Criteria for Recognizing a Religious Sect as a “Cult”

Criteria for Recognizing a Religious Sect as a “Cult”

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by Roger Olson

May 21, 2015

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*Note: If you are pressed for time and cannot read the whole essay below, feel free to skip to the end where I list 10 criteria. The essay describes my own history of interest in and research about “cults” and new/alternative religious groups.

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Many religious scholars eschew the word “cult” or, if they use it at all, relegate it to extreme cases of religious groups that practice or threaten to practice violence. “Extreme tension with the surrounding culture” is one way sociologists of religion identify a religious group as a cult. By that definition there are few cults in America. No doubt they still exist, but when one narrows the category “cult” so severely it tends to empty the category.

In the past, “cult” was used by theologians (professional or otherwise) to describe groups that considered themselves either Christian or compatible with Christianity but held as central tenets beliefs radically contrary to Christian orthodoxy as defined by the early Christian creeds (and for some the Reformation statements of faith). Given the diversity of Protestantism, of course, that was problematic because it opened the Pandora’s Box of deciding what is “orthodoxy.”

A Supreme Court justice once said that he couldn’t define “pornography” but he knew it when he saw it. Many evangelical Christian writers of the 1950s and 1960s, for example, couldn’t quite define a “cult” but clearly thought they knew one when they saw (or read about) one. One evangelical radio preacher published a book on the “marks of a cult.” He was not the only one, however, to attempt to help people, in his case evangelical Christians, identify groups that deserve the label “cult.” Many have made the attempt. In the 1950s and 1960s (and no doubt for a long time afterwards) “cult” tended to mean any heretical sect—judged so by some standard of orthodoxy. That standard often seemed to be little more than a perceived “evangelical tradition.” Some anti-cult writers called the Roman Catholic Church a “cult.” Many labeled the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints a cult. One controversy erupted among fundamentalists and evangelicals when a noted evangelical anti-cult writer published an article arguing that Seventh Day Adventists are not a cult. Most Protestants had long considered Adventism a cult—theologically. (Just to be clear: I do not.)

Still today, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, a difference exists about the word “cult.” It is used in many different ways. Following the trend among sociologists of religion most journalists tend to use the label only of groups they consider potentially dangerous to the peace of community. Theology rarely enters that discussion. Still today, many fundamentalists and conservative evangelicals use the label “cult” to warn fellow believers away from religious (and some non-religious) groups that espouse doctrines they consider heretical—even if the groups pose no danger to the peace of the communities in which they exist.

Psychologists often regard any group as a cult insofar as it uses so-called “mind control techniques” to recruit and keep members. Sociologists of religion quickly point out that most religious groups could be accused of that depending on how thin one wishes to stretch the category of “mind control.” Would any religious group that claims members who leave are automatically destined for hell using “mind control?” Some psychologists have said yes to that question. Sociologists of religion point out that would make many peace-loving groups cults.

The debate over the meaning of “cult” has gone on in scholarly societies for a long time. Now it has settled into an uneasy acknowledgement that there is no universally applicable, standard definition. But there is a general agreement among scholars, anyway, that “cult” is a problematic word to be used with great caution. Calling a religious group a “cult” can mean putting a target on it and inviting discrimination if not violence against it. For that reason many religious scholars prefer the label “alternative religion” for all non-mainstream religious groups. My own opinion is that has its merits, especially where there is no agreed upon prescriptive standards or criteria for determining religious validity, where no idea of normal or orthodox is workable—as in a diverse context such as a scholarly society. Even that label, however, assumes a kind of norm—“mainstream.” If postmodernity means anything it means there is no “mainstream” anymore. But religion scholars cannot seem to abandon that concept.

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I have more than a scholarly interest in the concept “cult.” For me it is personal as well as professional. It’s professional because, over the thirty-plus years of my career as a theologian and religion scholar I have taught numerous classes on “cults and new religions” in universities and churches. I’ve spoken on the subject to radio interviewers—especially back when “cults” were all the rage in the media (after the “Jonestown” and “Branch Davidian” and similar events happened). I’ve published articles about certain “alternative religious movements” in scholarly magazines and books. While rejecting so-called “deprogramming” practices, I have engaged in sustained discussions with members of groups about their participation, even membership, in groups their families and friends considered cults—to help them discern whether their participation was helpful to them as Christians and as persons.

It’s personal because I grew up in a religious form of life many others considered a cult. And I had close relatives who belonged to religious groups my own family considered cults.

The professional and the personal came together recently—again. I became acquainted with a man who grew up in (but has left) a religious group to which one of my uncle’s belonged. My uncle’s religious affiliation was always a bit of a sore spot in my large and mostly evangelical family. (I say large because when they were all alive I had sixty-five first cousins. That’s a large family by most standards. I remember family reunions where over a hundred people attended and they were all fairly closely related. And that was only one side of my family!) Among my close relatives (aunts, uncles, grandparents, cousins) were members and ministers of many relatively non-mainstream religious groups. But my uncle stood out as especially curious to me and to my parents (and, no doubt, many of his siblings).

