Friday Night Fights

Some people go home on Friday, and they have time with their families, or maybe they go out with friends.

So people e-mail threats, like so:

From:"Antonio da Rosa"
To:"Frank Turk" 
Subject: Head's Up
Date: Fri, 8 Dec 2006 15:59:00 -0800

We wonder what you would do with such evidence against your 
Traditionalistic interpretation of James. The article refers to you
by name:

this one

I am sure that my post will not be thoroughly responded to,
and that the wish of the LS will be that it fades away into obscurity.

It is my desire that you come engage it. If not I will post the URL
all over blogdom to see if someone else will.

Antonio 

Just in case someone thinks I'm hiding something, my exact response to Antonio's e-mail was, "I'm skeert, buckwheat".

Go read Antonio's post, and then pack a lunch. I have one more question for Jodie, and then I can deal with this full-time -- well, as full-time as blogging gets, anyway.

The Friday Post this week

OK: usually we have the next part of the Christmas series, or some other exhortation for you faithful readers to go into the weekend preparing yourselves for worship and the word.

I have something different today. Some of you (I don't keep a counter there because I don't do that for the fame and fortune) have been reading the DebateBlog exchange with Jodie about the matter of what James really said and really meant in regard to faith and works. Who knew that James didn't really mean "save" when he said "save your soul"? It was news to me, I assure you.

Anyway, she provided this link to pdf about what it meant in the OT when the word "saved" came up -- and what do you know: the OT, apparently, never meant soteriological salvation when it said "saved", either. So when Ps 18 says, "The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold," and from that we sing, "A Mi-Tee FO-o-tress i-is Our God! A Bulwark Ne-ver fa-a-ay-ling!" nobody is actually talking about salvation.

That con-sarned Luther and his theological hyjinx! How shall we ever be rid of him and them?

You think about that briefly, and then shake it off and be with God's people in God's house on His day. I'm narrating our Christmas cantata (that's an uptown way to say, "we're gonna sing real good to recorded fiddle playin'") on Sunday -- God willing it will bless the hearers.

UPDATED: ah, shoot. Read this link too.

Branded

My wife has branded this blog esoteric, and she thinks all of you are spending way too much time reading and blogging when there is obviously work to be done -- for ministry or for a pay check. Get back to work.

You can see why she is made of bronze and has a cloud of energy surrounding her. She's fierce.

One from the Tavern

Just read this over at BHT (yeah I know: if my wife is reading, I better stop reading BHT), and here's my take:

Just now Mark Driscoll realizes that he's got a national stage? Because some locals with thin skins, liberal theology, and no humor want to picket his church?

What happened to "man up"?

An interesting update

My wife says she's going to start reading my blog.

Who thinks that's a good idea?

Monday

About 3 months ago, I threatened over at TeamPyro to discuss the Catalyst podcast and I got bogged down with other things.

Go listen to it for yourself (the current edition should be Barna -- that's episode 14), and then read my review of Barna's book from a year ago (Part1 Part2). Let me say that if there was ever a time we needed a guy like Tim Enloe on the "right" team, it is in thinking about what Barna advocates in this interview.

And then you'll be ready to discuss Catalyst with me.

Preparing for Christmas [5]

<< back to part 4

My point, so far, is that God's wrath is coming, and Jesus -- whose birth we celebrate at Christmas -- is the savior from that wrath. It's a point a lot of people got because that's what a savior is -- and it's a point I have made here before, so you were probably with me on it by way of preparation, one way or the other.

Now, the question is: is that enough? That is, if we understand that what we deserve is God's wrath and what we get is God's savior, can we now have some ham and some applesauce and some casserole and maybe (in presbyterian homes, of course) a glass of wine, a decent night's sleep, and then open the presents on Christmas morn after an appropriately-solemn reading of Luke 2? I mean, seriously: enough's enough.

Listen: Christmas is not about a logical argument, an intellectual affirmation, and then a secular session of either greed or idolatry (or maybe both). Christmas is about God with us.

When the Jews had the Temple, God's wasn't "with us": He was nearby, to be sure, but He was separated ritually and physically from the people. He had a covenant with the Jews, and He gave them the means to sort of "pay up" or "make up" the ways in which they broke the covenant, but here's what He says about that:

Hosea 6:6 For I desire mercy, not sacrifice,
and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.

Two little lines in the book of Hosea -- a book in which God says that the right way to see the relationship between Israel (the chosen nation) and God is that God is a faithful husband and Israel is a wife who prefers the life of a prostitute to the life of fidelity. But Hosea has to go and buy his wife back out of prostitution to make himself like God in this object lesson prophecy.

The obvious application is that God is coming back for us when we don't deserve it -- you've all heard that one, I am sure. But look: when God is spelling it out for Israel in Hosea 6:6, God is saying, "You know: I don't want you just to think about what I have done this for you, I want you to acknowledge that I have done this for you and act like I am real to you."

I think that's a little dazzling, frankly. God doesn't want to just save us: God wants us to act like a wife bought out of prostitution.

