Christian Smith: The Bible as Sacrament

"In general, a wide gulf continues to exist between biblically generated theology and the theology of theologians - and this gulf will continue to stymie the vision of bringing together the fields of biblical studies with theology."

 

- J.R. Daniel Kirk, August 20, 2011

( http://www.jrdkirk.com/2011/08/20/colloquium-on-theological-interpretation-reflections/)

 

 

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The Bible as Sacrament

http://masonslater.com/2011/10/26/the-bible-as-sacrament/

by Mason Slater

posted October 26, 2011

What is the Bible?

In The Bible Made Impossible, Christian Smith lays a withering critique at the feet of popular and academic approaches which treat the Scriptures as a handbook to life, or an encyclopedia of timeless doctrines.

Though these approaches are often framed in the language of a “high view” of Scripture, they tend to ignore the Bible we actually have in favor of the Bible we think God ought to have given us.

In the process we end up making the Bible something other than what it testifies about itself – focusing on it as a sure foundationalist starting point on which to build watertight theological systems and “biblical” guidelines for relationships or politics.

But when Jesus explains the meaning of the Scriptures to his disciples he describes the text as a witness, a written word that points to the Word [of Life (Himself)].

“Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” – Acts 24:26-27

And, if the function of the Bible is to point to Christ, then perhaps talking about it as a handbook or encyclopedia is missing the point. Perhaps a better way to speak of the Scriptures is with the language of sacrament.

In the same way that the Eucharist and baptism ultimately point to and reenact the story of Jesus Christ, so too Scripture is not an end to itself but a witness to that Story.

So the text does not call us primarily to systems of theology or directions for life (though both may be there), but rather calls us to tell once more the story of the cruciform victory of Israel’s Messiah over sin and death – the resurrected Messiah who is mysteriously God-in-flesh.

We then read the rest of Scripture through the lens of that Gospel story. Not in a simplistic “every verse is about Jesus” sort of way, but in a Christotellic way where every text is read with the climax of the story in the crucified-and-risen Christ shaping our understanding.

The Bible then is not made less important, it is the inspired witness to the Word of God, but its role is clarified. Like the Eucharist and baptism, the Scriptures are a vital part of the Christian faith, but like the other sacraments it points not to itself but to Jesus Christ whose Story it tells.

“It is therefore true that Holy Scripture is the Word of God for the Church, that it is Jesus Christ for us, as He Himself was for the prophets and apostles during the forty days.” 

                                                                                                                             – Karl Barth

The Bible and Books About Dinosaurs

Guest Post: The Bible and Books About Dinosaurs

http://rachelheldevans.com/guest-post-mason-slater

by Rachel Held Evans

September 17, 2011

62 Comments

Today’s guest post comes to us from one of my favorite bloggers. Mason Slater is an MA student at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary, a freelance writer, and a publishing consultant. I had the pleasure of meeting Mason and his lovely wife Melinda when I was in Grand Rapids for the Festival of Faith and Writing. I love how this guy thinks! He’s smart, thoughtful, humble, and wise.

Mason blogs at MasonSlater.com, where he writes about the latest news in theology, Christian living, and publishing. I’ve been following for several years now, and am always interested in the conversation there. Mason recently moved his blog, so be sure to re-subscribe!

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The Bible and Books About Dinosaurs
by Mason Slater

After years of research, and quite a bit of agonizing, I’m finally able to offer this small pronouncement.

I no longer believe that there is any inherent conflict between the Scriptures and the scientific account of human origins, by which of course I mean evolution.

Admittedly, that someone you’ve probably never met is able to affirm a scientific theory which most of the Western world takes for granted may not seem like that big of a deal.

But it is for me, and I imagine my story is not all that unlike many of yours.

I grew up in a conservative evangelical home. As best I can remember my parents never made a point to bring up Creationism or Evolution, but they didn’t have to – the subculture did it for them.

Over time a young boy who loved dinosaurs and fossils began to sense those things were dirty, that the books he was reading were looked on with suspicion. At first I wasn’t sure why, but soon I learned that these books taught things about the world that disagreed with the Bible.

