[$] ... a flame of what?

This is just a smoking ember to apologize to the readers of this blog for not having a decent April Fool's post.

You'd think that, in aspiring to be the Chris Rock of internet apologetics, I could have pulled something together. Sheesh.

[*] 2.5 of 3: Who was Jesus?

I was scanning Doug Wilson's blog today, and I happened to come upon this nugget:

I am continuing with some occasional remarks on various aspects of N.T. Wright's work.

"What, then, was the agenda of Saul of Tarsus? We may draw it together in three points. First, he was zealous for Israel's God and for the Torah. This was a matter of personal piety, no doubt, and of fervent prayer and study. His zeal for the Torah was not, however, a Pelagian religion of self-help moralism. It was zeal to see God honoured which necessitated stamping out, by whatever means were necessary, all forms of disloyalty to the Torah among Jews . . ." (What St. Paul Really Said, pp. 34-35).

As I have noted elsewhere, I believe that N.T. Wright has many particular things of great value to offer the Church. But it is here, in his treatment of the unconverted Saul, that I think his entire project (taken as a whole) goes astray.

The converted Saul had a much lower estimate of his pre-Christian activities than do many advocates of the NPP. Note some of the descriptive elements above -- zealous for God, personal piety, fervent prayer, and so on. Sounds like a pretty good guy. But after his conversion, Saul described himself as a wicked and insolent man. I have no doubt that Saul was looking forward to the vindication of God for all Torah-keepers like himself. But when God did intervene, it was to reveal that Saul was actually a Torah-breaker. On the Damascus road, Saul discovered more than who Jesus was. He discovered who Saul was -- an evil man, and one who in substance and at the fundamental level, despised and hated the Torah.

We should take that as a kind of seasoning for the rest of the discussion on Wright, I think. When someone like Wilson is willing to go on-record to say that Wright has the relationship between pre-Damascus Road Saul and post-Damascus Road Paul "wrong", there is an opportunity to open the discussion wide.

[*] 2 of 3: Who was Jesus?

The reason I started to provide posts about Wright’s small book was really that he makes some extremely good evangelical points as he writes there, dismissing what he himself calls advocates of “a Jesus of their own imagining”. But the greater reason, I think, to start looking at Wright’s work from this place and this book in particular is that his #1 concern is for us to do something which some of the dissenting voices I link to on this page are not very clear about.

In the last installment of this topic on this blog, I listed 5 questions Wright lists as critical to the question of “Who was Jesus?” Wright makes this point about these questions:

These, I suggest, are the question which ought now to be addressed in serious historical study of Jesus. They are also the starting-point for the serious theological study of Jesus. It will not do, as we have seen many writers try to do, to separate the historical from the theological. ‘Jesus’ is either the flesh-and-blood individual who walked and talked, and lived and died, in first-century Palestine, or he is merely a creature of our own imagination, able to be manipulated this way or that.

(Who was Jesus?, 18)

I’d be excited to see someone argue otherwise, but it is clear to me that here Wright is throwing down a very conservative – somewhat radically-conservative – view of Jesus who we call Christ. That view is 100% in-line with the view Paul espouses in 1Cor 15 when he says:

12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. 15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

(ESV)

Sure: Paul is here talking about the resurrection as a historical fact, but Wright is taking that point and applying it more broadly to the person who was, in fact, raised from the dead on that first “Easter” Sunday. Wright is saying that whatever theology we are espousing, we must be true to the person and work of this person called Jesus.

Well, holy mackerel. You mean N.T. Wright makes an ad fonts claim regarding how we ought to think about our theological systems? How can that be? Hasn’t he read Derrida or De Mann? What does he think history is, anyway?

He thinks history is a set of actual events, as it turns out – that we, in whatever well-meaning manner we might participate in, sometimes forget about for the sake of some argument we are making. In that, Wright says this:

Jesus himself, on the strictly orthodox view, laid himself wide open to misunderstanding, ridicule, abuse and even death. The church has no vested interest in preventing people from coming up with new ideas about Jesus. Indeed, I shall myself be arguing … {that} the real, historical Jesus still has many surprises in store for institutional Christianity.

(Who was Jesus?, viii)

In the last installment, I’m going to cover what Wright summarizes to be a short list of those surprises as a kind of foundation for future discussions of Wright’s work, and to what degree he sticks to his own assertions. But here let me say this: the claims that Wright makes in this book are no more or less foundational in epistemology than those made by James White, Eric Svendsen, or any of the historical/grammatical critics I link to in this blog. The matter of what constitutes “new ideas” is probably one which deserves deeper investigation, and I concede that here for the sake of time and space.

