Literate writing and literate reading

I have a lot on my heart today, but I am going to post something here which I think I have mentioned often in the last 6 years. Yesterday, I tweeted the following:

Of course, my iPod corrects a lot of typos (whether they need it or not), but it didn't catch that one. So much for actually-literate. But some have asked, “well, what do you mean by that?” That’s a reasonable question, and I have a reasonable answer.

The biggest book in the Bible is the book of Psalms, yes? It’s huge. Nothing compares to it as a feat of literature, or, if I may be so bold, as a feat of theological exposition. And you would think that, for the latter to be true, it would have to be rote seminarian essays in somewhat-bloodless prose. But instead we get stuff like this in Psalms:

Oh give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever!
Let Israel say, "His steadfast love endures forever."
Let the house of Aaron say, "His steadfast love endures forever."
Let those who fear the LORD say, "His steadfast love endures forever."
Out of my distress I called on the LORD; the LORD answered me and set me free.
The LORD is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me?
The LORD is on my side as my helper; I shall look in triumph on those who hate me.
It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in man.
It is better to take refuge in the LORD than to trust in princes.
All nations surrounded me; in the name of the LORD I cut them off!
They surrounded me, surrounded me on every side; in the name of the LORD I cut them off!
They surrounded me like bees; they went out like a fire among thorns;
in the name of the LORD I cut them off!
I was pushed hard, so that I was falling, but the LORD helped me. [Ps 118:1-16]

That’s not an essay. That’s not a book report. That’s not “exposition” in the sense that it has a topic sentence, three examples and a summary statement. It’s a poem about the grace of God.

Now, that should be enough to run after the idea of literate reading – for example, is this poem about a promise being made or a promise being kept? Why is that distinction necessary to comprehend and therefore interpret the meaning of the Psalmist’s thanks to YHVH? A literate person would grasp this immediately and know it’s part of what we’re getting ourselves into here.

But there’s more to it than that. This poem occurs in the Old Testament, and speaks to both some event in the history of Israel, and ultimately to the victory of Christ. Therefore the literate reader sees this psalm occurring in the narrative of the Gospel; that is, somehow the story of which it is a part is necessary and meaningful for the reader who is actually reading the psalm. The ESV study Bible tells us that this is the Psalm the crowds sang as Jesus entered Jerusalem in triumph, and that Christ intimated it would be sung at his second coming.

Now seriously: so what? Is this just another kind of internet snobbery about to make the rounds? Is this just another way to look down the nose at other people and dismiss their use of Scripture and their kind of faith in Christ?

It could be. In fact, I would say that in some circles it is. For me, I bring it up for one reason only.

We love the Bible: all you readers and me love the Bible. Let’s not love it like we love Ice Cream – that is, for the short and self-centered moment in which it tastes sweet and cold. Let’s love it like a living and active thing which will cut us meat from bone, and also equip us, and inform us – if we treat it like what it is.

But this was said to me yesterday, also via Twitter:

I agree. It's most common to tell stories in Scripture. But it is not the way the apostles taught the Church ab Christ.

There are at least three things wrong with this view of the NT which point to a deficiency in having or showing knowledge of literature, writing, etc.:

[1] The apostles preached the Gospel, but they aren’t hardly the only place where Christ is expounded and extolled. For example, the letter to the Hebrews is almost entirely a book about Christ fulfilling the Old Covenant – which is a narrative point, requiring all the types and symbols, and yields a rich theology of salvation in the Bible.

[2] This completely overlooks the role of the four Gospels in presenting the Gospel, and neglects the book of Acts as a book which informs us on everything from soteriology to evangelism to ecclesiology.

[3] This denigrates the Old Testament in an entirely unacceptable way because it ignores the apostolic use of the OT, and it ignores the nearly-complete apostolic reliance on it as the firm foundation of scripture.

The bottom line is that the Bible – not our doctrines of the Bible – will do more to help us reform ourselves and evangelize and inform others than our cultural pup tents set up for a short time in the changing world will do. We have to read it as if it was literature and not as if it was merely the annotated and unabridged version of the reformed confessions.

don't hand me a calendar

Well, I was going to do other things tonight, but as God wills things one of my kids had to go (back) to the hospital (not life-threatening, but urgent and important), so I am here at home for the night with the other sleeping one and I can chat with all of you about Genesis 3, or Genesis 1, or the Lord's Supper, or all of it eventually.

So the quandry I posed to you people was this:

Now, if all of you would put aside your well-catechized systematics for 10 minutes today, I want you to re-read Genesis 3 and tell us in 10,000 characters or less what the purpose or objective of Genesis 3 is.

and we got some answers, all of which are totally adequate. Totally orthodox and fine answers -- and I think all of them really miss the actual purpose and objective of Genesis 3.

Sorry all. You all did really fine things summarizing the narrative. Not one of you really went after why these events matter. Daniel, btw, came really, really close -- which is why he's a side-kick.

Look: in broad-brush form, Gen 3 opens with the serpent asking Eve about what God told her to do, Eve exaggerates God's command, and the serpent then tells her that God is afraid she will become like Him. So Eve eats the fruit because it seems like a good idea, and her husband takes the fruit because she handed it to him, and they both are immediately ashamed.

Now, think about this: while He isn't even really present in a stage-blocking of this scene, the main character of this exchange is God. What did God say? What did God mean? What does God intend? Can you be like God? The temptation of Eve and the fall of Adam is centered on who is God, both in the sense of identity, and in the sense of authority.

And as God then enters, stage left, He asks all the questions and then He hands down all the final answers. That is, Adam and Eve have done something and God does something greater. God doesn't ask, "So what should I do with you now? Let's figure out something equitable because I need a gardener, and you people sometimes do good work."

God hands down both judgment and mercy, and what He says -- that's what goes. The snake crawls on his belly, the woman has pain and a striving for her husband, and the man is cursed to toil rather than to have free dominion over the world. God says it, and there you go: it's done.

So then consider it with me: while it is true then that man is a fallen thing, and God promises to provide a savior, the purpose of Genesis 3 is to point out that God is fully in charge of the events. That is, while man can disobey God, God is still able to provide justice to disobedience, and what He says, goes.

This is important for many reasons, but one reason stands out way head-and-shoulders above the rest: the credibility of the Christian faith.

Some people will make this story out to be about whether or not a snake can talk. Some will make it out to be about anthropology in the genealogical or archeological sense. But this story is not about the scientific origins of mankind: it is about God reigning over the universe which He made out of nothing.

The story at the beginning of Genesis, frankly, is not told to be something like a court reporter's transcript of things -- and we can admit this without forfeiting our claims of inerrancy. What inerrancy does not mean is that Scripture can only be one kind of method of communication -- such as a transcript. You know: if Scripture can only be read as a transcript of events, it leaves a lot of stuff out. If it's a transcript, it seems to be a sort of excessively-edited transcript which in the end has omitted details we could have used.

So when we say that the purpose of Genesis 3 (for example) is to show that God is in charge of the universe, we can say that because Genesis 1 is about the fact that the universe itself relies on God for everything, top to bottom. That's why Genesis 1 is written the way it is, why Genesis 2 is written the way it is, and why these come before Genesis 3 -- why Genesis 3, clearly, doesn't lead off the narrative.

Now, in that, it's interesting that Genesis 3 doesn't rely in the least on how many days transpired in Genesis 1. So when we want to talk about how all this stuff began, and how we got to today from there, it seems a little, um, ignorant of our own story to try to beat people into submission over 7 literal days when the number of days is not the point of the story.