Because I loved the Bible more than my books about dinosaurs, it wasn’t long before those books found themselves gathering dust on my bookshelf.

That evolutionary science and Christian faith were incompatible seemed as apparent as that every autumn would lead to another cold Michigan winter. With that assumption firmly implanted, my young self was one day faced with a crisis. While talking with my mom she made some passing mention that my father believed in evolution.

I was shocked, terrified even.

Terrified because I thought this meant dad might not be saved. So, after arriving home from a long day at work, my father was confronted by his twelve-year-old son who proceeded to try and convince him how important it was that he believed what the Bible said about God making the world.

I’m sure I was not a terribly convincing young theologian at that point, but I’m also sure dad could see what it meant to me, so he agreed with me and the issue was never raised again.

Though it wasn’t long before I made my peace with Evolution not being an issue of salvation, these crisis moments ensured that I would wrestle for many years with the ways my faith seemed to clash with science.

By the time I graduated from high school I had read many Creationist books and had the debates time after time, and was no doubt obnoxiously sure of myself.

Then college hit, and the more widely I read the less sure I became of my easy answers.

A Biblical Studies major as an undergrad, I expected to find theologians offering a thorough repudiation of godless Darwinism, what I found was quite the opposite. There were of course theologians who were outspoken Creationists, but plenty of theologians who I had come to deeply respect saw absolutely no contradiction between biblical faithfulness and the science of evolution.

This was exciting, freeing even, but also deeply frustrating.

See, I still cared more for the Bible than my books about dinosaurs. And, try as I might, I just couldn’t see how to make the two compatible without doing violence to the Scriptures I valued so highly.

As I continued to research I could see more and more massive holes in the Young Earth Creationism I had grown up on, but with no better option I became essentially agnostic. I knew I was no long a traditional Creationist, but I couldn’t really bring myself to throw in with any other position either.

Enter John Walton.

Last winter I read Walton’s The Lost World of Genesis One and it changed everything. Or, rather, I knew that it could. I also knew I wanted to believe what he was saying, so I was a bit suspicious of my motives for embracing his argument. It made perfect sense, but did I just think that because of all sorts of subconscious motivations?

So I took some time to ponder it, and this summer I re-read The Lost World of Genesis One and had the chance to hear Walton speak about his argument in the book. This led to this post, and a follow up.

Walton’s suggestion? In the ancient world the idea of creation was not about material but function. So that, in all the ancient creation myths, the thing that is created is order, things are named and given roles and a place in the world. How the “stuff” that things are made of came into existence was simply not a concern to the ancients.

If that’s true, and Walton makes a very good case for it, here is the way it cashes out: Genesis 1 is about functional origins not material, the original audience would have understood it as being about how order was created out of chaos, not how matter came from non-matter.

So the Bible takes no particular side in the debates we have about Evolution or the age of the earth, that Story is about something else entirely.

And suddenly I don’t have to choose between the Bible and those books about dinosaurs.

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Love God with All Your...Entrails?

http://newwaystheology.blogspot.com/2011/08/love-god-with-all-yourentrails.html

by Mason Slater

August 18, 2011

In the ancient world the seat of thought and emotion was not the brain, it was the heart - or more specifically the entrails.

So when the Scripture tells us to love God with our mind, it’s actually telling us to love YHWH with our entrails.

Why would the Bible say such a thing if it's not scientifically correct? Because God was not interested in correcting their physiology. It didn’t matter if they believed that they thought with their entrails, so long as they thought in ways that were holy and righteous.

Similarly, the text is quite clear that ancient Israelites held a cosmology (understanding of how the world works) quite similar to their neighbors.

They saw the earth as a disk, with the stars and sun close at hand, Sheol was underfoot along with the oceans of the deep, and the dome of the sky held back the waters of the heavens.

Interestingly, YHWH never seems interested in correcting this idea either, even though as a scientific error it goes far beyond where we imagine thought takes place.