At family reunions, when prayer was said over the meal, he would get up and walk away and turn his back on us. My father explained that his brother believed praying with unbelievers was wrong. So I set out to discover more about my uncle’s and cousins’ religion. My uncle would not talk about his religious affiliation with anyone in our family, so he was not a source of information about it. (My father knew some about it because he was “there” when his brother converted to the group.) Over a period of years I discovered some fairly reliable information about the group even though it is somewhat secretive. The group exists “off the radar” of most people including many religion scholars, but researchers have labeled it the largest house church movement in America and possibly the world. Some have called it the “church without a name” because its adherents and leaders give it no name but only call themselves “Christians,” “the Truth,” and “the Brethren.” (It has some similarities and possible historical connections with the Plymouth Brethren but is not part of that movement.) They have no buildings, no schools, no publisher, no headquarters. They believe they are the only true Christians, but they live peacefully among us and pose no physical threat to anyone. They do not believe in the deity of Jesus Christ or the Trinity, but they use the King James Version of the Bible only.

My acquaintance who grew up in the group asked me if he grew up in a cult. (His parents still belong to it.) I found that difficult to answer because of the many definitions of “cult.” Which definition should I pull out of my religion scholar’s/theologian’s grab bag of labels? I couldn’t give him a clear answer. “It depends on how one defines ‘cult’” is pretty much all I could say. I don’t think that satisfied him. It doesn’t satisfy me.

Certainly my family thought my uncle belonged to a cult, but that started me thinking, even as a teenager, what “cult” meant. At school I had been told by friends who were fundamentalist Baptists that my church was a cult. I began to conduct what research I could into the concept of “cult” and found two radically different but contemporary treatments of the concept. One was Marcus Bach, a well-known and highly respected scholar of religion who taught religious studies for many years at the University of Iowa. (I think he founded the university’s School of Religion.) I read every book by him I could get my hands on and they were many. Eventually I had the privilege of meeting him in person and having a brief conversation with him.

Bach grew up Reformed, became Pentecostal, and eventually ended up in the Unity movement. His book The Inner Ecstasy tells about his religious pilgrimage in vivid detail. He wrote many books especially about what scholars now call “alternative religions” in America and it was from him that I first learned about most of them—everything from New Mexico “Penitentes” to The Church of Christ, Scientist. I was especially fascinated by his descriptions of Spiritualism—the religion focused on séances as the central sacrament. He claimed that at one séance he did actually have a conversation with his deceased sister and asked the medium questions that only his sister would be able to answer—from their childhood. The apparition answered his questions correctly. He drew no metaphysical conclusions about that, which was typical of Bach. He was interested in, fascinated by, alternative religious movements and groups but held back from prescriptive judgments of any kind.

The opposite book was by a Lutheran pastor named Casper Nervig and the title tells much about his approach to this subject: Christian Truth and Religious Delusions. In it I discovered that the Evangelical Lutheran Church was the “church of truth” and that both my uncle’s religion and my family’s were “religious delusions”—tantamount to “cults.”

This launched me on a lifelong search to understand so-called “cults” and “alternative religious movements.” Had I grown up in a cult? Was the faith of my childhood and youth an alternative to some mainstream religion of America? We considered ourselves evangelical Protestants, but I discovered many religion scholars (including Bach) considered us “alternative” and even some evangelicals (to say nothing of mainline Protestants and Catholics) considered us a cult. As a passionate Pentecostal Christian in junior high school and high school I was relentless teased, even sometimes bullied, by schoolmates who belonged to many different religious traditions. I was called a “holy roller” and “fanatic.”

So my acquaintance’s question has often been my own: Did I grow up in a cult? Apparently it depends on what “cult” means.

When I taught courses on cults and new religions in universities and churches I often began by telling my students and listeners that “nobody thinks they belong to a cult.” I also pointed out that if the concept “cult” (in our modern sense) had existed in the second century Roman Empire Christians would have been called “cultists.” (Of course the word “cultus” did exist but simply meant “worship.”) We should be very careful not to label a group a “cult” just because it’s different from what we consider “normal.”

My preference has become to not speak of “cults” but of “cultic characteristics.” In other words, religious groups are, in my taxonomy, either “more or less cultic.” I reserve the word “cult” as a label (especially in public) for those few groups that are clearly a threat to their adherents’ and/or public physical safety. In other words, given the evolution of the term “cult” in public discourse, I only label a religious group a cult publicly insofar as I am convinced it poses a danger to people—beyond their spiritual well-being from my own religious-spiritual-theological perspective. To label a religious group (or any group) a “cult” is to put a target on its back; many anti-cult apologists still do not get that.

On the other hand, at least privately and in classroom settings (whether in the university or the church) I still use the label “cult” for religious groups that display a critical mass of “cultic characteristics.” Of many non-traditional groups, however, I prefer simply to say they have certain “cultic characteristics” rather than label them cults. And, in any case, I make abundantly clear to my listeners that if I call a group a cult, I am not advocating discrimination, let alone violence, against them. In the case of those groups I label cults publicly I am advocating vigilance toward them.

So what are my “cultic characteristics”—beyond the obvious ones almost everyone would agree about (viz., stockpiling weapons with intent to use them against members or outsiders in some kind of eschatological conflict, physically preventing members from leaving, harassing or threatening critics or members who leave the group, etc.)? Based on my own long-term study of “alternative religious groups,” here are some of the key characteristics which, when known, point toward the “cultic character” (more or less) of some of them:

1. Belief that only members of the group are true Christians to the exclusion of all others, or (in the case of non-Christian religious groups) that their spiritual technology (whatever that may be) is the singular path to spiritual fulfillment to the exclusion of all others.

