods sacrificed to idols or pork, or whether one participates in this-or-that festival (both in Rom. 14) is of small importance.  Only that which stands against these guiding principles for negotiating culture bound restrictions ought to be stopped.  And the burden of proof falls on Christ’s followers who wish to restrict, that they must show that the prohibition actually works to serve the other in love and to welcome the other in Christ.  This is part of the moral trajectory of the New Testament which recognizes the shifted sands of cultural and the problems of culturally codified restrictions.

So the argument, that I hear so often, that supporters of same-sex marriage and female pastors haven’t proven anything according to Scripture, does not stand.  Orthodoxy does not constitute a reason to escape burden of proof; in fact, the burden of proof is always on any static form of orthodoxy.  Therefore, nobody has to make the case for female pastors or same-sex marriage.  Opposers have to make a convincing case against it.

What restrictions in the New Testament are not bound by culture and do not follow the two guiding principles mentioned above?

The Lectionary Experience: Mark 3:20-35

And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem were saying, “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and “by the prince of demons he casts out the demons.” And he called them to him and said to them in parables, “How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but is coming to an end. But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his goods, unless he first binds the strong man. Then indeed he may plunder his house.
“Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man, and whatever blasphemies they utter, but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”—for they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit.”
(Mark 3:20-35 ESV)

Jesus is essentially saying, “if I am the satan (the adversary) and I am casting out demons, then good news, folks, the satan’s kingdom is gonna fall!!!  But no, really, if you want to destroy the satan’s kingdom, then you first have to bind up the satan, and then destroy his house.”  In other words, Jesus has bound the satan and that’s why he’s cleaning house.

A couple of existential observations.  Notably, in the First Testament, the three times the satan is mentioned he is at least twice a prosecuting attorney for God, most memorably in the prologue to Job.  With this in mind, it is fascinating, to see Jesus claim that the satan is bound, and then proclaim the forgivness of sins (nothing to do with the cross) over the children of man.

Nevertheless, we know that in the period between the Testaments, that the character of the satan grew in stature and power into the figure we encounter in canonical and non-canonical apocalyptic literature.  But here too, the satan is never simply “Satan” as many often imagined, but the satan is connected with the evil political powers of the day (see here for an example).

With the large accusatory Temple scene in Mark 11-12, we know that Jesus is attacking the corrupt powers (especially the scribes, see 12.28-40) of Jerusalem leadership.  With these three points in mind, I submit the following as a clue to the existential concerns of the text.  First, Jesus is calling out the scribes and other Jerusalem leadership for perpetuating evils, oppression, etc.  These evils are built on the premise that they run the system which negotiates sin and retribution between God and the masses.  Jesus, having bound the satan, is cleaning house with the forgiveness of sins, emptying the power of the corrupt leadership.

The existential concern is behind the premise that people need forgiveness of sins in order to be right with God.  With the existential crisis being that the people have no control over their own destiny, the forgiveness of sins meets crisis in several concerns.  First, it is identity with the people of God, a sense of belonging with the other righteous.  Second, the cost for peasants to have to participate in the sacrificial culture is an economic strain.  The forgiveness of sins, reduces this burden.  Finally, corrupt leadership tries to answer the the existential crisis, where they have no control over their own destinies, to try to control the destinies of others.  In some ways, the forgiveness of sin breaks their power to control the destinies of the people.

A good existential reading then will first focus on the identity, the economics, and oppression, before making too much of what “blaspheming the holy spirit” might mean.

Are there existential concerns that I missed?

… it’s what you see.

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.  - Henry David Thoreau

Yes, but can’t you see what your looking at first?

Indeed, we cannot even begin to consider the world in which we live without the conceptions.  The conceptions, the ontologies, the faith claims, they make our understanding of the world and our communication efficient.  We cannot adequately describe our experience, it’s too vast for words.  But for the sake of everything good and decent, can we at least look at how our experiences become our conceptions.  Let’s look at first, and then “see.”  Because, sometimes, in spite of Thoreau, it is what you look at that is important.

