Should Christians Resist the Pressure to Interpret the Bible Culturally?

 

Have you ever overheard comments that seem at first erudite - filled with great wisdom, learning and scholarship - but after some time of unconscious, mental gnawing in your heart-and-soul you begin to find such statements gnawing on you in a way that is no longer erudite? In fact, it has by then become one of those linguistic cankers you wished you never had heard, or ever hear again?

 

One such popular, de facto, statement that seems to pop-up all-too-frequently is the one that states confidently, "You know, with today's issues and contemporary news events Christians must resist the pressure to interpret the Bible culturally." A statement which seems harmless at first upon hearing it, until it ruminates in your head all day long, ceasing to go away like a bad song that endlessly loops around-and-around-and-around. Until finally delivered to your soul, added with a little salt-and-pepper and a dash of smug self-assurance, as if there could never be, at any other time or place, disagreement with this homey dialectic.

 

It is at that point that I realized how excluding, how pompous, how short-sighted and delimiting, such a definitive statement like this can be. I was left wondering just what news items we are talking about? What ideas of man that might be challenging the Bible to cause it to bow down to the pressures of the day? Whether there might be a select group of Christians called by God to be His own specially endowed shepherds to guide us lowly masses into the Biblical lands of learned, revealed, truths? A special group of mystics and revelatorys who have liturgically conjured up the proper boundary waters in which to dive-and-play less God becomes angry with mankind's endless questions, searches for truth and justice, and spiritual restlessness?

 

If whether today's Christians must resist living within the hoary bounds of contemporary cultural pressures of interpretation and nuance? To withdraw to a monastery, or missions lands, or even nature's temples itself, if only to define the limitations of God's holy existence within this world. To somehow retrograde all human affairs and mindsets in order to hold on to the conjugations of the church's past generations of sanctified Christian writings? If whether it is fair play, or not, to ask the God of the Bible whether today's concerns might be His concerns at all? Or if whether He only spoke for yesteryear's more literately attuned generations in a specially adapted cultural language that has long since past? If whether my daily concerns, and my generation's excruciating scholarship, have become one of those "lost" Sodomistic societies visited by God's holy angels only to be excluded from the temples of His all-compassionate wisdom.

 

At some point I realized by the tone, tenor, and delivery, of the conscripted statement above, that I was being excluded from that hallowed body of Christians who alone are privileged to act as God's chosen Levitical priesthood maintaining all that is hallowed and godly. That they alone were the selected ones divined by God's call to determine what may be culturally biblical or not. And whether such events are news worthy or should be damned and judged with the soiled masses of mankind.

 

No less was the idea that there existed a preferred interpretation of the Bible. One that was learned in hermeneutically extricating the hallowed script of God's Word so that when all was said-and-done we had arrived in the holy lands of Jerusalem lying between the two realms of light and darkness in a justifiable manner that extracted the ends to justify the means. And without this sanctified method (or literal code) of biblical interpretation we may never be able to enter into the holy lands of God's rest and refuge.

 

And so my heart-and-soul debated daily within itself until at-the-last I arrived exhausted, confused, and not a-little-angered by the culturally-reflective statement designed to be self-sustaining to an exclusionary body of "proper" Christians who-only-themselves, could hold to the "correct(ed)" truths of God's Word. Become its select purveyors of truth and dissemination. They alone had attained to a preferred, self-reinforcing hermeneutic that disallowed anything but their own ideas and beliefs about cruciform ministry, interpretation, and outreach. Their epistemological corrollaries and systematically derived theorems, much like their arguments and beliefs, were self-propagating without remediation or onslaught. Here was were God resided, and to be of God I too must likewise reside within their conscripted congregations lest I be banned as unworthy of templed conversation.

 

Issues of evolution, homosexuality, gender equality, religious pluralism, cultural ethnicity, biblical literacy, literalness and classic statement, had long ago been decided in their minds by past generations of Christians steeped in blood, war, injustice, greed, unworthiness, oppression, and pride. Mere mortals such as myself were not allowed to question the revered likes of Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Moody, or Piper. These are the sacrosanct men of record to whom we must bow allegiance. Not the Jesus of the Scriptures who questioned the learned of His day.