It is possible that I have misread Wright, and that his claims are not foundational in nature. However, his appeal here is to a kind of truth that only the foundationalist considers: that is, the historical, objective truth of some particular which is thereafter transmitted to us via language. There is no doubt that Wright places value on “community” – particularly “faith community”. The question is whether he believes that is it right to allow the community to influence to transmission of history, or if the transmission of history ought to challenge and shape the community.

Here I think it is the latter. Stay tuned for the final installment.

[?] Off Good Friday

Mt 27:27The soldiers assigned to the governor took Jesus into the governor's palace and got the entire brigade together for some fun. 28They stripped him and dressed him in a red toga. 29They plaited a crown from branches of a thorn bush and set it on his head. They put a stick in his right hand for a scepter. Then they knelt before him in mocking reverence: "Bravo, King of the Jews!" they said. "Bravo!" 30Then they spit on him and hit him on the head with the stick. 31When they had had their fun, they took off the toga and put his own clothes back on him. Then they proceeded out to the crucifixion.

32Along the way they came on a man from Cyrene named Simon and made him carry Jesus' cross. 33Arriving at Golgotha, the place they call "Skull Hill," 34they offered him a mild painkiller (a mixture of wine and myrrh), but when he tasted it he wouldn't drink it.

35 -36After they had finished nailing him to the cross and were waiting for him to die, they whiled away the time by throwing dice for his clothes. 37Above his head they had posted the criminal charge against him:

THIS IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS

38Along with him, they also crucified two criminals, one to his right, the other to his left. 39People passing along the road jeered, shaking their heads in mock lament: 40"You bragged that you could tear down the Temple and then rebuild it in three days--so show us your stuff! Save yourself! If you're really God's Son, come down from that cross!"

41The high priests, along with the religion scholars and leaders, were right there mixing it up with the rest of them, having a great time poking fun at him: 42"He saved others--he can't save himself! King of Israel, is he? Then let him get down from that cross. We'll all become believers then! 43He was so sure of God--well, let him rescue his "Son' now--if he wants him! He did claim to be God's Son, didn't he?" 44Even the two criminals crucified next to him joined in the mockery.

45From noon to three, the whole earth was dark. 46Around mid-afternoon Jesus groaned out of the depths, crying loudly, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?"

47Some bystanders who heard him said, "He's calling for Elijah." 48One of them ran and got a sponge soaked in sour wine and lifted it on a stick so he could drink. 49The others joked, "Don't be in such a hurry. Let's see if Elijah comes and saves him."

50But Jesus, again crying out loudly, breathed his last.

51At that moment, the Temple curtain was ripped in two, top to bottom. There was an earthquake, and rocks were split in pieces. 52What's more, tombs were opened up, and many bodies of believers asleep in their graves were raised. 53(After Jesus' resurrection, they left the tombs, entered the holy city, and appeared to many.)

54The captain of the guard and those with him, when they saw the earthquake and everything else that was happening, were scared to death. They said, "This has to be the Son of God!"

(taken from the Message)

[$] "NEXT BLOG" button

I started playing this game on Monday, and I can't stop -- even though my eyes hurt. It's called "next blog", and it goes like this: I load my blog in the browser, and click the "next blog" button in the Blogger header and read whatever comes up.

I can hear some of you wince. I know: I should know better -- especially given some of the blogs I link to. The "blog" as an object has reached the stage of popularity of cellphones -- which means that while blogging is a great idea with some real-world applications that make your head spin (think: freedom of the press, or global distribution of ideas), it is so ubiquitous that even jerks who can't spell "ubiquitous" are blogging, making 98% of the blogs you read completely worthless. Like the cellphone, the idea is futuristic and mesmerizing: you mean I can self-publish instantly and my work will be available to billions in a few seconds? Of course, there is something lost in translation: the disciple of an editor.

So in playing "next blog", I have found many, many, many spammy blogs: blogs that link to insurance pitches and viagra-to-your-home websites. Who didn't know those would be there? Kudos to Blogger, btw, that I have not found any explicitly-"adult" blogs. Not sure how they did that, but good on them: Blogger is mostly safe for kids.

That is, if you find people who visit the Taj Mahal and can only muster "my best memories are of eating fish and chips and getting drunk on beer" "mostly safe for kids". Or if blogs dedicated to painful breakups that are weeping and bleeding over the loss of one's own true love "mostly safe for kids" (man, they're like 1 in 6 out there, even if we don't count Red's blog).