Case in point: 2012 election.  What is important?  Let’s speculate that it’s the on-the-ground experience of millions of Americans.  Therefore, the policies that affect change on the people’s lives are the important politics.  But every day, Obama is a Muslim, Romney is greedy, the Democrats are commies, the Republicans hate poor people.  These are ontological claims, conceptions of our world, that are at best irrelevant.  Distractions from what is important, making us blind to what we look at, and only emphasizing what we see.

The same happens with faith claims about God, even if those faith claims are quoted word-for-word from the Bible.  The words are far from the core, yet they point to the core.  But the core is the experience and context that produced the words.  To fetischize the faith claim before the core, is to “see” what your not looking at.  To read Christ into Isaiah 9.6 (“For to us a child is born…”) before placing it in the context of Northern Kingdom/Assyrian conflict is to quit reading and and to insert one’s own message into the text.  There’s no reason to shut our brains off and quit reading the text in order to defend our deeply held theological notions.  The Bible is a text that behaves like a text, because that’s what texts do.  So look at the text and let’s see what we can make of it?

Story Saturday: “All right, then, I’ll go to hell”

Huck Finn’s letter to Jim’s new owner:

I felt good and all washed clean of sin for the first time I had ever felt so in my life, and I knowed I could pray now. But I didn’t do it straight off, but laid the paper down and set there thinking- thinking how good it was all this happened so, and how near I come to being lost and going to hell. And went on thinking. And got to thinking over our trip down the river; and I see Jim before me, all the time; in the day, and in the night-time, sometimes moonlight, sometimes storms, and we a floating along, talking, and singing, and laughing. But somehow I couldn’t seem to strike no places to harden me against him, but only the other kind. I’d see him standing my watch on top of his’n, stead of calling me, so I could go on sleeping; and see him how glad he was when I come back out of the fog; and when I come to him agin in the swamp, up there where the feud was; and such-like times; and would always call me honey, and pet me, and do everything he could think of for me, and how good he always was; and at last I struck the time I saved him by telling the men we had smallpox aboard, and he was so grateful, and said I was the best friend old Jim ever had in the world, and the only one he’s got now; and then I happened to look around, and see that paper.

It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:”All right, then, I’ll go to hell”- and tore it up.

It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head; and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn’t. And for a starter, I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.”

via Rachel Held Evans | “All right, then, I’ll go to hell”.  Stop by her blog, and read her inspiring interpretation.

Christian Misunderstandings of Scholarship

“God is no fonder of intellectual slackers than He is of any other slacker.” – C.S. Lewis

Almost without fail, at least once a week, I hear someone complain about Biblical scholarship or Academia.  ”I just want to hear that God loves us.”  ”Do you think that Academia is at the center?  Of course not, it’s God!”  ”I don’t trust in scholarly theories, I trust in the Bible.”  ”Jesus said it, therefore, we don’t need to argue about it.”

I usually sit in silence, and then go plant my face in my hand in private.  But today, I’m pulling out my soap box.  Admittedly, I am a Bible Scholar, so I am strongly biased.  If you would like, I can follow up this post with the weaknesses of scholarship in religious communities.  But in my opinion, while they exist and are plentiful, they are usually not what people suggest to me the weaknesses are.

Feel free to let me know in the comment section what you might think possible weaknesses are.  (Edit:)  But scholarship is not opposed to the Gospel or the Church, contrary to some opinions.

A.  If there is no scholarship, there is no Bible.  No Bible, no Church, no Gospel.  Are you not aware that there is no standard original text of the Bible?  There are thousands of various manuscripts, which then, somebody has to go through and speculate (with evidence, of course) as to what the original text was.  Guess who does this?  So, your precious Jesus, Church, and Gospel don’t even make sense until the two thousand years of scholarly work binds it into a book form for you.  And the original text is still debated to this very day.  People, wake up, and smell the leather binding.