We don't have to be people who are in it for the money anymore -- because the price for us has been paid forever. We don't have to work off our debt. Now, that sounds like standard christianese, I am sure -- and the best way to overcome that is to describe for you in detail what the life of a protitute is like. However, homeschool moms are reading this, and they would probably find that a little much -- and they might be right. I'll sum it up in a sentence: imagine a life in which your own body is not safe from the demands and impulses of others who care nothing about you. If you were stuck in a life where you don't even own your own body, or have a right to your own flesh, how would you act toward the person who paid the price for your body and set you free from that kind of slavery?

That's the razor's edge at Christmas: it's the place where mental assent doesn't cut it. We can't just agree that these things are true for us in some religious metaphor, or maybe in some metaphysical transaction. We have to be in love with the one who has actually done this for us. We have to live as if God is with us. God doesn't want us to go and offer a dove or a lamb or a bull in the temple: God wants us to love Him above all things because He deserves to be loved above all things. And He should get it right now because He is worthy of it right now -- in the same way you love your own spouse right now personally, passionately, and somewhat impulsively.

This Christmas thing -- it shouldn't be about an idea of God: It should be about God. In person. Here with us.

When we prepare for Christmas, we ought to be loving God in a real way -- because He is saving us in a real way, and He is here with us. What are you going to do with this God who is with us -- place some statues in a wooden box and turn the light on, or welcome Him into your family and life as if He was your beloved husband and deliverer from slavery? What is actually the right thing to do?

... to be concluded ...

BTW, unless something happens at the D-Blog, this'll probably be my last post today, so be with the Lord's people in the Lord's house on the Lord's day. Jesus loves you even when you're iced in and it's too cold to thaw -- and a blog is not a church. It's a blog.

Anaphoric part 2

There is the charge, of course, from that section of the internet that thinks that grace costs us nothing - that it's nice to do good, but it might not happen in your faith life - that Dr. Daniel Wallace is a bit of a jerk for interjecting his theology into his Greek grammar. The particular person who says this claims that we cannot take Dr. Wallace's analysis of the anaphoric use of the article at face value - because it demands a theological conclusion.

Well, let's test his theory. Here's James 2:14-26 (from that shameless ESV):

14What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? 15If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, 16and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and filled," without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? 17So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

18But someone will say, "You have faith and I have works." Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. 19You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe--and shudder! 20Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? 21Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? 22You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; 23and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness"-- and he was called a friend of God. 24You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? 26For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.

Now, I have annotated this passage with some candy colors to help you follow me. The "faith" highlighted like this are the antecedent occurrences of "faith". The "faith" hightlighted like this are the anaphoric "faiths" – the ones which refer back to the other "faiths". And then we have one whole sentence which I want to approach because it is the hardest part of this passage to get, grammatically.

Listen: all the examples outside of v. 22 are pretty transparent. The anaphoric applications are references to predicate "faith" – faith which is the object of the action. But in v. 22 we have something very interesting happening. In the previous verse, we see that Abraham was justified by works when he offered up his son, right? But then, if we translate the words of v. 22 without any kind of art or English idiom in mind, we get this:

You see since {that} faith works together {with} {those} works of him and by {those} works {that} faith was made perfect.

The person who cannot grasp context will look at this and demand, "hey: the antecedent of ‘pistis’ is the one way up in v. 18 – which you say is the false faith, and that doesn’t make any sense. You’re done." I think you’d be right except for the crazy, contextual fact of the adjective "auton" – "of him". There is clearly a juxtaposition here between the faith without works and the faith of him -- that is, of Abraham. The faith of him works together with the works of him. It’s not a faith without works: it is a faith which is perfected by these works.

In that, it's 100% acceptable to not translate the article at all -- because it's not necessary. The particular nature of that faith and that work is conveyed in English 100% by the possessive pronoun -- it distinguishes this pairing from the dead pair of faith without works.

That’s it. That’s all I have to say. If you have an objection, bring it on.

Church and State (answer)

id you know that the way we swear in the members of the U.S. House of Representative is governed by law? Isn't that amazing? Here is the law which governs that procedure:

TITLE 5
PART III
Subpart B
CHAPTER 33
SUBCHAPTER II

§ 3331. Oath of office

An individual, except the President, elected or appointed to an office of honor or profit in the civil service or uniformed services, shall take the following oath:

“I, AB, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

This section does not affect other oaths required by law.

That's something, isn't it? "So help me God" is required by law, but the use of the Bible to swear the oath is not required. That's important for a very good reason: the Constitution of the United States.

No? yes? Let's find out. Article VI, clause 3 says:

"The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States."

Think about that: No religious tests.

You might hate it, but that's the law: no religious tests. None. If one must use the Bible to swear to God -- which, in itself, is a little anti-Biblical anyway, "yes be yes" and all that -- then we have employed a religious test for office.

Sorry. That's what it says.

Next.

Church and State

Read this.

Now: who can guess what cent is going to say about this story?

I'll give you through lunch today to make your guess. Then I'll tell you what I think.