2. Aggressive proselytizing of people from other religious traditions and groups implying that those other traditions and groups are totally false if not evil.

3. Teaching as core “truths” necessary for salvation (however defined) doctrines radically contrary to their host religion’s orthodoxy as broadly defined (be it Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, etc.).

4. Use of conscious, intentional deception toward adherents and/or outsiders about the group’s history, doctrines, leadership, etc.

5. Authoritarian, controlling leadership above question or challenge to the degree that adherents who question or challenge are subjected to harsh discipline if not expulsion.

6. Esoteric beliefs known only to core members; levels of initiation and membership with new members required to go through initiations in order to know the higher-order beliefs. [A secret society of worshippers].

7. Extreme boundaries between the group and the “outside world” to the extent that adherents are required to sever ties with non-adherent family members and stay within the group most of the time.

8. Teaching that adherents who leave the group automatically thereby become outcasts with all fraternal ties with members of the group severed and enter a state of spiritual destruction.

9. High demand on adherents’ time and resources such that they have little or no “free time” for self-enrichment (to say nothing of entertainment), relaxation or amusement [or, even external criticism].

10. Details of life controlled by the group’s leaders in order to demonstrate the leaders’ authority.

By these criteria I suspect that I have been involved in religious organizations with cultic characteristics in the past. The college I attended displayed some of them some of the time (depending on who was president which changed often). The first university where I taught displayed some of the characteristics. I remember a faculty meeting where the founder-president (after whom the school was named) called on individual faculty members by name to come forward to the microphone and confess “disloyalty” to him. I would not say, however, that the religious form of life of my childhood and youth was or is a cult or overall has cultic characteristics. There are specific organizations within it that do. My recommendation to people caught in such abusive religious environments is to leave as quickly as possible.

Foundations for a Radical Christianity, Part 5 - A Theology for the End of Modernity

A Theology for the End of Modernity

Apparently great minds think alike and when they do they appear as alter-egos to one another. Or so I would like to think as a theological layman who has exerted a lot of effort into envisioning what a postmodern theology might look like over these past several years of research and writing. And lately, what a Radical Christianity might look like as it emerges from the shadowlands of crisis to become a postmodern tribute to things we have attested, acclaimed, embraced, and vouchsafed, as a worthy theology for the end of modernity.

But all kidding aside, my theological radar has now locked onto a fellow theological twin who has spent a lot of time writing of a theology at the end of modernity. Someone who was onto this gig a lot earlier than I was but whom I had no personal knowledge of until today. "Oh!" I thought, "How those years of feeling so alone might have been gathered up into the hopes and dreams of encouragement had I known there were fellow exegetes similarly burdened and seeking a theology for the end!" How grand this might have been! But in hindsight I doubt I would have been so greatly moved by the Spirit in my labours of research to envision a new kind of theology. One that was postmodern, radical, relational, and contemporary with science and technology. A theology both mysterious and personal, wonderful and meaningful, in every possible way that it could be. And so, by the Spirit of God, I laid down my visions through digital pen and paper to describe what a postmodern theology might look like and never looked back to the fatherlands of my faith. A faith that had come into crisis and required a rewrite if it were to be relevant once again.

And so, it seems that in the not so distant past (or, in a galaxy far, far away) there was a Professor by the name of Gordon Kaufman who dwelt in the lands of Harvard of Boston who also was gripped in his imaginations to express the great mystery of God in light of science and technology. Who wished to re-fit his Christian faith into the larger plan of the Divine than currently presented within the chambered halls of Christian modernity.

For Kaufman, part of that conception was to envision God as an act of Being (or, more simply, God as a creating process) which he described by the phrase "God as creativity." In this way he might focus on not defining the mystery of God ontologically (or personally) but through the evidences of His Being. Or by the fingerprints of His Soul left behind on the foundations of creation's firmament. Whose Divine imprint is evidenced by the evolutionary processes spanning creation cosmologically, geologically, and biological. Processes which we have focused on here at Relevancy22.

But I would also add the relational components of spirituality (Godwards), sociologically (outwards), psychologically / psychoanalytically (inwards), and ecologically (cosmologically). So that in every part, whether by the process of serendipitous creation (meaning, an evolution that was massaged by our Creator towards a furthering ends of presenting humanity with the opportunity for spiritual life with the Creator-God). Or within its divine components of Godly mystery, mankind (and all creation by extension) might be brought into a fully rounded and beautiful relationship with all that is God. Both to His Being and well as to His activity of creativity (or, in my line of thinking, "activity of re-creation"). So that in every way, and in every possible manner, we are presented with the opportunity to meet both the holy Personage and the Art of our Creator-Redeemer.

A Theology Not of the Dark Side but Full of Light and Grace

So where do we begin? As good fortune would have it you may begin with me and many others as we join into a series of studies produced by Homebrewed Christianity's Summer School of 2015 where Gordon Kaufman's theology will be investigated over a period of six-weeks (holidays excluded, of course). The cost is $30 through the links provided. Please consider joining this weekly forum with many other like-minded brethren wishing to envision a theology come to the end of itself in modernity and what it might look like on the other side of its modernal chasm of crisis. For myself, it has never been a theology of the dark side (in homage to the newest Star Wars film soon to be released) but a theology full of light and grace.