In fact, John Walton goes so far as to suggest in The Lost World of Genesis One “Throughout the entire Bible, there is not a single instance in which God revealed to Israel a science beyond their own culture. No passage offers a scientific perspective that was not common to the Old World science of antiquity.”

Having heard Walton speak last night I’m still wrestling with the implications of that claim, and I’m curious to hear your thoughts -

- Can you think of a passage where God did reveal new scientific data?

- If not, does that change the way we approach the text?

Grace and peace

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Are We Missing the Point of Genesis One?

http://masonslater.com/2011/08/19/are-we-missing-the-point-of-genesis-one/

by Mason Slater

August 19, 2011

Continuing yesterday’s conversation – if YHWH did not choose reveal scientific truths to the people of Israel that they would not have already known, and I’ve yet to come across a place where he does, why then do we assume Genesis 1 is a modern scientific account of creation?

Now, right away that question becomes problematic, or at least it seems to. It’s one thing for God to accommodate his speech to fit ancient ideas like thinking with your entrails, and quite another for him to fabricate an entire creation narrative that turns out to be misleading at best.

But what if it’s not a question of making Genesis 1 fit either Young Earth Creationism or Evolution?

What if the text is about something else altogether?

In The Lost World of Genesis One, John Walton makes what I find to be a quite convincing argument that we’ve imported an idea of creation into the text that was quite foreign to the ancient mind.

We, as good post-Platonic Westerners, are concerned with creation as material – the story of how there was no “stuff” and then God brought that stuff, that material, into existence.

In the Ancient Near East creation narratives were never about the creation of matter, but rather the creative act was a matter of bringing function and order to elements which were not serving their proper role. Case in point, the idea of “nonexistence” in Egyptian literature could be used to speak of the desert, which clearly exists in material terms but has not been given function or order in relation to the life of people or the gods.

{Similarly,] the story of Genesis 1 becomes the story of how the ancient world went from “formless and void” to properly ordered and given function by the God who, at the end of the story, sits down to rest and rule in his newly inaugurated temple – the cosmos.

Of course, the question behind the question for many of us will be this: if Walton’s understanding of Genesis 1 is correct, and it’s not about the creation of material, is there any biblical reason not to take up the scientific account of material origins?

"Love Wins" Six Months Later

http://masonslater.com/2011/09/05/love-wins-six-months-later/

by Mason Slater

on September 5, 2011

It’s been over six months since a video trailer for Love Wins sparked countless blog posts, late night debates, and one (in)famous Tweet.

Now, with a little distance between us and the initial fireworks, I thought it might be an appropriate time to offer a few reflections on Love Wins and the reaction to it.

1. The Reaction On Both “Sides” Was Too Often Driven By Emotion And Sensationalism

Because this discussion evolved mostly online, and because everyone involved saw so much at stake in this discussion, tensions were high, grace was a rarity, and rushing to judgment was the norm.

Case in point, thousands of people speaking out against a book they hadn’t read. This of course resulted in people who appreciate Rob feeling like he’d been treated unjustly, and instinctually coming to his defense – often before they had read the book either.

Also, the way the media discussed the book was entirely unhelpful, leading to false impressions of what Rob was saying and stoking passions in a debate that was difficult enough to begin with.

Soon the book became a boundary marker: those who were sympathetic to Love Wins were often deemed liberal at best and universalist heretics at worst (and at times driven from their church), while those who took issue with the book were accused of being unloving or even wanting people to go to hell.

None of this did justice to those involved.

2. There Was Much Worth Saying In Love Wins, Though Little Of That Was New

Ironically, very few of the ideas in Love Wins were new, despite the controversy they caused. Rob says as much early in the book.

In fact most of the book was solidly Evangelical and restated points about the doctrines of heaven and hell that were already being made by authors like Scot McKnight, Mike Wittmer, C.S. Lewis, and N.T. Wright.