And before we go forward one more word, I have to also say this so that the whole internets doesn't implode: nobody who knows me thinks I deny a literal 7-day creation. Most people who know me are somewhat blinkered by my obstinance regarding what I consider the undeniable fact that God created the universe in 6 days, and on the 7th day, He rested. I believe it.

The problem is that the fight for such a thing doesn't really begin in Genesis. Genesis doesn't hand you a calendar and ask you to memorize it before it will tell you any more about God: it simply lists an ordinal creation (that is, a series of events), and reiterates creation as a network of cardinal relationships, and then goes on to make the point that God controls it all in spite of man's disobedience.

You don't have to believe that Gen 1-2 started on a Sunday and ended on a Saturday to get that Gen 1 is talking about the fact that God created all things, and placed man at the top of creation as His chief minister to creation.

And let me say this: you don't win any apologetic merit badges by demanding a 7-day creation when the point of that story has nothing to do with a calendar week. You in fact should take at least one demerit for doing so -- and you will, from those you are seeking to evangelize.

"yeah, but!" comes the response for many, if not all, of you loyal readers. "Yeah but what about the word 'day'? Don't we need to get very interested in how the word 'yom' is used in Genesis 1 so we can finally put to bed how old the universe is?"

Aha, says I. How old the universe is? Where in Genesis do we find the intent of the author to express how old the universe is?

You can sleep on that this weekend while I go about the business of tending to sick family and my poor bookstore. And since you're right now so calendar-obsessed, figure out which day is the Lord's day, and get with His people in His house this weekend so you can prove -- at least to yourself -- that the objective of Genesis 3 means something to you other than the means to win an argument.

what's the point?

Because I don't really have time today to post what I intended to post over at TeamPyro today, I'm going to post this here as a prelude to a new topic for this blog, which is the Lord's Supper. And it's a long prelude to that topic, but today's post is relatively short.

I want everyone to think for a few minutes today about Genesis 1. But in order to think about Genesis 1, we need to start in Genesis 3.

Now, here's the topic for you to hash out in the meta while I attend to the business of life: Genesis 3 is about something, right? Now, if all of you would put aside your well-catechized systematics for 10 minutes today, I want you to re-read Genesis 3 and tell us in 10,000 characters or less what the purpose or objective of Genesis 3 is.

Re-read it, think about it, and post your thinkings in the meta.

On Sermons

I was flitting around today trying to avoid doing work, and I stumbled onto this post by iMonk at BHT about preaching.

Believe it or not, this is not a fisking of iMonk. This is the perspective of a guy who used to be an English major on the art of speaking publicly about some piece of literature.

You know: the degree most reputable universities and colleges give out to English majors is "B.A. (or M.A.) for Literature in English" – because one doesn’t really study grammar or the alphabet for 4 or 6 years in college: one reads way too many books. One reads poems until one either "gets" it or throws up. One reads plays, which is its own special punishment for majoring in literature.

And there's something interesting that happens there which is applicable to the art of preaching: not once in 6 years of studying literature did we do a "word study" for an hour to plunge the depths of meaning in one word over the larger portrait of meaning the author was communicating in his book or play or poem or whatever.

Now, the disjunction between what one does in reading Literature in English and what one does when reading literature in translation (cf. the Bible) is that in the latter case, the reader has to grasp what the translator was doing while at the same time seek out what the original author was doing when the text in question was written. That is: was the translator seeking to be as transparent as possible, or was the translator seeking to do something independent of the original work as well as remain faithful to the work?

For those of you who are really into this geekish analysis, think about Samuel Butler's translation of Homer's Odyssey, which is a prose translation of a poem. Butler's intent was to translate the words as best he could, but in doing that he sacrificed the matters of diction, form, and genre – so we get the story from classical literature well enough, but it's not hardly poetry: it's prose; it lacks the magic of poetic form even if all the words of the original are in tact. On the other hand, about 50 years earlier, Chapman translated Homer as a poem, and as such he took liberty with the words of the original poem in order to convey, in one poetic form/style in order to convey the art and power of the original in a second language. No real story changes were made by Chapman, but you can't line up his poem to Homer's and go line by line and learn the Greek – it would be impossible.

The translator does something to the text when he brings it from the source language to the receiving language, and understanding what he did is important for those who are only reading the receiving language. In that, word studies have a place in preaching. But my contention is that it is a subordinate place to preaching, as they say, "the whole counsel of God".

John MacArthur's excellent book on Bible study, Unleashing God's Word in you Life, makes this point clearly, as does any really good book on Bible study: you have to get the big picture before you try to sort out the details. For example, the book of Jonah is not about a big fish. There is a big fish in Jonah (or, well, Jonah does wind up in a big fish, right?), but this book is about the hardness of Jonah vs. the love of God toward the unrighteous. And if we read Jonah to try to justify the presence of the big fish, or to make the big fish into an allegory of this or that, we miss the actual point that God is willing and able to do things even for the enemies of Israel which we, as men, are not.

You have to read Jonah the first time to see how it comes together; then, you have to read Jonah to see what the parts are in order to better understand how they come together. And it's the same for any book of the Bible.

Listen: preach the word, in season and out of season – but don’t just preach on one word from the word. Preach the Word: preach Christ. Get the whole thing out there. Don't get so engrossed in one word that you miss all the others: that's called missing the forest for the trees.

Now back to your day.

In 100 words or less ...

Well, Andrew Sullivan is going to ignore my last post (he's a big fish; I'm a little fly), but the question of the iMonk's affirmations about inerrancy, frankly, needs a little hair tonic and clippers. So to keep the uproar to a minimum, I'm going to talk about his position in 100 words or less, and I invite his fan club to come and try to do the same.

Is that fair?

iMonk was quoted thus:

I do not doubt God or his ability to express revelation exactly as he wants it to be. The thought that God cannot reveal truth unless it is in a book that is supernaturally prevented from having normal, imperfect, human expressions of its time really never occurs to me. I assume that within the expressions, thought world, worldviews and literary genres of the time, God got exactly what he wanted and I can preach it without having to be concerned about "errancy."

My thought on reading this is that the writer has never considered what errors in the text says about the authority of the text. A categorically-perfect comparison is the Scofield notes to the KJV. Scofield's original notes were, frankly, errant – and only the most ardent KJVO clown will demand Scofield's first edition of notes for his KJV. Oxford has been kind enough to repair Scofield's work – twice – so the Scofield III notes are at least serviceable.

Who exactly is prepared to "repair" the book of Luke or of John? And on what basis ought those repairs be made?

Dear Andrew Sullivan ...

We play a game at my house with people who make unsubstantiated claims. It's called "name three".

Since your comments are closed, I leave mine open for you to play along.

Wallace fan club update

No, I haven't fixed the t-shirt yet. I found this entry at bible.org on Bible translations, and if you haven't read it, you should.

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In other news, check out my bookstore's new template and let me know if your browser is crashing when it opens. I have one computer in my beta assortment that can't seem to open the page, but everything else from Mac to Windows to Unix seems to be OK. Your opinion may differ, and I am interested in knowing what happens.

epistemolopoloosa

J. P. Moreland goes too far in saying that evangelicals have gone too far. I leave it to you to decide in what way -- you'll enjoy thinking about it.

handles and weight

I hate to break up all the really interesting side-shows going on here at my blog, but I had a half-hour today and something has been coming up this week over and over as I have been chatting to flesh-and-blood people, and I wanted to play it here a little for a wilder audience that will either ridicule it or sharpen it with their various tools of rock, copper, bronze and iron.