Peace,

RE Slater

May 19, 2015

Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens

Official Teaser Trailer #2 (2015) - Star Wars Movie HD

* * * * * * * * * *

Summer School – Living Options in Christian Theology

http://homebrewedchristianity.com/2015/05/17/summer-school-on-hbc/

by Bo Sanders

May 17, 2015

JOIN the Homebrewed Community as an Elder or Bishop, and you’ll be enrolled for FREE – www.homebrewedcommunity.com. OR, you can register for the class by itself here –www.trippfuller.com/learning. Sign up – order your book – and get ready for the goodness!

Bo and Tripp are excited to announce a new High Gravity class for this Summer! We are interested in a vibrant approach to a contemporary theological framework that doesn’t require a complete overhaul of your already existing faith.

• Is Process too big of a leap?
• Does Radical Theology provide too little substance?
• Is Practical Theology just too darn practical?

Looking for a robust, thoroughly-Christian theological framework for the 21st century? Then we have a conversation for you!

As I have taken some time off these past several months, I have noticed a couple of trends:

1. Process is just too big of a conversion for some. They like the ideas and enjoy that Tripp is so jazzed about it … but it is a major commitment to learn that vocabulary and overhaul nearly every aspect of what they have been taught was Christianity.
2. Radical Theology is interesting and challenging … but at the end of the day just doesn’t provide very much to go on. It is deconstructive in helpful ways but doesn’t leave you with much for constructing a faith worth even having.
3. Practical Theology asks some helpful questions and people get why I am into it … but it is a second order discourse and people want to ask some ‘first order’ questions about some primary issues.

This June and July we want to engage is a conversation about science, technology, other religions and the limits of language – while constructing a fully up-to-date version of Christian belief! Don’t worry about Heidegger, Hegel or Kant – plenty has already been said about them – this is an intelligent conversation about the here-and-now of Christian thought.

Living Options in Christian Theology

June 12 – Intro: Theology for a Nuclear Age

June 18 – Week 1: Theology, Science & Nature

June 25 – Week 2: Theology and Public Discourse

July 4 – Half-Time Break

July 9 – Week 3: Theology, Historicity and Solidarity

July 16 – Week 4: Theology and Corporate/Corporeal Identity

July 23 – Week 5: Theology and the Prospects for God-Talk

Our main text will be Theology at the End of Modernity: Essays in Honor of Gordon D. Kaufman – Sheila Greeve Davaney (Editor)

Each of the 5 sections of the book has 3 essays. Each week we will focus on 2 of those essays with Tripp taking one to explore and Bo concentrating on another. We will also supply supplemental material each week on the course website. PDFs of course material will begin going out May. 

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JOIN the Homebrewed Community as an Elder or Bishop, and you’ll be enrolled for FREE – www.homebrewedcommunity.com. OR, you can register for the class by itself here –www.trippfuller.com/learning. Sign up – order your book – and get ready for the goodness!

Gordon D. Kaufman

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gordon Kaufman

Born	June 22, 1925 Newton, Kansas
Died	July 22, 2011 (aged 86)
Main interests	Progressive Christianity, Modern theology
Major works	In Face of Mystery: A Constructive Theology
Influenced by[show]

Gordon D. Kaufman (22 June 1925 – 22 July 2011) was the Mallinckrodt Professor of Divinity (Emeritus) at Harvard Divinity School, where he taught since 1963.^[1] He also taught at Pomona College and Vanderbilt University, and lectured in India, Japan, South Africa, England, and Hong Kong. Kaufman was an ordained minister in the Mennonite Church for 50 years. He was the subject of two Festschriften. He was a past president of the American Academy of Religion(1982)^[2] and of the American Theological Society, as well as a member of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies. Kaufman was the author of 13 books, which influenced how many mainline Christians have considered God language and religious naturalism. Among these are An Essay on Theological Method, God The Problem, Theology for a Nuclear Age, and In the Face of Mystery. This work earned him the 1995 American Academy of Religion Award for excellence among constructive books in religion. ^[1]

He participated for many years in the discussions on religious naturalism at the The Highlands Institute for American Religious and Philosophical Thought and the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (Lecturer 2006) ^[3]

Views on God

In a review of Kaufman’s In The Beginning…Creativity^[4] –

For religious people a challenge is to bridge their belief in God with scientific explanations of the world. There is a huge need for a new understanding of God that bridges these viewpoints(…) His book is the first that makes a big step forward on this issue. Starting with the notion offered in the Bible of God as Creator he offers a proposal of God as "creativity". Creativity as a mystery that somehow was involved in the initial coming into being of the universe, in evolutionary processes, and in human symbolic creativity(…)This framework is a scholarly step forward towards resolving the faith-science debate. It provides a framework where God is not Protestant, Jew or Muslim. And it plants protection of the environment as a foundation of moral life (…) He is following the same theme Albert Einstein described in his writings on religion. And Kaufman's proposal complements the religious naturalist proposals of Ursula Goodenough

In a second review of In the beginning …Creativity .^[5]

One must wonder what would bring about this radical shift, and Kaufman is very honest with readers about why he believes the traditional understandings of God are inadequate. First, he discusses today's ecological crisis, and asserts that the situation of our world today and the threat of global disaster and decay through human actions is unlike anything Christianity has ever faced before. He not only concludes that this is a bigger issue than Christianity has ever faced (it is before been preoccupied with existential questions of guilt, sin, happiness, and so on), but he further concludes that Christianity may be in the way. 