Books such as Surprised by Hope or Heaven Is a Place on Earth had already started to refocus Christians on a biblical hope which looks very little like Christian pop-theology or Dante’s fiction. A focus on new creation, resurrection, heaven coming to earth, and how our eschatology influences our ethics – none of that was new to Love Wins, but all of it needed to be said.

3. Some Of The Questions Rob Raised Were Needed, Because The Traditional Answer Is Lacking

After the book was released Rob was often criticized for his questions. At times just because he raises so many of them, but often because he questions the way we hold doctrines that are considered central to the faith.

But it’s naïve to think these questions originated with Love Wins. People have been asking many of the same questions around kitchen tables and over cups of coffee for a while now.

Rob was simply articulating what many of us were already saying.

And there is a reason these questions are being asked with increasing volume – the traditional answers are often intellectually and theologically unsatisfying. The ways we talk about the nature of God, about heaven and hell, about the fate of the unsaved, these are words which matter. And much of the time how we speak of these things seems radically out of place with the rest of the biblical story.

Whether we agree with Rob’s answers, there are many areas in which I think he was right to raise questions and push for us to do better.

4. On A Few Issues Rob Went In An Unhelpful And Unbiblical Direction, Which Made The Rest Easy For People To Dismiss

Many of the books written against Love Wins focus on a handful of problematic sections, and then on the basis of faults found there quickly dismiss the rest of the book.

The thing is, some of the critiques are spot on. There are ideas in Love Wins which are impossible to support from the text, and others that rely on reading the text in ways which are questionable at best.

Ideas like infinite chances to repent after death, for example.

I have no interest in pretending there were not problematic areas to Love Wins, there most definitely were and we should own up to that. But the way some bits of shoddy exegesis and speculation became an excuse to dismiss the rest of the book, and even to ignore the questions Rob raises, seemed to be missing the larger point.

__________________________

So, what do I think of Love Wins after six months? It was a provocative – albeit flawed – book, which raised questions we need to be able to openly discuss, and was often restating solid evangelical thinking with a bit of Rob Bell flare.

In the pages of Love Wins Rob states that he doesn’t intend the book as a final word, but as the start of a conversation. Personally I think it’s a conversation worth having, and I hope Rob continues to be a part of it.

Five Things We Can Learn from Severus Snape

 

 

[Spoiler Alert: If you've not read Deathly Hallows

or watched the final movie, you should go and do that,

and then come back and read this post.]

http://newwaystheology.blogspot.com/2011/07/5-things-we-can-learn-from-severus.html

by Mason Slater

posted July 15, 2011

Last night, as I sat waiting for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to begin, I was looking forward to one character's story more than any other.

It wasn't Harry's, or Ron and Hermione's, or even Voldemort's.

No, the story I wanted to hear was the story of Severus Snape.

By the end of movie 7 part 1, the audience has been set up to hate Snape, and with good reason. Always a shadowy figure with questionable loyalties, in Half Blood Prince Snape kills Dumbledore. Soon after, with the rise of the Dark Lord, he is placed in charge of Hogwarts. As headmaster he oversees a brutal and oppressive school which lacks any of the light and magic of earlier years.

Yet things are not as they seem, and in Deathly Hallows we learn the true story of Snape. The story of a man who was tormented by lost love, who played his role for the greater good, and who was in the end one of the greatest heroes of the story.

Didactically, I think Snape's story provides a sort of traction that some of the others do not, and I want to look at five things we can learn from Severus Snape.

__________________

1. Our judgments about people are often wrong. In almost every book Harry and his friends suspect Snape is in on whatever evil is threatening them, all the more so after he kills Dumbledore. As it turns out he was on their side all along, and did more to protect and aid Harry than almost anyone else.

2. Rough exteriors are not the whole story. Admittedly, Snape is my favorite character in the Harry Potter series [so I was glad to see him vindicated when I read book 7]. But that isn't to say I find him to be a pleasant person, quite the opposite really. We learn some of why that is later on, but from beginning to end Snape is cold, short tempered, and at times rather cruel. Yet this exterior hides a person who dedicated his life to defeating the forces of evil.