Here's a little passage from Mark 4 (ESV), with the verse numbers left in to keep us all on the same sheet of music:

30 And he said, "With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? 31It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, 32yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade."

33 With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it. 34He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything.

35 On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, "Let us go across to the other side." 36And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. 37And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. 38But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" 39And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40He said to them, "Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?" 41And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?"

And any person you meet except the really militantly self-absorbed would agree with the following statement:

The Gospel of Mark is a historical account of jesus' life, and as such, this passage of Mark reports historical events in the life and ministry of Jesus.

Now, here's where many people will bail out of the discussion: How much time elapses between v. 32 and v. 35 in Mark 4?

I mean, this is a historical account, right? So it doesn’t seem very problematic to say, without being very cheeky, "The rest of the day, cent. Pay attention."

That's fine, I guess – no reason to argue about that. But what did Jesus say during the rest of the day? We know in general what Jesus said – Mark says, "With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it. He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything" – but we don't have any kind of a record of what Jesus said in the rest of the day.

Now, that's pretty much undeniable – we don't have any way to tell what Jesus said specifically the rest of that day. And worse still, when v. 35 begins, "on that day, when evening had come," Mark may also be saying "on that day when this next stuff happened", so it's another day entirely.

And I bring this up not to impugn the clarity of Scripture, but to instead ask what it means to have a class of literature which conveys historical facts. In the first place, we can see that not every minute detail has been included in Scripture – how often Jesus drank water, for example, is not included in the holy writ. In the second place, there are massive omissions of dates and time – so much so that there's no way to say that the "synoptic" Gospels actually list the events of Christ's life as if they were a travelogue.

But if this is so, how does the good Christian say that the Bible says things which are true, let alone that the Bible is truth? How do we trust them, for example, as history when these texts are practically date-free?

Well: we have to be better readers than my first-grader. We have to be somewhat literate readers who understand things like genre and type and authorial intent. Because it turns out that Scripture is clear, and is truth, but not in some wooden sense where words don’t do what they do in every other place we use them.

So on the one hand, to stick with my example of Mark, we can say that Mark wrote a historical account of the life of Christ. But on the other hand, he wasn't transcribing Jesus' diary of his 3-year ministry: Mark was ordering the events, or grouping them, or relating them, to underscore specific truths about the life of Christ – building contrasts and comparisons in the events in order to make what we can call expositional points.

That's going to rub a lot of people the wrong way, but who asked them? Here's what you can't do with the Bible: you can't demand that it be "narrative" and not define what kind of "narrative" it is, especially in its diversity of text types. But once you define its genre – its type by book and author – you then have the broad opportunity to read and receive what's written as it was intended to be received.

And I say all that to say this: we can't get all broken up when somebody comes to us and wants to tell us that the Bible is a shaky foundation for faith. For centuries – millennia almost – the Bible has been recognized as one of the great sets of literature man has available to read. And in that, we can’t read it like it's simple hack writing; we can't receive it as great literature but expect it to be easier to read than Milton or Shakespeare or Spencer. The Bible is a beautiful thing, and in that it has all the attributes of beauty: simplicity and complexity, accessibility and incomprehensibility, small handles that even a kid can grasp but massive weight that grown men will strain at to carry.

We have a beautiful thing in the Bible and we can't let someone scare us off that just because they don’t really understand how beauty works. There's more to be said about this, but I have run out of daylight today, so think about that and we'll come back to it eventually.

Gadfly and I

My friend and occasional fellow channel-rat ("occasional" because I am only an "occasional" IRC channel rat these days) Alan Kurschner posted a fine piece of reasoning about KJVO-ism at AOMiN.org today. It recounts 10 good reasons to reject King James only (and it's sister, King James "mostly" as the "ecclesiastical" text) as the translation of the word of God in English, not to be tampered with.

He deals, for the most part, with the "majority rule" argument, and that's fine -- it's the prevailing wind in KJVO advocacy. But I think there's a far more compelling argument against KJVO which dueling about texts types doesn't approach. It has to do with how the Bible was actually circulated for 1000 years amongst Christians -- in Latin.

By a long shot, the primary mode of transmission of the Bible among people in the church was the Vulgate -- especially in the West. And the Vulgate is, frankly, a somewhat-inferior translation of the texts in whatever form Jerome found them. Yet in that form God's word changed the world.

B. B. Warfield notwithstanding, the most powerful argument against KJVO is that God's word doesn't rely on the integrity of the methods of men's dissemination of printed pages. The psalmist says, "For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven," but also, "I have not departed from thy judgments: for thou hast taught me."

The trap the KJVO guy falls into in thinking that God doesn't have a plan for His word, doesn't have a purpose for His word. We can't fall into that same trap and then fight about who's hole we are in. He can have the hole.

This is not an argument against integrity in translation, or having right methods -- because we are receivers of the text, and we ought to receive it with some kind of faith-fortified, Christ-exalting humility. But the purpose of right methods is discipleship and evangelism (not necessarily in that order). Right methods ought to lead us to the right view of what God is doing and has done, rather than replacing one human work with another and then arguing which is really the least-errant.

Just one. No, really ...

After a week of listening to guys like Roy Hargrave and Tom Ascol speak (yeah, yeah, David Wells ...), I'm full. Not another bite. I couldn't read a single word of Zens paper even as a purgative.

However, I do have a question for anyone reading this blog today -- and it stems from some things that happened to me and Dan and Phil not directly related to the Founders Conference, or related to anyone we saw at the conference.

Let's imagine you're a pastor, and you have a statement of faith which begins like this:

We believe:

the Bible is God's Word. It is accurate, authoritative and applicable to our every day lives. (2 Timothy 3:15-17)

Seriously now: good on you. That's real meat -- real Confessional foundations there. That's where any other statement about the faith you could make would have a place to stand as you roll out your convictions.

But then let's imaging that this is the rest of your statement of faith:

there is one God who is the Creator of all things and is eternally existent in three persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. (John 14:18-27)

that man was created in God's image, but is separated from God by sin. His only hope of redemption is in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. (Gen. 1:26-31, 3:1-7; Romans 5:12-21)

in salvation by grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

that our eternal destination of either Heaven or hell is determined by our response to the Lord Jesus Christ. (John 3:16-17, 5:24)

in the baptism of the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in other tongues as a subsequent gift to salvation. (Acts 19:1-6)

it is the Father's will for believers to become whole, healthy and successful in all areas of life. Because of the fall, many may not receive the full benefits of God's will while on earth. That fact, though, should never prevent all believers from seeking the full benefits of Christ's provision in order to better serve others.

1) Spiritual (2 Corinthians 5:17-21)

2) Mental (Philippians 4:7-8)

3) Physical (1 Peter 2:24 )

4) Financial (2 Corinthians 9:6-10)

As they say: that's it. That's the whole statement of faith.

Without getting all fisky over the problems evident in this affirmation, let me ask you: if the Bible is "God's Word ... accurate, authoritative and applicable to our every day lives", this statement of faith seems to leave out, well, most of the Bible.

I couldn't say much more today without passing out from theological overload, but I want you to think about this: if this is a valid statement of faith for a church, why would anyone have a reason to attend that church faithfully? Would attendance even be on your radar?

I know it is for you people. Be in the Lord's house on the Lord's day with the Lord's people this weekend, and try to treat the "accurate, authoritative and applicable" Word of God as if it has more than 27 verses of Scripture in it. Because you know what? It does -- and they are.