The second major development that in his view stands in the way of traditional faith in a personal God is the developments of science (specifically evolutionary cosmology and biology) have shown us a much bigger universe than was once thought to exist. A personal God is not an idea that is comprehensible in this type of setting

Kaufman in his Prairie View lectures says –^[6]

I suggested that what we today should regard as "God" is "the ongoing creativity in the universe" - the bringing (or coming) into being of what is genuinely new, something transformative;(…) In some respects and some degrees this creativity is apparently happening continuously, in and through the processes or activities or events around us and within us(…) is a profound mystery to us humans(…) But on the whole, as we look back on the long and often painful developments that slowly brought human life and our complex human worlds into being, we cannot but regard this creativity as serendipitous(…) I want to stress that this serendipitous creativity - God! - to which we should be responsive is not the private possession of any of the many particular religious faiths or systems(…)This profound mystery of creativity is manifest in and through the overall human bio-historical evolution and development everywhere on the planet; and it continues to show itself throughout the entire human project, no matter what may be the particular religious and or cultural beliefs

A Zygon abstract on a Kaufman article states –.^[7]

Thinking of God today as creativity (instead of as The Creator) enables us to bring theological values and meanings into significant connection with modern cosmological and evolutionary thinking. This conception connects our understanding of God with today's ideas of the Big Bang; cosmic and biological evolution; the evolutionary emergence of novel complex realities from simpler realities, and the irreducibility of these complex realities to their simpler origins; and so on. It eliminates anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism from the conception of God(…) 

This mystery of creativity—God—manifest throughout the universe is quite awe-inspiring, calling forth emotions of gratitude, love, peace, fear, and hope, and a sense of the profound meaningfulness of human existence in the world—issues with which faith in God usually has been associated. It is appropriate, therefore, to think of God today as precisely this magnificent panorama of creativity with which our universe and our lives confront us

God as Mystery

For Kaufman, the only “available referent” for the word “God” is the construct we hold in our minds, a construct that has developed over the centuries. There may be a “real referent,” but even if there is, it remains “a transcendent unknown.”^[8] Thus, Kaufman thinks of God as “ultimate mystery.” He does not speculate whether there is an “extra-human reality” called God.” Thus, as a theologian, he views his work as dealing with “profound, ultimately unfathomable, mystery.”^[9]

The “ultimate mystery” called “God” serves as a living symbol in our culture. For many people, it functions as the primary point for “orientation and devotion.” Being oriented on the “ultimate mystery in things” is an awareness of one’s “bafflement of mind” over the mystery “that there is something and not nothing.” When the mystery is thought of as God, it evokes not only bafflement but trust and confidence.^[10]

Works

• In Face of Mystery - Harvard University Press (October 7, 2006), ISBN 0-674-44576-7
• Jesus and Creativity - Fortress Press (July 30, 2006), ISBN 0-8006-3798-4
• In the Beginning-- Creativity - Augsburg Fortress Publishers (July 2004), ISBN 0-8006-6093-5
• God, Mystery, Diversity: Christian Theology In A Pluralistic World - Augsburg Fortress Publishers (March 1, 1996), ISBN 0-8006-2959-0
• An Essay on Theological Method, An American Academy of Religion Book; 3rd edition (January 2, 1995), ISBN 0-7885-0135-6
• Theology for a Nuclear Age - Westminster John Knox Press (May 1985), ISBN 0-664-24628-1
• Theology an Imaginative Construction - Edwards Brothers (1982), ASIN: B0016JFF9A
• The Theological Imagination - Westminster John Knox Press; 1st edition (January 1, 1981), ISBN 0-664-24393-2
• Nonresistance and Responsibility, and Other Mennonite Essays - Faith & Life Press (June 1979), ISBN 0-87303-024-9
• God the Problem - Harvard University Press (December 12, 1972), ISBN 0-674-35526-1
• Systematic Theology - Scribner's (1968), ASIN: B001OXJ7DS
• The Context of Decision;: A Theological Analysis - Abingdon Press; 1st edition (1961), ASIN: B0007EB8QY
• Relativism, Knowledge, and Faith - University of Chicago Press (1960), ASIN: B001P5RABQ
• Theology at the End of Modernity: Essays in Honor of Gordon D. Kaufman - Co-editors Sheila Greeve Davaney & Gordon D. Kaufman, Trinity Pr Intl (October 1991), ISBN 1-56338-017-X
• Mennonite Theology in Face of Modernity: Essays in Honor of Gordon D. Kaufman - Cornelius H. Wedel Historical Series 9, co-editors Gordon D. Kaufman & Alain Epp Weaver - Bethel College (July 1996) - ISBN 0-9630160-7-5

Christianity caught in the wastelands of Modernity

Faith in Crisis: Cycles of Challenge Presented to God's faithful

How to Read The Old Testament in Light of the New Testament

How to Read the Old Testament in Light of the New Testament

Daniel Kirk recently reviewed his colleague Dr. Goldingay's new book, "Do We Really Need the New Testament?" which asks the question how to read the Old Testament as a New Testament Christian.

Basically it advocates that the Christian learn to read the OT on its own without reading church history's re-interpretation of it through Jesus. Which is a fair point to be made - but impossible to do in light of Jesus.

At some point the text of the Old Testament should be discerned and interpreted in a twofold manner:

1. On its own apart from the New Testament's testimony to Jesus, and
2. Coupled with the New Testament's testimony of Jesus even as its gospel writers had clearly done.

Let us look at the first point.