3. Sometimes heroes are silent. At the moment of his death, the only person who ever knew how good Snape really was, was Dumbledore, who Snape had killed. He died as an enemy of all that is good in the world of Harry Potter, and it was only after he could no longer be thanked that the true story was revealed - why he betrayed Voldemort, how he did the difficult thing no other wizard could have done and deceived the Dark Lord, how he gave his life selflessly for people who might never know what he had done for them.

4. True loyalty comes at great cost. Sure, we all want loyalty and put forth some effort to be loyal to others, but we rarely consider the cost. For Snape, loyalty to Dumbledore meant living a double life, sacrificing everything he held dear, and even killing Dumbledore when Dumbledore commanded him to. In the end we find out that he was never a traitor, but instead had played his part perfectly to the very end.

5. Love changes everything. Snape was originally a Death Eater, a true servant of Voldemort. We learn in these last chapters that what drove him to Dumbledore was love, love for Lilly Potter. He had loved Lilly since childhood, and though his personality and obsession with the dark arts had driven her away, he never stopped loving her.

When he learned that Voldemort was searching for the Potters, he went to Dumbledore in an effort to protect Lilly. When she died, he spent the rest of his life ensuring her son was safe. The redemption of Severus Snape was, like so much in Harry Potter, because of love. In the end his one request was to look into Harry's eyes, because he had his mother's eyes.

__________________

- Have you seen the final film? What did you think of it?

- Who is your favorite Harry Potter character? Why?

- Be honest. Did you trust Snape?

__________________

The Bravest Man I Ever Knew

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vl7MW8u31u4&feature=related

Severus Snape's Farewell

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S73dWB_Qt7o&feature=related

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows-Requiem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLozcBo8TxY&feature=related

 

 

Angelic Help

http://newwaystheology.blogspot.com/2011/06/angels-are-cop-out.html

by Mason Slater
posted June 6, 2011

[Quickly I breathed], "No not here!" It was 3:00am, I was on my way home from work, and my car had just died. For the past few miles of highway it had been acting up, and as I stopped at the red light at the top of the exit ramp it lost any ability to move - later I found out the transmission had failed.

The exit had two lanes, so even though I couldn't even move off to the side, other cars could get around me. I flipped on my four-way emergency lights, and sat there trying to figure out what I was going to do.

No cell phone (it was a few years ago), no idea why my car wouldn’t move, and frightened that some inattentive driver was going to rear-end me.

Suddenly lights shone bright in my mirror. I stuck my hand out the window to wave them around, but then their four-ways came on and a woman in her mid thirties knocked on my window.

She asked if I needed help and I explained my predicament. “Alright,” she replied “well first we have to get you out of this intersection. If you can still brake and steer I can push you with my car into that parking lot down the road.”

A few terrifying minutes later we had made it into the parking lot, and we got out to survey the damage. My car looked fine, but her's was a bit scraped up in front.

I thanked her profusely, and asked for her contact information so I could repay her for the repairs I knew her car was going to need. She refused. When I insisted she said it was okay and that she would just tell her husband it was like that when she came out of work.

After letting me use her cell phone to arrange for a ride, she drove off.

Over the next few days, almost every time I told that story I got the same response, “God sent an angel to help you.”

____________________

I was reminded of that night recently, when a friend was telling a similar story. He and his wife were broken down in the middle of the Appalachians when a man stopped to help them, drove a half hour each way to get a part to fix their car, and instead of letting them pay him back he left them with $100 to “get something to eat.”

My freind's response, “It must have been an angel, no one would do all that.”

____________________

Now, I believe in angels. They might not be a very central part of my faith, but the Bible talks about them and I have no reason to discount their existence.

But in situations like these, I’ve become convinced that most of the time angels are a cop-out.

Maybe we can’t imagine driving an hour out of our way, or scraping up our car, all for a stranger. Since we can’t imagine doing it ourselves, we don’t want to admit there are people far kinder and more generous than us, and we attribute it to angels.