The Berean See and Call

Last week I was manning TeamPyro for various reasons, and I neglected this blog for that reason. Some of you have given up on ever reading the end of a critique of Jon Zens' paper, and I apologize for that.

That said, in one of the threads, Steve Camp posted a couple of long comments, and I have said that I'm going to blog it here. Thus:

There are a dozen or so minor reasons I think Steve's comments need special attention, all of them outputs of my own personal brain jar, like the problem of "readers" like Cyd who points me to 9Marks material for my information in general when the post she is commenting in a almost entirely a citation of Mark Dever from 9Marks material. But those are minor issues -- not about the topic at hand. If there's a major reason, it's at the bottom of this post.

Steve began his first exhortation of me (which I replied to) by saying this:

1.We must remember that the pastor/elder of a church has no authority inherent in the office itself. His authority only extends to that which the Word of God affords him - no more, no less.

I let Steve off the hook on this one in my first response to him, but since he's intent on making his point by every means necessary, we're going to start here.

This statement is self-contradictory and meaningless. On the one hand, Steve wants to say that the pastor/elder has "no authority" based on office, but then he wants to say that the Word of God affords him limited authority. I would agree with the latter, and I would avoid, at all costs, the former because -- as Steve is very worried about in other people -- that statement is completely unbiblical.

To be sure, Elders are not sergeants or majors or generals (or as Doug Wilson said this weekend, "martinets") in God's army: they are ministers of the word, teachers of the people, and servants - - statements I am already on-record as affirming in many places. They don't act autonomously, capriciously, or self-indulgently, and they don't have carte blanche to do whatever they see fit. I have never implied such a thing -- I have never implied that a pastor (especially a lone pastor with no elders and no accountability) should run things in his own image.

In fact, I said this in reply to Steve: "This doesn’t mean that the Gospel is what they say it is: it means that they are tasked to be faithful, and in that fidelity they have the authority to correct, discipline and admonish in a way which is more than merely argumentative. I'd go to Titus 1 & 2 to make that point specifically." So it is hard to guess where the idea that I would say something like what comes next comes from.

Steve then makes his point for saying what he said perfectly clear, in case we were too sleepy to see it:

Subsequently, there are no protestant popes to obey.

And again, I'm pretty sure I never implied such a thing. The series Steve wants to correct here is not about the scope of the offices of the church -- it's about how people, average Christian people, ones who are not leading the church but are themselves under leadership - - should think of and treat God's church in the first place.

One of the things evident in the NT is that God thinks His church is precious: it is the exclusive place where His people are found. And in that, the idea that Christians are better off in family churches or some other such modern innovation which isolates the Christian from the body of Christ is a corruption of the commands we receive in the Bible.

But here's something I think is worth underscoring for the skimmers and the people who won't even do that before dropping a comment in the meta to defend or encourage Steve: I don't think Steve would deny that -- which is why I won't spend any time outlining the Biblical case for such a thing. Steve thinks people should be joined to a church; I do, too. The question is only to what extent does that connection have value in practice .

Thus, when Steve says this:

1. though your "don't leave church under any condition unless they force you out" sounds admirable--it is not biblical. Be dogmatic where the Word is dogmatic; but give room for conscience and wisdom given under godly counsel where Scripture is silent and preference might apply.

We have a sight line on what is bothering him: he is worried that I think there are no circumstances in which someone should leave a church -- and that's simply false.

But I want to start someplace here which Steve does not: with the view that the church -- the local church, not some hypothetical church-in-America, or the eternally-known body of all the ones effectively called-out by God to Himself -- is actually God's plan for things in our spiritual life.

As I outlined in my series at TeamPyro, from the first day -- the day of Pentecost and the pouring out of the Spirit to fulfill the prophecy of Joel -- people who come to Christ are added to the body of Christ not in some hypothetical way but in a concrete and identifiable way. They are joined together. This adding-to is not provisional; you can't find anywhere that says that the believers are joined together until such a time when they thought something else would be better.

And what's worse, there is no command or exhortation in all of Scripture for people to abandon a local church. None. You can't find one.

What you can find is a basis for deductive reasoning which leads one to say, "you should leave that church". On pages 890-891 of his A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith, Robert Reymond gives a specific line of reasoning to deduce a singular reason for separation: "separation from one's church or denomination is appropriate if it will not discipline heretics." This conclusion is reached by the following line of reasoning:

1. Elders are charged to guard the church by guarding the truth
2. Apostates and heretics ought to leave the church
3. Unrepentent heretics who do not leave the church should be disciplined

And the 4th point is stated, above.

But, I think, Steve would reject this line of reasoning -- because he doesn't think that the the role of an elder is different than the role of a "layman". You can see this in his second point:

2. The congregation of any church should hold their leadership accountable to the office and heavenly charge they have been given by God's mercy. As faithful Bereans they have the duty to examine what they teach with the Word of God. Per Paul's instruction in 1 Thess. 5: "test all things, cling to what is good."

In some way, Steve has simply ignored all of the places Paul exhorts for honoring and submitting to the Elders, and discounted the commands for what Elders ought to be, instead choosing for a radical congregationalism which makes the elders of the church the most pitiable of men: men accountable to a consensus decision.

Now, to make sure that this statement is not mishandled by Steve's many defenders and by Steve himself, let me underscore something: I agree with Dr. Reymond about the responsibility of believers in the worst-case scenario. People should not pretend there is a church where there is no church. But the place where this occurs is not when the pastoral cup is half-empty: it occurs where the cup refuses to hold any liquid at all.

And think on this: Dr. Reymond's view is about the failure of elders to be elders in the sense that they are failing to exercising authority. The mark of a church which has stopped being a church is that the elders do no fulfill their duty to uphold the correction and discipline of heretics.

But how does a layman or woman do that? How do they decide that their church is no longer a church in that sense? The only way to do that is by employing a Biblical method for resolving differences. Steve's a very staunch advocate of Mt 18 when it comes to most things, and he should be an equally-staunch advocate of it in this case when what is at stake is not merely a personal wrong but the life and unity-through-truth of the church. It is in that context which I advocate the "don't leave until they toss you out" application. You should be clear about your concerns if you have them; you should have a couple-three witnesses who agree with you if your concerns are valid; those with whom you have issues should have a chance to respond and not merely cowtow because your nose is out of joint.

And in that process, there is something which is implied: a final submission to the judgment of the whole (local) church. See: if the church decides that your complaint doesn't have any merit, or that you're a trouble maker for bringing it up, it has to say so. And in saying so, you have an objective basis for either submitting to its judgment or doing something else.

Let's take the worst case scenario: let's say that the pastor is caught on tape with your spouse doing something which one does not describe in Christian circles. It's on video. So you take it to him, and to your spouse, and they both laugh you off -- it's nothing, they say.

Well, it's not nothing. It's on video. So you take your Sunday school teacher, the head usher, and your pastor's wife with you next time, and the witnesses agree that it is something, but those two still laugh it off as a lark -- not a sin, and not a reason to be upset.

Well, it's not: it's on video. Anyone with two eyes (you think) will see it as sin and condemn it. So you get a place at the next business meeting, and you bring up the video (you don't show it in public because of content), and a decision is called for from the church on the matter. After discussion, the church says -- to your surprise -- that it is nothing and that you owe the pastor and your wife an apology.

Listen: you have your walking papers from them. When adultery is called nothing and you are called upon to apologize for calling adultery a sin, move on. But find another church .