If we are to read the OT alone without any interpretation to it by the NT then we must do so without the interpretation of the church councils which present doctrines like the "Trinity" into the mainstream of OT Jewish theology. Such doctrines were foreign to the theology of the ancient Jews even though within the texts of Scripture itself it can be seen by the "backwards glance" through the lens of the New Testament that the church doctrine of the Trinity is not as foreign a concept as first thought. But again, that is with the benefit of historical hindsight.

This may also be inferred by other "Christian doctrinal formulations" which developed after Jesus and not before during the period of the Old Testament. As such, Christian doctrine  is absent Old Testament Jewish theology as it developed its own theologies about God and their place within God's purposes for a time and people removed from the Christ-event to come.

So then, to read the Old Testament on its own and within its own historical periodicity is to attempt to understand its Scriptures without the theological perspective of the New Testament church and its councils which were not historically present in the OT.

Which gets to the idea then of "How does one read the OT in its own setting?" Or more to the point, "How does one read the OT without reading it through the grid of NT theology?" 

The best help and guide here would be from the ancient Jewish theologies themselves as they were formulated through the Inter-Testamental period between the Old and New Testament eras.

History of Jewish Theology

I find the Inter-Testament period between the Old and New Testaments to be significant for any number of reasons:

• It becomes the period of time when Israel comes to finally understand the full ramifications of God's covenants to Abraham, Moses, and David (the Abrahamic, the Mosaic, and the David covenants);

• When Israel comes to understand the full meaning of the blessings and curses that attenuated those ancient covenants when obeyed or broken;

• When Israel finally comes to understand the meaningfulness of God's promises to their daily lives as a true blessing - and not merely as a bothersome regulation or rule of authority;

• When Israel finally discovers what covenantal restoration really means in light of its repentance and confession from sins and transgressions to be fully restored to rightful fellowship to her Creator-God on the basis of blood sacrifice; or even,

• The scope of God's love and faithfulness to His chosen people at the height of their disobedience to Him (at the last, the Abrahamic covenant was ever-and-always enacted upon the faithfulness of God and NOT the faithfulness of Abraham nor his descendants).

Moreover, post-exilic Israel (now Judah) had the benefit of hindsight over its many years of redemption from Egypt as they tried to live as a people who worshipped a unique God quite unlike the gods of their polytheistic neighbors around them. A God whose expectations of ethics and morality were wholly unlike the ethics and moralities of the other gods of the nations. A God whose covenantal faithfulness and love was not really understood until experienced through difficult times of failure and breakage among his people as they strove to understand this God they worshipped and clung too (sic, the Psalms are full of the pathos of covenantal struggle and restoration).

The Inter-Testamental Period Demanded Owning up to Failure

After the times of the priests and early judges; after the times of the kings and their fickled people; after the times of the early and later prophets; now we come to Ezra and Nehemiah as they rebuild a people who have suffered long and hard for their sin and faithlessness. For sins that the God had warned them would create separation and struggle not only from Himself but from one another:

• From Himself as their Sovereign who granted the freedom of the heart to follow other loves, gods, and fallacious thinking; and

• From one another as evil entered into their assemblies causing this Godly separation to become harder, deeper, more grievous, with every twist-and-turn of the fallacious heart.

And so, after all this history, all the many stories of brokenness and restoration, Israel now stands on the other side of history and takes the long look back at itself. Its rich culture lost on the swords of so many destitutions. Its bright promise blighted in the night of its many sins. Its deep longings to be faithful to their loving God, their godly heritage, and to one another lost in the ragged return of its survivors coming to terms with the despair of their final and horrific holocaust.

Here now is Israel struggling to be a country lost amid the ruins of its own civilization as the world stage shifted from one empire to the next. From a Greek empire transitioning to a Macedonian empire ruled by a king named Alexander the Great. That fearless ruler who would conquer Asia Minor where Babylon once ruled; the land of Egypt where the Pharaohs once ruled; the lands of once mighty Persia; and finally find his eclipse in the terrible lands of India to vast its scourages, plagues, and tribes.

Upon Alexander's demise came the trading sea kingdoms of the Middle East and North African regions struggling against Egypt to the east and west and against Rome, to the north, becoming mightier and fiercer with every victory against nearer and further Gaul (Spain, France, Germany) as it came to its zenity to then turn its gaze southwards and across the blue Mediterranean.

Little Israel lay now in the ruins of world dominions seeking as it could the answers to a shattered faith that could give few answers but asked many unanswerable questions. Consisting of a covenanted people who remembered the religion of their fathers and sought to give this rich heritage a voice through their scrolls and scribes. Through new rules and laws (Mishna et al). Through a priesthood rededicating itself to its God who seemed no longer close. Or to care. Who was thought to be as faraway as His forsaken children  were from themselves struggling to survive in a harsh world made harsher in the lostness of their faith.

A History Created and Remembered in the Aftermaths of Ruin and Forsakenness

The remnants of this once blessed kingdom now wrote its long histories:

(i) Remembering its covenantal failures to God over a remarkably long period since the days of Joshua who led them out of the Wilderness into the lands of Canaan;

(ii) Remembering its covenantal judgments for their many failures through numerous occupations as it split in two and became a Northern of 10 tribes and a Southern Kingdom of 2 tribes where the first Jewish kingdom suffered under the brutality of Assyria and the second kingdom under the breakage of the kingdom of Babylon;

(iii) Remembering its final, culminating cycles of repentance-and-restoration from their Babylonian captivity-and-release back into the lands of Israel broken and despised;

(iv) And finally, remembering to rest in the land of their fathers and there to do the hard work of recovering a culture from what they could remember upon the lost shards of time once mishandled with careless disregard. To make sense of a past become even more distant from themselves when cast upon the deep lores of forgotten times now faintly intoned upon the disillusioned lilts of songs and poems by dying tongues remembering fonder memories.