Maybe we have such a low view of people, such a strong doctrine of the fall and human depravity, that we have no room for people who do these acts of love with no thought of gain for themselves. Angels then become an easy explanation to how anyone could do such a thing. They can't, only angels do.

Or, maybe, in those moments we are faced with the realization that the proper response to what was done for us is to pay it forward, to do the same for others, and that’s hard. Saying, “it was an angel” releases us from that responsibility.

It could be that the woman who helped me that night was an angel, but I don’t think so. I think it was just someone who took pity on a stranded driver at 3:00am, banged up her car to help him, and refused to consider repayment.

And, in many ways, that is far more powerful an idea than the suggestion that I encountered an angel.

Heaven Has A Name and It's Called Sidney

Resurrection | in memory of Sidyney

http://newwaystheology.blogspot.com/2011/05/resurrection-in-memory-of-sydney.html

by Mason Slater

posted on May 19, 2011

A week and a half ago our cousin, Sydney Potjer, passed away due to complications from Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA).

She was six years old.

Losing someone so young has been devastating, but that we had even six years with Sydney was a miracle. When diagnosed at one year old with SMA she was not expected to live past two. Yet due to her parents incredible 24-hour a day care for her, and her determination to keep fighting, she was able to be part of our lives for far longer.

In those six years Sydney touched many people, with her ready smile, infectious personality, and desire to see the best for everyone around her. This was evident at her funeral last week, when her entire class from school gathered to sing songs in her memory, and over 400 people attended the service.

Our local paper, the Grand Rapids Press, did an article on Sydney’s life which you can read here.

In it her mother, Kami, recounts a conversation she had with Syd “She was excited about going to heaven and seeing Jesus. She said, ‘I want to go there. I want to see Jesus.’ Of course, she wanted to come back home afterward.”

That story was told a number of times over the week, and on the second or third telling it struck me. Yes, it’s cute, and sweet, and touching,

but it’s also spot on.

Sydney, unbeknownst to the reporter or most of those gathered to honor her memory, had summarized the Biblical hope far better than we often hear it from pulpits and professionals.

When God’s people die they do indeed go into his presence, protected and comforted by our Lord, but then, later, we do “come back home”.

And Jesus will be coming with us, to restore this place and set all things to rights.

This hope, of not just disembodied bliss in heaven but real grounded resurrection hope for new life and new creation, has been especially poignant over the past couple weeks.

It’s easy to intellectualize our theology, but right now resurrection has a face to it for me, Sydney’s. A girl who, because of her SMA, was bound to a power chair, and in the resurrection will be able to experience this place as she never was able to before.

I have no doubt that Sydney is free already of her illness, but someday she will be able to walk the fields of Byron Center, play a softball game without any help, even ride a horse.

And all of it will be free from the effects of sin, and death, and pain because, in his resurrection, Jesus was victorious over all that takes life from his people, and in his life we see the promise of the life to come.

Grace and peace.

*Images from the book Art that Tells the Story*

1984 vs. Brave New World | Our own Distopia

http://newwaystheology.blogspot.com/2011/05/1984-vs-brave-new-world-which-dystopia.html

by Mason Slater

posted on May 20, 2011

I have an inexplicable love for all things distopian, so I was intrigued when I came across this comparison of two of my favorites in that genre, 1984 and Brave New World.

Though 1984 was, in my opinion, the better read, this comparison argues that Brave New World might be a more accurate critique of contemporary culture. That rings quite true to me, and in fact I've had this very conversation with friends before.

Like Fahrenheit 451, Huxley's Brave New World features a society who, for the most part, can be relied on to oppress themselves with little outside help. Sure, both books feature powerful enforcers, but the majority of the work is left to the people.

People who volunteer to ban books because they are seen as dangerous, and because they are entranced by more immediate forms of media. People who are kept in line not through force, but through entertainment. People who don't challenge the status-quo not because of fear of retaliation (though that comes as well), but out of fear of losing a privileged position.

We worry about 1984, but it may actually be a Brave New World that we are on the path towards.

The illustration is based on Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, and was recently featured at Theology and Culture.

e

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