And if what's at stake is not in the same league as calling adultery a sin, then maybe you have to think about whether you think that you're the one who is infallible. See: having a high view of eldership cannot be confused with thinking these men are infallible -- but what cannot happen is turning your own current state of maturity and Bible knowledge into its own infallible fortress. If you are the only one who has the ability to tell the difference between the Gospel and all the damnable frauds -- and all you see is damnable fraud -- you have established a church of one member.

The view that each person must always test everything is hyper- atomistic, and negates the counsel of scripture which defines the role of elders in a church. The Elders are explicitly the ones who are tasked to guard orthodoxy, and when they fail to do so, they have fallen down on their primary task in the body.

The objection will undoubtably come -- as Steve has already posed it by citing Strauch on this matter -- that this view is authoritarian and violates the principles of Scripture. But the problem with this objection is that it misses Strauch's point and overlooks that Scripture doesn't say that any ol' guy can be an Elder. Eldership has qualifications, and as such bases the duties of the Elder on those qualifications.

Saying Elders with meaningful authority -- for example, the authority to write and deliver a sermon in church for the exhortation and edification of God's people without passing it through a series of other hands to make sure it is pure enough to be read in public -- are inherently authoritarian and somehow oppressive mistakes "having authority" with "being a law unto one's self". Of course elders are tasked to teach what the Bible teaches; of course elders are tasked not to lord over people. This is a premise of eldership in the way they are qualified to that office .

It is not authoritarian in public life to have judges who frankly decide cases every day with minimal oversight. We can see that as having authority subject to law, and we ought to be able to see that having elders who rule wisely, by God's word, not as necessarily authoritarian but as necessary for church to be church at all.

After that, Steve's comments about pastors being teachable men is fine -- who can object to that? But what is far more necessary in a church -- because it is the practical application for all but a handful of people in the church -- is that the rest of us who are not actually called to pastoral ministry be teachable, gracious and willing to admit we are not ourselves finished goods in the Christian life. The caution that Pastors ought to be teachable falls somewhat flat in a country where people are themselves unteachable -- the phrase the Bible uses is "hard hearted" .

This is where my previous comments to Steve really take some shape. Steve has made a career out of complaining about the theological and spiritual vacuum which exists in CCM. And let me put in bold letters here, he's right about that, his ministry there is warranted, and somebody should listen to him about that. But if CCM has this problem, it is a symptom of something which must, because of the kind of spiritual sickness it is, also effect the ability of the average church member to stand in judgment over his or her own elders.

If people cannot tell the difference between the great hymns of the faith and what happens on Christian radio every day, how can they be expected to hold pastors or elders accountable in the way Steve is demanding in his concerns to this point in his comments? It seems incongruous at best to think that someone (not Steve, but some randomly-selected member at a randomly-select evangelical church) who thinks CCM is a method of spiritual edification has the equipment to discern whether or not his or her pastor has made a grave theological mistake.

Steve also says this:

Here are a few ways that people can hold their leadership accountable in Christ:

1. Edify through prayer (1 Timothy 2:1-3)
2. Examine their message (Acts 17:11-12)
3. Encourage godly character (1 Timothy 3:1-7; Titus 1:5-8)
4. Entreat their shepherding (Hebrews 13:7, 17)
5. Exhort the unfaithful (1 Timothy 5:19-21)

The brethren of any church have a great duty in their commitment to that local body to honor their leadership by holding them accountable to their biblical duty.

It seems to me that Steve can't decide what categories he's using to make this list -- except, of course, good baptist alliteration. If this is a list of things Scripture says people should do for their pastors, that's a broad enough category to keep the list. But if Steve, for example, thinks "prayer" is a kind of "accountability" -- especially as it is exhorted in 1 Tim 2 -- he's going to have to define how he is using that word.

While I alluded to it in my previous comments to Steve, I'll say it here plainly: this is the major reason for responding to him at all. At some point, Steve is going to have to examine his own ability to handle Scripture, because 1 Tim 2:1-3 is not about leaders of the church but about government leaders , people with secular political power who are tasked to keep society at large stable and safe. While it is certainly not ungodly to pray for our elders in church (it is in fact evident in Scripture frequently -- cf. 2 Cor 1:11; Eph 6:18; Phil 1:9; Col 4:3; etc.), and it is right to pray that these men be edified and spiritually sustained by God, this passage doesn't tell us about that at all. There is actually a significant irony in Steve citing this passage because what Paul says here speaks to whether or not the men in political power are using their authority to allow us (the church) to lead a "quiet and godly life". Paul here entreats the church to prayer in order that God, in His authority, will cause those in political power to use their authority to allow the church to live in peace.

Even if Steve was looking for a passage that was supposed to be talking about "edifying" church elders in some non-specific way, I think Steve has shot pretty wide of the mark. At a glance, John Gill would disagree with him, as would the 1599 Geneva Study Bible, Matthew Henry, and A.T. Robertson. And John Calvin says this about the passage:

For kings He expressly mentions kings and other magistrates because, more than all others, they might be hated by Christians. All the magistrates who existed at that time were so many sworn enemies of Christ; and therefore this thought might occur to them, that they ought not to pray for those who devoted all their power and all their wealth to fight against the kingdom of Christ, the extension of which is above all things desirable. The apostle meets this difficulty, and expressly enjoins Christians to pray for them also. And, indeed, the depravity of men is not a reason why God's ordinance should not be loved. Accordingly, seeing that God appointed magistrates and princes for the preservation of mankind, however much they fall short of the divine appointment, still we must not on that account cease to love what belongs to God, and to desire that it may remain in force. That is the reason why believers, in whatever country they live, must not only obey the laws and the government of magistrates, but likewise in their prayers supplicate God for their salvation. [Commentary on Timothy & Titus, ccel.org]

It's not about church elders at all: it's about praying for rulers who, as Paul wrote, persecuted the church, in order that God would establish peace for the sake of the church.

My concern is not whether Steve can identify the precepts of the faith: it's whether he knows where they are found in Scripture. If Steve is worried about men who are mishandling the word of God, he has to start in his own, um, camp to make sure he's not part of the problem.

For the record, I will not be answering e-mails about this post. Please bring your specific concerns about this post to the meta. This is a matter of public statements made in public forums, and it ought to be, then, discussed openly, frankly, and publicly.

Prelude: a word on the Bereans

I have some other things which I am going to post today after I finish editing them, but I wanted to say a word about Acts 17:11-12 before I got to that, and I have 15 minutes this morning …

Now [the Bereans] were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so. Many of them therefore believed, with not a few Greek women of high standing as well as men.

It's common for people to consider the noble Bereans as people who were somewhat bibliocentric in their worldview, and that we ought to emulate in what they did with Paul's message to them. We should, as it says, "examine the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so". Therefore, in the same way the Bereans were skeptics who scrutinized Paul, we should be skeptics who scrutinize all men when they bring some teaching before us.

But we should consider what is being said here both in context and in the force of what Luke wrote. On the one hand, when Paul reasons from the Scriptures with the Thessalonians, they rioted. They didn’t actually listen to what he was saying. Luke says that, "the Jews were jealous, and taking some wicked men of the rabble, they formed a mob, set the city in an uproar". So what occurs in Thessalonica is ignoble.

But then Paul and Silas go to Berea, and what we have to consider is that Paul did the same thing in Berea that he did in Thessalonica. That is, "Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead".

And when this happens in Berea, the Jews there were themselves not forming mobs as a result of Paul's exposition of Scripture: they received the word with eagerness. Against the jealousy of the Thessalonians, there is the nobility of the Bereans. But in what way were they noble?