 

All then has become "Amen and Verily" in common cultural assent by dying religious traditions and denominations that even now, in their death throes, look blindly upon the moiling tempest seeds of humanity held not-unlike themselves, in epistemological turmoil, seeking a Redeemer lost from speech within the congregations of God's own churched people. Though holding onto the keys of their own assured redemption, they continue clutching to keys that cannot unlock the hearts-and-minds of those lost beyond their own cathedral walls of golden truths.

 

Unable to speak to the masses the church today speaks a religious language that heaps contempt upon any who may disagree with its "cultural" interpretations of the Bible. Making of the Bible an idol of the very book they would attest (known as bibliotry). And making a religious image of a sacrificed Savior meant to be received by all. This, to me, is the most egregious, contemptible form of Christianity. Making of itself an object and a religion, of the God whom seeks to love us as we would seek to love Him. Become closed to the needs of the world abounding around itself. Unable to speak to its needs because we are too threatened by our own fears of losing the truths we deem important to uphold if we are to be faithful. Speaking of God through a Christianity become closed, exclusive, and self-justifying. Unwilling to challenge itself in its own logics and self-perpetuating closed beliefs. A system where God will not reside so long as He has become quantified by our own religious reasonings and fallacies. This is neither godly nor God-like. It smacks of man, and of man's corruptible, proud, heart.

 

"If we must judge, let us first use the mirror on our own wall for practice."

 - anonymous

 

"Perhaps a greater tragedy than a broken dream is a life forever defined by it."

- Sheridan Voysey

 

R.E. Slater

July 15, 2013
 

(click to expand)

 





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Index to past articles on "An Open Faith and Open Theology"






 

Paul Tillich's "God Above God" and the "Restlessness of the Human Heart"

 

 Apparently Tillich is imminently quotable... and worth the read. This week's High Gravity group explored Paul Tillich's "God above God" in the face of radical doubt and a religionless Christianity: "The God who is absent is present as the source of restlessness." Here's another: "The separation of the holy from the secular is a symptom of man's estrangement from himself." Thinking through these quotes you quickly understand my intrigue. Here are some more quotes that I've more-or-less have culled from readings and restated in mine own fashion:

 

- Like any man, atheism tries to transcend the religious images of God by removing the crimes and misery religion has caused mankind. Seeking critical honesty in the face of religious traditions. But once indoctrinated, a religious man cannot break from his symbolic past, finding it hard to see the God he would love.

 

- Ideally, Christian theology is able to show in its own symbolism the truth about the God above God. If not, we are left with beggarly images of the God we think we know.

 

- The presence of spiritual restlessness, ache, doubt, all is due to God's presence in this life.

 

- God is the God of all - to both the secular man as to the religious man, each lost in their own turns.

 

- Impossibly, we cannot resist to image God. Images which confuse His Being and Meaning whenever we do. The paradox of God is that this God is above all we would think and worship. For God is not an object. His being transcends the world of objects as well as every subject. And so must our images of God likewise be transcended lest we fail in our sight of our Creator-Redeemer.

 

You can see my intrigue by the statements above. And by saying less in today's post I hope to say more by allowing you, the reader, to think on these things. At-the-last, I leave with you an example of a fellow Christian caught-in-the-turns of a symbolic, relational Christianity that both fails and heals as best as it can in this brief life of ours.

 

Overall, my encourage is in knowing that our God is ever present in our lives. That He Himself is restless in joining our lives with His own. That goodness and light, life and love, should never be dimmed in the presence of evil we see everywhere abounding. Evil that rejects God, harms others, and states "Thus I have done, let it not be undone" in shouts against the divine will so patient, so open, so restless to bring judgment and justice to our world of woe.

 

R.E. Slater

July 12, 2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

  http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/church/church-broken-institution

 

by Michael Hildago

Issue 64: July/August 2013, Relevant Magazine

 

 

Several years ago, I left the Church.

 

My wife and I were deeply wounded by our closest friends and partners in ministry, rumors about us spread like wildfire and we felt abandoned. I said goodbye to God and the Church and, it was safe to say, I was never coming back. I thought the Church was a broken institution.