Thank heavens about a third of the random blogs out there are in Spanish. Because that way I can fool myself into thinking that very metropolitan Europeans and South Americans are blogging about existentially-vital matters that we stupid, monolingual Americans aren't fit to read because of our provincial, puritanical and xenophobic worldview -- rather than admitting that even those blogs are completely self-absorbed journals about video games, some insignificant local band scene, the never-discovered (with good reason) poetry of some emotionally-burdened adolescent, or the evils of corporate employment.

You play it yourself -- see if you can validate my findings. I think this is a great sociological experiment. I'll leave it up to you, blog reader, to determine the hypothesis and the results. The method, however, is addictive.

[#] Analogy and Clarity: Scripture

One of the great parts of being a dad is living with your kids when they are growing up – except when they wake up at 1:30 in the morning, climb into your bed, and then proceed to kick you for the rest of the night so you don’t actually sleep in spite of having to work the next day.

Sure: I hear you. Don’t let them in the bed. Yeah. Whatever. That’s advice from non-parents in the same class as, “clean out the van every time you come home.” When you live that way for more than two days in a row, write a book for the rest of us idiots to read and from which to learn.

I say all that to note that it is not all downside when your son will not respect your need for 7 hours of sleep. I was able to crack open a few books last night regarding the matter of Scripture and whether it says anything of particular use, and I have a few thoughts on the matter which might be of value to the blog.

The first is this: anyone who is willing to either read or write has no business contesting the ability of the writer/reader relationship to take meaning from one end of the process and transmit it to the other end. I’m sorry: while I agree that in the strictest sense language is analogical, analogy is not a process by which the “real clear” meaning is lost or obscured beyond utility. We all love Van Til and Frame as brothers in Christ, but I agree with Robert Reymond when he says this:

Christians should be overwhelmed by the magnitude of this simple truth that they take so much for granted – that the eternal God has deigned to share with us some of the truths which are on his mind. He condescends to elevate us poor undeserving sinners by actually sharing with us a portion of what he knows. Accordingly, since the Scripture require that saving faith be grounded in true knowledge (see Rom 10:13-14), the church must vigorously oppose any linguistic or revelational theory, however well-intended, that would take away from men and women the only ground of their knowledge of God and, accordingly, their only hope of salvation. Against the theory of human knowledge that would deny the possibility pf univocal correspondence at any point with God’s mind as to content, it is vitally important that we come down on the side of Christian reason and work with a Christian theory of knowledge that insists upon the possibility of at least some identity between the content of God’s knowledge and the content of man’s knowledge.
(Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, 1998, Thomas Nelson, 102)(Italics from Reymond, underlined emphasis added)

To those who at this point say, “well, duh!” but then go on to complain about the use of historical/grammatical exegesis as a means of receiving the truth of Scripture, God spoke and wrote for the express purpose of being understood. Even Reymond, in outlining the WCF’s doctrinal confessions of Scripture, elaborates emphatically

The Scripture’s doctrine of Scripture, espousing its own revelatory and inspired character, binds us to the grammatical/historical method of exegesis. … that each biblical document and each part of any given biblical document must be studied in its immediate literary context and the wider situation in which it was written. This will require an understanding of (1) the structure and idioms of the biblical languages, (2) a document’s literary genre (is it prose or poetry, history or allegory, parable or apocalypse?), (3) the document’s historical background, (4) its geographical conditions, and (5) its Sitz und Leben (“life-setting”), that is, what occasioned it? What problem or question did it intend to address? (Reymond, 49)

It is not arrogant (or, as Reymond points out, idolatrous) to read the text closely, critically, even grammatically to try to begin to comprehend it. It is in fact what Scripture calls us to do.

So what is the point of confessing that language is analogical? What does one actually mean by confessing that? Here’s what I mean, and you can take it for what it’s worth as it agrees with fellows like Gordon Clark and J.I. Packer: it is a terrible mistake to think that language is the thing itself, but it is equally damaging in the systematic sense to think that analogy, as Van Til has said, has no point of contact with the thing itself.

Reymond gives Clark’s example of knowledge about King David, but I’m going to offer another one which, I think, accounts for “more parts” of the problem. Let’s say that Timothy is in Ephesus, and of course God knows Timothy is in Ephesus. But Timothy is thinking about Jerusalem for a moment as he reads Paul’s letters, and he turns to face Jerusalem for whatever reason. Of course, Timothy does not have a GPS or even a geographically-exact map, so when he turns to face Jerusalem he turns roughly Southeast and thinks about the city.

Now think on this a second: God knows Timothy is in Ephesus, and knows that Jerusalem exists not at exactly 45º East off the North-South Longitude but more like 47.5º, so when Timothy is facing Southeast, he certainly does not know the position of Jerusalem as God does – he knows the position of Jerusalem “analogically”, which is to say well enough to get there from here, but not ontologically or categorically.