This is the story of the Old Testament before Jesus, before His disciples, before the authorship of the New Testament gospel writers, before the early church's pentecostal beginnings, before the early Church Fathers and their early church councils. 

This was the Old Testament without the historical Jesus who was to come. Which looked for a suffering Messiah-Redeemer not understanding what this really meant and sometimes confusing it with God's own suffering people as a nation broken and alone.

This was the Old Testament that spoke of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of the mighty God without ascribing to the later Trinitarian ideas of Father-Son-and Holy Spirit. Who saw the atoning sacrifices of the Old Covenant but could not make sense of its longer meaning until a toiling early church preacher wrote the NT book of Hebrews to ascribe to Jesus every precept and principal of the Jewish system built upon animal sacrifices and mediating temple.

Of a Jesus who paradoxically became both atonement and atoner. Both altar sacrifice and mediating priest. Both the broken covenant and covenant maker. Both the cleaved bullock halves of Genesis 15 and the Spirit of Him who walked between those halves to renew a covenant that would surely be broken again-and-again-and again in the wayward hearts of a sinful mankind.

Who was the suffering servant of Isaiah (52-53) and the mighty Davidic King who had at last come to reign and take His place among His people. But who offered a kingdom of upside-down proportions. Who sought weakness in place of strength - even in that of his earthly incarnation. Humility in place of grandness. Service in place of cruel reign. Sacrifice in place of survival. It was a King that the world could not appreciate - nor even want - so blinded by its councils and lost sight of the future.

And it was into this gospel era that Jesus, the Son of God, came as provision and provider. Who would re-write the passages and chapters of the Old Testament to once again become illuminescant with an unearthly meaning dared thought or hoped. Who came to re-write the histories of the Old Testament into the furthering chapters of the New Testament where those Jews of the land who had the spiritual vision to see might glimpse their portion of the promise of God made so many long years ago on the eve of their birthright upon the great faith of their Father Abraham. Himself called from the foreign lands of his fathers to leave all he held familiar and true and become a renewing man of faith and vision. And in a sense, a stranger to himself and his past when captured by God's vision for his future.

This is the story of the Old Testament. And the next chapter to its dusty pages scripted onto the heart of Jesus our Savior who would birth the many worlds of the church to come as it struggles even now to lay claim to a belief becoming more distant with every passing era of this new millennium.

A God who surely loves us and has become surety for us through His Son. A God who calls to a people not His own to become a people of His tabernacles. To there reside and no longer take up residence in any other alien lands. To find rest for the weary soul and an everlasting peace that will ever abide upon the faithfulness of His decrees and charters and eternal will. Amen.

R.E. Slater

May 18, 2015

* * * * * * * * * * *

Jesus and the Old Testament

http://www.jrdkirk.com/2015/05/15/jesus-and-the-old-testament/

by J.R. Daniel Kirk

May 15, 2015

My colleague John Goldingay has a new book out. Its provocative title: Do We Need the New Testament? Letting the Old Testament Speak for Itself.

The provocation doesn’t stop with the front cover, as the last chapter is entitled, “Theological Interpretation: Don’t Be Christ-Centered, Don’t Be Trinitarian, Don’t Be Constrained by the Rule of Faith”.

As someone growing my love for baseball, I want to say with all seriousness that batting .667 makes you one of the all time greats! Here’s my two out of three:

• Don’t be Constrained by the Rule of Faith. Agreed. 
• Don’t be Trinitarian (in your interpretation!). Agreed. 
• Don’t be Christ centered? Not so fast!

I have three compelling reasons to do Christ-centered (or Christ-directed) biblical interpretation.

But before I lay those out, I want to voice my partial agreement even with the idea that we should not read the OT Christologically. I agree with the claim up to this point: we should always allow the OT to say what it has to say, listen to what it has to say, as an expression of its own historical context as a first reading of the text.

In my forthcoming book on Jesus, I have 50,000 words invested in the notion that what pre-New Testament material says about God, humans, and how they relate is of its own importance, and absolutely essential as well for reading the NT aright.

So I half agree with my colleague. We need to first let the OT speak with its own voice. His batting average is now up to .833!

But we cannot stop there. We have to continue to a Christological reading. Here’s why.

1. The New Testament says that scripture is about Jesus

In the famous “all scripture is God-breathed” passage in 2 Tim 3, where we learn that all scripture–which would have meant our Old Testament–is profitable for teaching, etc., we often overlook something.

Before saying that scripture is profitable, Paul tells us what the outcome of such profitable reading is:

"Since childhood you have known the scriptures which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus."

Scripture has a goal, an end, an outcome: faith in Christ.

This parallels what Paul says in Rom 10:4, when he claims that Christ is the end or goal (telos) of the Law.

It is recapitulated in Jesus’s words in John 5: “You search the scriptures because you think that in these you have life–yet it is these that testify about me!”