 

A year before that, I was a pastor. My congregation was filled with people who loved Jesus and had a passion to see His renewal come to this broken world. I never tired of hearing stories of brokenness followed by experiences of healing. Our belief was simple: the Church should be the last place you should find people who pretend to have it all together. I was having the church experience many people are blessed to have in their lives: one that was vibrant and exciting.

 

I didn’t know that not everyone agreed with my mind-set, and a few did all they could to ensure I would not be a pastor at that church for long. One morning, I was told I had to resign. As I looked around the room, I saw people who were more than friends—they were family. One of those in that meeting used to tell me I was “like a son” to him. But now, as one leader told me, I was simply “an issue that needed to be dealt with.”

 

There was no warning and no conversation; just a severance agreement I had to sign or else I’d get nothing. So I did. What followed was one of the most painful seasons of my life.

 

I walked out of that church, and no one from its leadership team ever reached out to my family again. Apparently their “issue” had been dealt with. But it wasn’t over for me. Our community, my career and our future with the church were all suddenly severed, and my wife and I were devastated. We’d had such a strong sense of spiritual purpose, and now we had no idea what to do with our lives. For years, I had met people who had been “hurt by the Church.” Now, I was one of them.

 

We are everywhere

 

The saddest part in all of this is my story is not unique. Many of us have had painful experiences with the Church, Christian ministries, organizations or universities.

 

My friend Rick worked at a Christian university for more than 15 years. He quickly became one of the most beloved and popular professors at the school. For many students, he served in a pastoral role, offering godly guidance. Rick challenged the comfortable Christianity of many students and invited them to truly make faith in Jesus their own.

 

Yet as his popularity with students grew, the concern of the trustees regarding Rick grew, as well. They believed his teaching went against the doctrinal statement of the college and even raised questions about his political viewpoints. After Rick had spent years giving everything to that university and caring for students, the trustees fired him without ever seeking to clarify what he believed or taught.

 

The people in the Church are broken, but we serve a Christ who is making all things whole.

 

Students protested, alumni wrote letters on his behalf, many called and emailed, asking the trustees to rethink their decision, but nothing worked. Rick was out, without so much as a “thank you” from the trustees of the university where he invested in the lives of so many. He told me he felt like “his heart was ripped out his chest.”

My friend Julie went through an experience where she felt totally rejected by Christian leaders. Her husband, Dan, was an alcoholic. As much as she begged him to get help, he never did. He believed he couldn’t talk about it because he worked for a Christian ministry. He knew if he told anyone of his addiction, he would be immediately fired.

 

After years of pleading with him to no avail, Julie found out Dan had been diagnosed with an inoperable tumor. Within months, his health deteriorated and he passed away. Julie finally opened up about Dan’s addiction to those in the organization where he worked. She was shocked at their response: They wanted nothing to do with her.

 

In her greatest time of need, those she had considered friends ignored her and gossiped about her and Dan. She had spent years suffering in her marriage, and now, after her husband died, she suffered more. The people she believed she could trust rejected her—all this from those who worked for a Christian organization.

 

These are not just stories. These are people like you and me. And we are everywhere—all of us wounded, not by the Church or a ministry, but by others who identify as Christians.

 

It’s Not the church that hurts you

 

Recently, a young man named Ryan told me how much he “hated the Church” because of how “the Church hurt his parents.” I met a woman named Melissa after one of our Sunday morning services. It was her first time in a church in more than six years. She said, “I was so hurt by the ministry I worked for.”

 

Speaking this way allows “the Church,” a ministry or a university to remain a faceless, impersonal organization. But a faceless, impersonal organization can’t hurt us the way friends and family can. The Church did not wound me, Rick was not fired by his university and Julie was not rejected by an organization.

 

The reality is, it’s not the Church that has hurt us. It is the people we loved and trusted, whom we associate with “the Church” to make it less personal, less painful. And yet that’s why it hurts so much—you can’t get hurt by someone you don’t love.