But there is a problem with taking this fact – that Timothy’s knowledge of Jerusalem is not as complete as God’s – and concluding that Timothy and God share no points of contact regarding the truth: both Timothy and God know that Jerusalem exists. In fact, they both know that Jerusalem and Timothy exist. Thus while Timothy’s knowledge of Jerusalem may be analogous to God’s knowledge of Jerusalem, it is illegitimate to say that God and Timothy share no qualitative coincidence. Timothy can know what Jerusalem is, and if he is there, even if he cannot know (as God does) how many people are there at any particular moment or at what point in redemptive history exactly Jerusalem finds itself in during Timothy’s lifetime – the hour and the day, so to speak.

This truth is underscored by Reymond who makes this particular point

What I am urging here is that the success of any analogy turns on the strength of the univocal element in it. Or as Edward John Carnell has stated, the basis for any analogy is the nonagalogical, that is, the univocal.(97)

Speaking of man’s reception of, and understanding of, God’s truth as analogical does not change the fact that God intends man to know something in particular about Himself. Moreover, this analogical understanding of man’s understanding of God’s mind cannot be parlayed into enough skepticism or equivocation to overturn the exegetical apple cart.

So what’s the point? I think there are at least three:

(1) Opting to advance the position that Scripture truth is analogical truth (which I would do) is not the same thing as saying that univocal truth is obscured in such a way that man must find some other co-validators to help achieve some degree of certainty about a given text.

(2) Understanding the basis for analogy – which is, for those keeping score, foundational at its core – allows us to receive analogical data in epistemologically-reliable ways.

(3) Because the source (that is, God) of the analogy we are speaking of (that is, the Bible) is actually a univocal source and also the source of the actual truth being represented (that is, God), there is a strong basis to approach the text without fear of distortion, given the orthodox presupposition that the testimony of the Holy Spirit, removing the blindness of sin, allows man to see the testimony of Scripture.

I have to get ready for work now. I’m sure this will come up again.

[#] A parable about Manitowoc, WI

My wife and I used to live in Wisconsin, in a town called Manitowoc. Manitowoc has a great full-service marina (allegedly the only one on Lake Michigan), and is a great place to live in the summer. The lake does a really swell job of keeping the temperature in Manitowoc enjoyable about 6 months out of the year -- 60's in the daytime, and 40's at night.

The problem with Manitowoc is that in the winter, it is far enough north (like Green Bay) that many nights dip way below zero -- like -20°F and -30°F . That's cold. In fact, it is so cold that if you don't have a heater, you're probably going to freeze to death.

I can remember one week in particular when we lived there that the temperature did not get above 5°F. That’s cold – so cold that salt won’t work on the streets and sidewalks, so everything is just frozen over. That's so cold, in fact, that you can hardly even make a snowman because the snow has little or no cohesion -- the flakes don't have any dampness to stick together, so they stay a fine powder. Even the air has zero humidity -- which you can feel in your nostrils.

I was sure glad, during that week, that I could get up and turn the heater on for myself – because if I couldn’t, I’d be dead right now. Some of you might think that would be a good thing, but my kids would be dead, too, as would my wife. I think it’s amazing that I wouldn’t be here right now except for the fact that a machine kept me and my family alive during those cold weeks in Manitowoc.

Of course, even though I couldn’t have possibly kept myself warm those weeks when the temperature was too cold, at least I could feed myself. Thank God I didn’t need a machine to keep me warm and to feed me. Who would have bothered to turn my machine on if I needed to be kept warm and also to be fed?

Apparently, nobody.

[*] 1 of 3: Who Was Jesus?

Well, OK: after a week of doing other things (like watching both discs of the Incredibles 3 times -- which should be mandatory for anyone who thinks they like either animation or comic books), I've finally gotten back to the blog, and to the matter of NT Wright's book Who was Jesus? Sadly, this is actually a rather old book (c. 1992), but I think that its implications are just seeing the light of day in popular conversations, and it is worth thinking about them for that sake.

Really, I think I have 3 things to say about this book, and this is the first: Wright asks 5 questions in the first chapter of his book that any self-respecting Christian ought to ask. They are:

(1) What was Jesus' relationship with Judaism of the day? Readers of this blog will recognize this question in substance if not form, but Wright asks specifically what Jesus shared with his fellow Jews, where did He contrast them, and most importantly, what did Jesus "say and do that related to Jewish hopes for the immediate future"?

(2) What were Jesus' actual claims? Wright "turns this question around" to ask what Jesus expected people to do if they were listening to Him.