When we read the English, it seems that the Bereans were skeptical of Paul, and then because they compared his teaching to Scripture, they received him gladly. But factually, unless Paul was doing something innovative in this synagogue because of what happened to him at the last one, Paul was already giving an argument from Scripture – the Bereans didn't have to go back and see if there was any Scripture which substantiated Paul's message: Paul's message was, as Luke says, "reasoned ... from the Scriptures".

But there is something under the text of the last clause which often gets missed, and that is the optative mood of the verb "echo" regarding the manner in which the Bereans searched the Scripture.

Here's what my handy Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics says about the Optative mood:

There are less than 70 optatives in the entire NT. In general, it can be said that the optative is the mood used when the speaker widhes to portray as action as possible. It usually addresses cognition, but may e used to appeal to volition. Along with the subjunctive and the imperative, the optative is one of the potential or oblique moods. [Wallace. 480]

Dr. Wallace also goes on to say this :

The very paucity of the optative in the NT illustrates a principle of syntactical shifts between Attic and Koine:When one morphosyntactic feature if becoming absorbed by another in Hellenistic Greek and when a Hellenistic author uses the rarer form, he normally does so consciously and with understanding. [Wallace, 480]

The emphasis, btw, is in the original. And as one example of the oblique optative, Acts 17:11 is listed among 6 others.

Well, so what? What's that mean in Acts 17:11? When it says that they examined the Scripture to see if these things were true, the implication of the optative is that they hoped that they were true. They were not scrutinizing Paul to see if he was lying: they were examining and evaluating the Scriptures which Paul presented them because they wanted to believe what the Scriptures said.

This is a very nuanced approach to this passage – and it may not forbid the run-of-the-mill understanding of the nobility of the Bereans. But what made these people noble was not a high skepticism on their part, but a willingness to receive the Scripture for what it says. They would rather examine the Scripture Paul presents to them rather than riot blindly out of jealousy. So as we turn to the Bereans as examples of how we should live as Christians, let's think about whether we believe they are demonstrating skepticism and a cold, rational eye – or if they are demonstrating something else which looks like the hope which Scripture points us toward.

Stump the Chump

My guess is that this list is going to be a bit of a let-down for the people who asked for it for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that it's not like I have kept a file of these questions, so I'm working from my own flawed memory. Another reason is that the average theology blog reader is far and away more self-educated about the Bible and about various controversies than the average teenager is, so some of these are going to be somewhat run-of-the-mill.

I could probably write 500 words on why this list is what it is, but that would waste all my time for inserting the list. Here ya go:

• Bible Contradictions. Yes, I know: {yawn}. However, while you may or may not be able to give a specific answer for any or every alleged Bible contradiction, here's the short list of categories all the ones I have ever encountered fall under --
  1. Anachronistic Scientific interpretation: like the "smallest seed" conundrum -- no, the mustard seed is not the smallest seed in all of creation, but the Jews didn't know that. The point of the Mustard Seed parable is not to make a scientific point but to demonstrate the expansive nature of the Kingdom using something these people understood. Should Jesus have started this parable out saying, "you know, in a land which is across an ocean you guys don't even know about, there's this water Lilly that has as seed that's the size of a mote of dust -- and it doesn't really grow to be that big, so the Kingdom of God is not like that ... Hmm ... oh wait -- it's like a Mustard seed ..."
  2. Materialistic demands imposed on the Supernatural: for example, Noah's Ark and the Flood. All told, there's probably no naturalistic explanation of the Flood -- because it wasn't brought on by naturalistic causes. It was caused by God, and the solution God provided for Noah and his kin, plus all those animals, should also be seen in that light. The irony of this kind of objection, I find, is that they want to go after the "big" ones -- like the sun stopping in the sky, or the parting of the Red Sea -- but they won't just come out and say, "And people don;t just raise from the dead, vis a vis Jesus." A foundational tenet of the Christian faith is a belief in a transcendent God who can do as He pleases in creation because He is its cause and sustainer. Failing to see this is a fatal error.
  3. False demand for conformity: Like the fact that the 4 Gospels tell the history of Jesus' life in 4 distinct ways -- which always cuts both ways. On the one hand, there's no question that the story Matthew tells is distinct from the story John tells -- and on the other hand they are plainly about the same man and the same historical events. The objector usually wants the 4 Gospels to be uniform in detail, but when it is pointed out that they are uniform in substance and the details underscore the perspective and audience intended by the human writer, they retreat to hyperliteralism and abandon any literate way of receiving the texts. Which really leads us to ...
  4. Plain failure to comprehend: The example I always use for this is Psa 3 in which the skeptical reader skims the handful of verses and condemns both David and God of being barbarous for wanting to "break the teeth" of David's enemies. Does David want God to be an Ultimate Fighting Champ -- or does David want God to redeem him and save him, and in the process punish the wicked for blasphemy? David is calling for justice, not brawling here -- and to misread the poetic language in Psa 3 is to read as if one had not progressed past first grade in reading comprehension.
• Radical Skepticism: This view is manifest in the blogosphere by the complaint, "but how do you know which interpretation is right?" and usually manifest in teens by the question, "How can we trust what the Bible says since it is so old? Is the stuff in the Bible for us today?"
  
  This question is far more sincere in this form than in the blogospheric form, for 2 reasons. The first is that intellectually, teens are sharp, but even the brightest ones are all saw and no wood, if you see what I'm saying -- they don't have enough information to answer questions like this one, so even if they have a brain like a 10" 5 HP table saw, they don't know what to cut or how wide to rip it.
  
  The second reason is that this is what they pick up from the culture. And before we start cursing public schools and MTV, most adults aren't really much different. We pick it up at work and at the ball park and whatever -- a kind of individualistic skepticism which negates all kinds of authorities and all kinds of methods of knowing (I'd call them "epistemological footholds", but I'd lose half of you by saying that). For adults, this kind of thing is almost unforgivable -- because this kind of skepticism doesn't hold up in practice. It's lazy disobedience which, if we practiced it at work, would get us fired inside 2 weeks.
  
  But teens -- kids -- are sheltered enough that they can hang with this sort of mental disingenuity until they have to get a real job and get away with it.
  
  So how does one address it? I'd take them to Deu 5 & 6 where God tells us the purpose of His Scriptures, or to Exodus 20 where the 10 Commandments are plainly spelled out. In the former case, I'd outline the fact that God says that the reason He gives us these writings is so that we will not forget Him. God does not make a promise to always appear before us as a pillar of fire or a pillar of smoke: God makes it clear that for all time, His Word is the foundation for knowing who He is and what He has done.
  
  But because we live in a pomo age of experientialism, Exo 20 is a different kind of example. All in all, there are 5 commandments which they will probably not want to pay attention to, and 5 which they cannot deny are true today. You can get them to admit that honoring parents, telling the truth, not stealing, not murdering, and not coveting are true and virtuous. If that holds up, the others can be proven by induction. For example, if Moses believed that it was evil to tell a lie, how could Moses say that God gave him the commandments if there was no God, or that God said something other than what he wrote down?
  
  The key to these kinds of objections is to demonstrate not only that the objection falls apart under scrutiny, but that there is something far more obvious and useful present in Scripture -- even if it causes us to reach conclusions which are costly or hard to follow.
• Calvinism vs. Arminianism/Lazy Evangelicalism. They usually don't even have these categories of theology yet, but questions like "How does God know?", "Why does God send people to Hell?", "Why does God allow bad things? Does He cause them?" are all part and parcel of a foundatinal weakness in systenatic understanding of the Bible.
  