If we do not read OT scripture as pointing to something beyond itself, if we do not read it as part of a story that has an end in Christ, we are not reading it in keeping with the NT guidelines.

2. If we don’t read the Old Testament Christologically then Christianity is not true

I know that this is a strong statement. But I’ll stand by it. (At least until one of you talks me out of it in the comments!)

The story of Jesus can only be the story of God’s salvation if it is the answer to God’s promise to save God’s people and restore the cosmos. But a “straight” reading of the text from front to back does not in itself paint for us the picture of the Jesus about whose life we read on the pages of the NT. It does not adequately prepare us for salvation through God’s offering of God’s own Son.

Jesus claims at the end of Luke, for instance, that the whole OT (Law, Prophets, Psalms) speaks to a suffering Christ who thereafter enters his glory. We find out what this looks like, exegetically speaking, in the sermons in Acts.

How does the OT speak of the Christ to come? Only when we return to those scriptures to read them with new understanding after we already know that Christ has been crucified, raised from the dead, and enthroned at God’s right hand.

In other words, if we don’t ever read Psalm 110 as speaking about Jesus’s enthronement in heaven, despite the fact that it was originally about the coronation of Israel’s king, then we have no grounds to claim that what actually happened to Jesus is related in any way to the preceding story.

And if Jesus is not related to the story, then the claim that he fulfills the law and the prophets (Matthew), that he goes just as it is written about him (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), that he is the fulfillment of the promises God made beforehand in the prophets (Paul)–that claim is proved false.

If we do not allow what God actually did to transform our understanding of what God promised to do, we have no answer to the promises of salvation articulated in Genesis-Malachi.

3. If we don’t read the Old Testament Christologically then we have a mess on our hands

I know that this claim is also going to be controversial. But here’s the deal.

Over the past couple of years I have led small groups through studies of both Amos and Isaiah. And those prophets, alongside their beautiful visions of the future, are also a troubling mess.

The heights of proclamation about the mercy and justice of God are interwoven with gruesome vengeance–God meting out on the nations the very sorts of violence for which they themselves are allegedly being punished.

We have to be able to return to passages that look for God to give destroy Egypt as the ransom for God’s people, and say no. No, God chose a different path. God gave God’s son instead.

We have to be able to return to passages that look for God to subjugate the nations as vinedressers and shepherds and say no. No, God chose to bring in the Gentiles on equal footing, bearing the divine image as co-heirs with Christ as much as Israel.

The cross does not make every mess go away–and it is, in many ways, its own mess to wrestle with.

But Jesus does show us what the ultimate revelation of God looks like. It is the God who confronts the enemy–by sending the Son to die on their behalf.

This is what permits us, better, demands of us, that we not allow the depictions of the violence of vengeance to stand. (And, yes, the Jesus story might demand of us that we reread portions of the NT for the same reasons.)

So yes, bracket the Trinity and the Rule of Faith while you read. But don’t leave Christ to the side.

Our faith depends on it.

* * * * * * * * * *

Comments

Donald Juels, Messianic Exegesis, 1998. Christological Interpretation of the Old Testament in Early Christianity.

Anon - "Dr Goldingay's approach is helpful in one aspect. It helps us appreciate the fact that no one was thinking in terms of Messianism the way Christians did because they looked at who, and what, Jesus was-and-did and this changed the game. Basically if one reads Donald Juel's Messianic Exegesis he says it all. Juels book is quickly forgotten in these discussions.

Anon - "I have read that Jewish sages figured out that there was a suffering servant Messiah they called Messiah ben Joseph and a conquering king Messiah they called Messiah ben David. What they could not figure out is whether the relevant texts were discussing two Messiahs or just one and there was debate. The puzzle was they did not see how a Messiah that would suffer and die could also reign as king."

Book Review - Messianic Exegesis by Donal Juels

Anon - "Juel's work is one of those books that I wish had been assigned a long time ago. The basic premise of the book is to show that the early Christians were convinced that Jesus was the promised Messiah (meaning "king"), and then undertook the task of reflecting on the good news of his death and ressurection in light of the Scriptures. What came first was NOT apologetic argument but scriptural reflection whose goal was to understand the gospel.

Basically the early Christians take key words from well known Messianic passages already established, and use other passages NOT considered Messianic, and apply them to what they saw happened with Jesus in his unexpected death and resurrection.

This should be required reading for all who study the Bible. I believe this mainly because after being involved in Biblical Studies for a while and digesting all kinds of discussions, I feel that the way things are presented in this book should be the standard for understanding the relationship between the Tanakh and what is referred to as the New Testament.

It is the ultimate way of honoring Christ. The Messiah becomes the one who reinterprets everything that came before. The written word is in submission to the Living Word. SO when the unexpected happens we re-imagine everything in light of [Him who is] the Truth.

This means that one needs to believe first that the death and resurrection of Jesus really happened, and also beleive that the result of this was vindication of His self declaration of being Messiah. When the Chief Priest asked if he was Messiah, Jesus said, "I am".

The other thing that one needs to believe in is that God is fully consistent. So that when something happens later in history after Jesus' resurrection and ascension that is significant, it should always be compared to the death and resurrection and seen as inferior to it. [sic, Christ as the Mid-Point of Salvific History" - r.e. slater]

Colossians 1:15-18 15 - "And He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation. 16 For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities-- all things have been created by Him and for Him. 17 And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. 18 He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the first-born from the dead; so that He Himself might come to have first place in everything."