B.  Scholarship has put these sacred texts into a book and into a certain order.  But to read it as one book, requires some form of internal human processing.  Biblical scholars are often hesitant to connect the dots from one author to another, because who’s to stop us from making the Bible say what we want it to say when we do that.  It’s a form of control in the interpretive process.  But many Theological scholars (and biblical too) have connected the dots with this or that theory.  Often when people connect the dots to make a theology that Biblical scholars would question, they do so with theories from Augustine, to Aquinas, Luther, and Calvin, et al.  Not with the work of the holy spirit.  In other words, people unknowingly have already accepted some form of scholarship in their interpretation of Scripture and Tradition.

C.  Scholarship is so much more about learning and educating pastors and lay people to ask the right questions, not always to find the right answers.  If you start with an understanding of what the Gospel is before you read the Bible, of course all the answers will be self-evident.  But where did your Gospel come from in the first place?  You can start with a Gospel that’s external to Scripture, it’s not illegal.  But don’t pretend to be a “biblical” Christian when you do it.  Scholarship on the other hand, helps us to ask the best and most efficient questions (not always that efficient) to find out what the Gospel might be.

D.  Many people do not know what they’ve accepted on faith before they believe.  What manuscript of the Bible is the best one?  What about the exclusion of the Apocrypha?  The Bible must be interpreted ontologically?  Literally?  Figuratively?  Most of these questions are answered by a community and accepted on faith, without any awareness of the fact that they’ve already been accepted on faith.  Part of scholarship’s job is to point out what faith claims are in play at each decision point.  A good rule of thumb: the less you think critically, the more you’re accepting on faith.  And the irony is, the more you accept on faith, the more you place your trust in scholars that you don’t even know, and the less your faith is centered on Christ.  Get it?

E.  Scholarship brings out marginalized voices within Christianity.  Scholars are not the inventors of these voices necessarily, but they amplify them.  The theology of the African slaves which was based on the exodus, was amplified by scholars, and now most scholarship realizes the importance of the Exodus imagery all throughout the Bible.  Scholars amplified the Jewishness of the New Testament after the holocaust.  Peasant communities in Latin America have helped scholars look at the text from an agricultural society, rather than from a capitalist one, amplifying the peasant ideologies that exist in the texts of the Bible.

In my opinion, when people complain about Biblical/Theological scholarship, it’s usually because we aren’t edifying them with what they already believe, and we aren’t telling them what they want to hear.  After all, you can always just go to another church that will, anyways.

I’ll step off my soap box for now.  But there’s so much more…

What are the benefits/weaknesses of Biblical and Theological scholarship for you?

Experience Behind Lectionary: John 3.1-17

Looking at the Gospel text for this weekend again.  I’ve highlighted what I believe to be helpful in determining the existential concern:

Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.  (John 3:1-17 ESV)

Remember from last week how the gospel writer was defining the identity of the community.  Here too, it is the same thing.  The Kingdom of God, the Spirit of God, and the Son of Man are all traditions within Second Temple Judaism.  A community of Christ believers within Judaism are in the midst of a conflict with other Judeans (Jews).  Much of the Gospel is redefining the Gospel-communities identity in light of this conflict with the other Judeans.  Nicodemus serves as the perfect character who is transcending the boundaries of the two Judeanisms.  There’s a good deal more to be said about Nicodemus, so read a commentary or two.

But I find this statement of Jesus’ in line with the proposal of this blog: “If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things.”  If you don’t understand anthropology, how can you understand theology?  If you don’t understand earthly existence, then how will you comprehend heavenly existence through the conceptions Jesus will teach?

But when you look at what Jesus has said just previous to this claim–be born again/from above, kingdom of God, Spirit, etc– it sounds as if he is already talking about heavenly things.  But then Jesus gives us the metaphor of the wind, taking us into the existential experience of feeling the wind blow.  It exists, but its origin and its destination is unknown.  But it is experienced as a part of existence.  In other words, this new growing Jesus movement within Judeanism is claiming validity through their experience of the Spirit.  It is not defined here, but it is experienced, as an earthly thing, and for all practical purposes it is real for the community.

If you can’t understand that communities have real religious experiences, how can you honestly engage in theology?