  I would offer one caveat in this: the Bible, really, is not a systematic book. It is mostly a narrative book, a story. It has some expositional writing in it -- all of Paul's letters, for example, are expositional. But the way theology is delivered in the Bible is by example and by analogy. For example, in the OT, while the Messiah is prophecied about, the greatest images of who and what the Messiah will be are manifest in the temple system of worship -- and all of that is shadows and types, as the book of Hebrews says. So in order to "get" the Messianic work, we have to have a firm grasp of the analogies between what the temple provided and what Christ then fulfilled and completed. We can explain these things expositionally and systematically, but we receive them in Scripture analogically.
  
  In that, the answers are there: the propositional truths are there. The question is if we are willing to go after them and get them and them allow them to form our thinking and understanding of ourselves and of God.
• Basic Bible Exposition. For example, what is the parable of the Good Samaritan about? Why does Jesus call himself the "Good Shepherd" or the "Son of Man"? What is the Gospel? Why does Paul tell us both to marry and not to marry in 1 Cor? And these questions are all because somehow, they have started to read their Bibles in order to get something out of them. These questions are far more important than the tricky ones, above, because unless these questions can be answered in a way they can understand and in a way which drives to ward a living faith, they will walk away from our faith as irrational and useless.

Don't let anyone walk away from the faith for that reason -- not if you can help it. Our faith is a beautiful and vibrant thing which ought to give us hope and life. If we make it a dead thing, or a matter of trivial pursuit, we should be shamed of ourselves.

Show Stopper

Somebody should read this at Slate and then demolish it -- first from an otherhodox Jewish standpoint, and then from the Christian standpoint.

Any takers?

UPDATED [05/28/07]: Just for the record, the reason I suggest the two-layered approach to dismantling the above, um, essay is that the writer is clearly coming at the text with biases he is unwilling to overcome. You know: when you read Lolita for the first time, you make one of two choices -- [1] I'm going to read through this to see if the vices protrayed here are more than just titilating pornography, or [2] I don't care what the vices are supposed to mean: I'm not going to read this trash. Any Christian who made the latter choice about Lolitawould be branded a provinical hick with the literary sensibilities of a self-parodying prude.

Yet, sadly, this is exactly the same sort of error clearly evident in this essay. The reader is actively seeking to impose his own aesthetic and moral code onto the writing before understanding the asthetic and morals of the writer(s). If someone wants to condemn the Bible after reading it for what it says in the way it says it, I say they should go ahead with gusto. But their first responsibility as a reader is to reader what is written in the way it is written.

So the first place to read the OT is as it was written by pre-Jesus Judaism, and if you're especially clever you can read it as a post-Jesus Jew after another 2000 years of waiting for the Messiah.

But then you have the problem of what to do with the NT which is clearly derivative of the OT. It is somewhat shameless in its capitalization on the OT to makes it most salient points. In the worst skeptical case, the NT provides an alternate reading of the OT which the post-Jesus Jew rejects but reflects a first-century interpretation of that body of literature which far outstripped the spread of Judaism worldwide.

Unfortunately, the Slate writer misses this entirely. Saying more than this would require abandoning all other active blog projects. I'm going to leave that to someone with more free time.

art markers and oil paints

I know a lot of people wish I would shut up more often. For example, my wife would be very happy if I didn’t blog anymore because she thinks the whole thing is creepy. She’s probably right, as usual, but if I didn’t blog this stuff she’d have to talk to me about it, and I know factually she doesn’t like to read non-fiction, so talking about non-fiction is mostly out of the question.

Anyway, Phil Johnson linked to a very long and stimulating essay by N.T. Wright about the current British whoopla over the atonement, and I liked that essay pretty well. But, of course, what’s a blog if it is only gushing praise? The good Bishop said this at the beginning of his essay:

In any case, I am one of those who think it good that the church has never formally defined 'the atonement', partly because I firmly believe that when Jesus himself wanted to explain to his disciples what his forthcoming death was all about, he didn't give them a theory, he gave them a meal. Of course, the earliest exponent of that meal (Paul, in 1 Corinthians) insists that it matters quite a lot that you understand what you are about as you come to share in it; but still it is the meal, not the understanding, that is the primary vehicle of meaning. What is more, I happen to believe, as a reader of the New Testament, that all the great 'theories' about atonement do indeed have roots there, and that the better we understand the apostolic testimony the better we see how they fit together.

And let’s be honest: I usually steer clear of getting into the boat with N.T. Wright because he’s a lot more, um, esoteric than I tend to be. He paints with a variety of brushes, and he has an oil palate; I tend to have a fat black Sharpie and 16 very nice Pantone-numbered art markers because I’m doing this for a less-refined audience.

Before we begin with the comic book characters and the angry eyebrows, this essay by Wright has a lot to appreciate. For example, he makes a fine point about the caricatures of the atonement which many people reject rather than considering the actual atonement presented in Scripture – and as far as he goes here, I’d have to agree with him. His consideration of the very poorly constructed “is God a child abuser?” objection to the manner in which God deals with sin through Christ at the Cross has a lot of good in it. And his view that the atonement has more to do with love than wrath in an interesting perspective, even if I can’t wholly say, “that’s exactly what I’d say about that.”

So if you have two days to read this essay 2 or 3 times and think about what’s good in it and what’s bad, I recommend it for your information and intellectual physical fitness.

Which leads me to this statement I have cited, above. You know: I feel tortured sometimes when I read these really smart guys because (IMO) they frequently know exactly what they are saying, but they say it in terms which are intentionally controversial. That probably says something about me because a lot of you feel that way about what I do here. Anyway, when Bishop Wright says something like the above, it sort of makes me want to check all of his good work to see if the mistake he makes in this one piece of bad work isn’t there in some genetic mutation.

Here’s what I think: I think somehow N.T. Wright, who has an extraordinarily- robust view of the operation of covenant and teleology or purpose in the work of Jesus Christ, here suddenly becomes a one-note wonder – a guy who, after berating all kinds of people for being reductive or dismissive or careless, fumbles the NT in a sort of reductive way.

Listen: I can buy, in general theological terms, into the idea that the meal, the table, is the central act of worship – that it has some analogical rather than propositional value in promulgating what the NT repeatedly calls “the Gospel”. I think there’s no question to that at all. And I think that in any case, however we perceive the relationship of that analogy to ourselves, we are demonstrating our identity in Christ by doing that in memory of Him. Amen?

I can also stand next to, without feeling all weird, the idea that somehow God’s promise to Abraham is fulfilled in Christ because of, or perhaps in spite of, the fact that Israel failed to do what Christ was able and willing to do. I think that’s a good enough covenantal view as long as you don't start demanding that it is definitive or exclusive – but I think it also has some problems in that as far as the covenants go, Israel was willing to do the “temple” work of the covenant, but wasn’t willing to do the “circumcision” work of the covenant. That is, God’s complaint with Israel turned out to be that he didn’t want sacrifice so much as He wanted obedience, and right-heartedness. It’s funny how Israel was willing to do all kinds of religious observance except, as Jesus pointed out to the Pharisees, the “the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness”.

But I have a problem when Bishop Wright – or anyone – reduces the object of the Gospel to the Lord’s table, especially when he says, “when Jesus himself wanted to explain to his disciples what his forthcoming death was all about, he didn't give them a theory, he gave them a meal”. That’s a somewhat non-linear and non-comprehensive view of how Jesus spoke about being the Christ Himself.