(3) Why did Jesus die, and was a violent death part of the vocation He himself anticipated for what He set out to do?

(4) Why did the early church begin? In other words, what really happened at Easter?

(5) Why are the Gospels what they are? Are they, as Wright asks, "like the better newspapers, substantially true but slanted? Or are they, like the worse newspapers, substantially slanted and untrue? Or what?" And what does this tell us about Jesus and His followers?

It is important to note, I think, that at his foundation, Wright is coming up with his questions from and through the right place: an honest faith. That is to say, Wright is unwilling to advocate his position(s) at all costs. I have touched on this in other forums before, but if one is an advocate (or, as in the realm of the Christian faith, and apologist) for something, one cannot advocate for the truth with a lie. So, for example, if we say that Jesus was the Son of God but He himself denied such a thing, well, that seems to be a pretty big problem if we want to say our belief is true.

Fortunately, Wright does not believe that Jesus denied He was the Son of God. But what is more important is that Wright advocates that Christians ought not to be afraid of the truth about Jesus, whatever it might actually be -- and we should reform our beliefs based on what is actually discovered (or re-iterated) to be true.

So after all that, let me be clear that any self-respecting Christian ought to ask and ought to be able to provide some kind of factual answer for Wright's 5 questions. I think the answers are available at a rudimentary level from the Scriptures, but they are also available by reading some basic Christian history, like Schaff or Kelly -- so you cannot be distracted by ignorant tongue-wagging. If you cannot answer Wright's 5 questions, you probably need to go back to your books before you start arguing with anyone about what you think you think.

Stand by for part 2 …

[*] Intro: Who is Jesus, by NT Wright

I am sure many people reading this blog right now are having flashbacks to the new Star Wars trailer just by seeing the image at the right, thinking of palpatine saying to young Skywalker, "not from a jedi ..."

Just keep your hand over your mouth as you stand there gape-jawed, OK? I read this book last night (literally, all in one night), and it's got a lot going for it -- especially in the context of the discussions I have had with Tim Enloe regarding the nature of truth.

So while I still strongly recommend, with only a few comments, the Church Government book, this is the book I’m going to spend some time examining over the next few posts. Hope no one is bored by that.

[#] Perspectives on Church Government

You can see this book (and buy it, if you're so inclined) in the recommended reading column on the right, so I'm not going to paste an image here in my brief review of it.

This book has been out for about 6 months, I guess, and I have been through it twice for various reasons -- not the least of which is that I was looking for something a little less, um, one-sided than Strauch's book on Biblical Eldership. See: I think it's an important part of the in-house discussion about a topic like church polity that we not just stake out a camp and then defend it with blind zeal. If we are going to be honest about our selves and our motives, it is useful to get counsel of a reasonable few who are godly men and not necessarily of our like opinion. SUre: I have a bias about the "right answer", but men of good faith whom I respect come to a different answer than I do on this question, and it helps to see why.

One great reason to read this book is that it has affirmative and critical essays in it from two of my favorite "religious stuff" writers: Robert Reymond and James White. The really fun part here is that none of the 5 essayists are writing from a bland academic viewpoint: they are all writing in advocation of their particular demoniational viewpoint. I think the reading is always better when the writer obviously has a vested interest.

Anyway, who should read this book? Well, Christian theological "hobbyists" should read this book -- people who enjoy reading about secondary doctrines of the faith from the various non-fringe perspectives will enjoy the accessibility of this book.

I think pastors who are trying to open an ecumenical dialog with other denominations should read this book. Let's face it: seminary is not always a place where you get a balanced analysis of the practical views of the faith, and this book does a great job of not villianizing anybody. Even when Paul Zahl criticized James' White view of ecclesiology as too "high church", (which I find funny every time I read it, because Zahl is an Episcopal Bishop), it is done in the right spirit -- which is to say, it is given appropriate context to wave off any suspicion that anyone is taking a cheap shot.

Most importantly, in our world where Evangelical laymen and "deacons" or "elders" are frequently under-informed about important (though not necessarily deal-breaking) theological matters because they are too boring or don't fit into the program of a purpose-driven church, this book is for anybody who has concerns about what the church ought to look like from the inside. Does is put every action under the microscope, testing which pass the litmus test of James 1 for true religion? No, it does not. But if your church, for example, is taking under consideration the matter of whether it ought to adopt eldership as the model of accountability and church polity, or if you do not understand why your church does what it does in terms of church polity, this book gives you the introductory summary -- complete with fair criticisms -- of each of the 5 major views of Protestant church goverment.

overall rating: *****(4 stars)