For example – and I would agree with Bishop Wright that many people can’t find the Gospel in the Evangels, nor do they try – it is presented in Mark 8 and again in Luke 9 and Matthew 16 that when Jesus asked the Apostles, “who do you say that I am,” and Peter, prompted by the Holy Spirit, says, “you are the Messiah”, Jesus doesn’t say, “Now take this bread and eat it, and drink the cup of the new covenant.” Luke’s robust version of what comes next is

And [Jesus] began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. And he said this plainly.

It was to that point which Peter, apparently not listening to the Spirit of God anymore, rebukes the Christ of God!

Why rebuke Jesus if Jesus isn’t expressing something – which I think is treated unjustly if we call it a “theory”, since it is God’s view of God and not some inductive piece of analysis – of a particular, propositional nature which is either offensive or confusing?

And that’s really not all there is to it. On the road to Emmaus, after the resurrection, Christ says this to Cleopas in Luke 24:

O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?"

And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.

Think about that: Christ did, in fact, give them a “theory” about what just happened – and more than a “theory”, but in fact the interpretation of the Prophets and Moses as to what the work of the Messiah was to be.

And before this gets away from us in the meta or at someone else’s blog, the question of what happens at the end of this story of Cleopas is critical – because someone is going to pull a J.D. Crossan on us and say that only after the meal did they know Christ himself. Listen: when Cleopas comments to his companion about what Christ told them on the road as he interpreted Moses and all the Prophets, the question was not, “is this a parable about Jesus,” but “wasn’t this man about to tell us what God has promised to do and now has done?” It is not the meal which reveals to them Moses and the Prophets: it is the words of Christ, the explanation he gives them of the Scripture.

Christ was not just a performance artist. Christ was about being the Word of God. That means He was about doing what God set out to do, and, as He said explicitly in the sermon on the Mount, to fulfill the Law.

It is reductionistic to try to read the rest of the NT through the lens of one ordinance. That’s why it’s wrong to hang so much on baptism; that’s why it’s wrong to hang so much on the eucharist. Those things are consequential, not principle.

Maybe – just maybe – my problem is that I’m a comic book guy and Bishop Wright is painting frescos in a cathedral, or very nuanced portraits in a baroque style. But when we read things like this, I wonder if he’s really trying to represent the subject he’s painting at all.

I don't care what you call it

This will not turn into a rant or a six-page exposition of human frailty. I just have something burdening me after doing my daily skim of the blogosphere.

Listen: do you hate Calvinism? I'm OK with that, really -- you're allowed to be intellectually and even emotionally opposed to the idea that soteriology places man in a subordinate and mercy-needing position before God. That doesn't make you right, but you are within your rights to think that way.

Here's what I don't care for, really: I don't care for you being unable to be honest about Calvinism. That comes in two major brand names, so if you fall into one of them you can go ahead and start being offended:

[1] Hunt's Tomato Paste: "I hate Calvinism, but I can't accurately describe the Doctrines which constitute such a thing." Listen: read a book or something -- and I mean read the whole book, don;t skim it in hopes that you have picked out the useful bits by mistake. The Five Points of Calvinism, 2nd Ed., By D.N. Steele, C.C. Thomas & S.L. Quinn, would be a great and brief place for you to start.

[2] Caner's Spaghetti Noodles: "I hate Calvinism, and I will handle Scripture in any way that I need to in order to tell people how mad it makes me." See -- the thing is that there are some passages of Scripture that you have to admit make God look pretty sovereign and unthwartable. For example, Gen 50 makes it clear that God intends to work a saving end out of the evil intentions and actions of Joseph's brothers -- and whether there's a broader application to all things there or not, that's a really amazing piece of evidence that God's sovereignty is also over the ends and means of salvation. And John 6 -- dude, that may be the most wholly-abused passage of the whole Bible, with the remarkable fact that there are not two non-Calvinist perspectives on that passage which agree with each other. If you get serious about your hermeneutic, and you find a passage that teaches something about God you don't like, the answer is not to change your hermeneutic: it is to change your understanding about God.

Thanks. Back to work with you ...

Do not be offended

iMonk has axed a question over at BHT:

So what’s going on here? With John. (And, yes, the rest of the chapter is applicable.)

11:1 When Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in their cities.

2 Now when John heard in prison about the deeds of the Christ, he sent word by his disciples 3 and said to him, “Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?” 4 And Jesus answered them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: 5 the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers [1] are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. 6 And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.”

This is of course Matthew 11:1-6, for those who prefer the ESV popup. In the interest of promoting better Bible reading, here’s my answer:

[1] John’s in prison.

[2] John is dispatching his own disciples to Christ.

[3] John is a little put off by having to serve prison time while Christ is free to walk around all of Judea.

And why not? Which prophet didn’t give God a little sassy-mouth with a side of angry-eyebrow for having to suffer for the sake of being the divine messenger? Elijah sure did – and that was after seeing the prophets of Baal burned while their god was not listening in the potty. (1 Kings 18:27; 1 Kings 19:14) And let’s not bring up Jonah again, yes? So John here wants to know if the Christ is come – and, of course, that the captives will be delivered, starting with the one who was a voice crying out in the wilderness – or what.

And I think iMonk’s point in asking is this: if John is allowed a little doubt, isn’t everyone allowed a little doubt? That would make sense in the personal context of the barkeep. If he has a broader question, I’d be willing to field that, but here’s where I think that original thought goes.

The question has to be, “was John allowed a little doubt, or was John rebuked for having a little doubt?” Because Jesus doesn’t say to John, “Cousin, I’m sorry you are having a hard day and I’ll try to make it up to you.” What Jesus says – and I’d compare this to what Jesus says over and over to the Pharisees who keep demanding a sign, or that Jesus spell it out about this Messiah thing – is, “John, these are the signs of the times [with the implication that you know what they mean], and if you have to suffer a little for my sake, count it as a blessing and not as an offense.”

Jesus tells John that doubt is not warranted, and that his concerns – like the concerns of the Prophets before him – ought to be weighed against what he knows for certain to be true. And because John is John – who saw the spirit descend like a dove, and who called Jesus “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” – Jesus doesn’t pronounce the 7 woes upon him for being a malcontent and an unbeliever. But at the same time, Jesus also tells him flatly that he shouldn’t be doubting what God is about to do.

And I think that’s a great way to set up a Good Friday post, so I’ll leave it at that for the day.

Even a Child ...

Al Mohler does more for biblical hermeneutics than most pastors have ever done by quoting the post modern icon Stanley Fish. It's amazing what you can learn when you read.

Book Recommendation

There are a ton of books on hermeneutics in the marketplace, and most of them are so high-brow that you -- the person who has a life not revolving around a college classroom or your tenure maintenance -- can't really use it. The rest are frankly useless programs for passing your eyes over texts in the hopes that something will get past the back of your eyeball to your brain by some black box process.

Graeme Goldsworthy's Gospel-Centered Hermeneutics is frankly the first book written by someone with academic muscle on this topic which I would recommend to anyone who simply does not understand how to read the Bible.

Goldsworthy wields an intelligent yet understandable vocabulary to direct the reader through his theses which range from whether it is necessary to have a hermeneutic, to why other hermeneutics fail to deliver substantive and lasting results, to what a hermeneutic must deal with in the broad range of what kinds of literature occurs in the Biblical text.

It's brilliant. Buy one for yourself, one for your pastor, and one for the next person to whom you have to deliver the Good News of Jesus Christ. This book is required reading.