 

If I had been conspired against by someone I did not know, I could have dealt with it. It would not have been personal. But I believed these people to be my closest friends—people I had worked alongside, people with whom I had shared life.

 

Those we love the most give us our deepest wounds. And when those who wound us are connected with the Church or a ministry, it’s easy to depersonalize the injury by attributing it to the entire institution.

 

The longer we hold on to those feelings of hatred and the more we speak of being hurt only by an organization, the less chance we have of actually addressing our wounds. The best thing we can do is speak honestly about what happened—which can be the hardest part of healing.

 

It’s not easy to speak of our pain and the names of those who caused it. At times, it can feel like we are reliving the entire experience. However, if we are to find healing and return to wholeness, this is exactly what we must do. Healing and forgiveness will find it’s way into the cracks in our heart where truth is present and spoken.

 

This kind of honesty is truly terrifying. When we share our pain and open up our wounds with the truth, we take the chance of being hurt again. For, in those moments, we place our trust in another. Therein lies the risk. But in the risk lies the chance for healing; and not just healing for us, but healing for others, too.

 

Becoming the Hands and Feet

 

Years ago when Julie’s friends rejected her, she spoke of her wounds and those who caused them. Now, by the grace and goodness of God, she is able to speak of her wounds and the God who has healed them. It’s the same for Rick and for me, too.

 

It’s not because we are anything special. Rather, it’s because we met others who had been wounded, and they helped us find healing. They were the ones who came alongside us and helped every step of the way. One might say they were like Jesus for us in our time of need.

 

When God saw the suffering and pain in our world, He sent His Son headlong into it to suffer with us. God could have done anything He wanted in response to the mess humanity got itself into. He could have snapped His fingers and made everything better or, with a wave of His hand, banished all evil from the world, allowing only good to flourish.

 

But He didn’t do any of that.

 

God’s decision was to share in our wounds, take up our pain and bear our sorrow. It’s in the suffering of Jesus that we find our hope. The God who suffered on the cross for us is the same God who suffers with us today. Because of this, we have the opportunity to be like God for those who are wounded.

If you’ve been wounded, betrayed, stabbed in the back or victimized, in that very moment, you look more like Jesus than you did before.
 

This is what Paul was getting at when he called the Church the “body of Christ.” We are the embodiment of God in this world. There are some who describe being the body of Christ by saying “we are his hands and feet.” I can think of no better description—especially when we are hurt ourselves.

Jesus’ hands and feet bear the marks of crucifixion—which means if you’ve been wounded, betrayed, stabbed in the back or victimized, in that very moment, you look more like Jesus than you did before. Our scars allow us to be more like Jesus to others and lead them toward healing.

 

The Church is not a bunch of people who have it all together. It’s a bunch of broken and bruised people who know about getting hurt and causing hurt themselves. But it’s also people who know about healing. And while we should never diminish the seriousness of our pain, it’s in our pain that we encounter the suffering servant who died for us. It’s in our pain and our healing from that pain that others can find hope.

 

Perhaps this is why Rick Warren tweeted recently, “I only hire staff who’ve been hurt deeply. People who’ve never suffered tend to be shallow and smug about other’s pain.” Our pain is the very thing that allows us to share in the pain of others and their journeys to healing. Because when you have scars and someone shares their wounds with you, it makes you weep.

 

When others shared in my pain, they didn’t always have amazing wisdom or brilliant insight. They didn’t quote the perfect verse at the perfect moment. Many times, they struggled to find the right words for encouragement. But they bore scars that spoke of their pain and, most importantly, of God’s grace and goodness that healed them. And I learned that was often the only thing I needed.

 

Finding Healing in the Brokenness

 

Years after swearing I would never return to the Church, I have not just returned—I am a pastor. And, as a pastor, I can say that the people in the Church are certainly broken, but we serve a Christ who is making all things whole. And because He is making all things whole, the institution of the Church is alive and well. Surely only our God could orchestrate such a paradox—a broken people being sustained and built and re-created into something whole.

 

Because the building of the Church is Christ’s alone, we know His work is not broken. This is what we affirm and celebrate every time we participate in communion. We remember that the Church was birthed in the broken body and spilled blood of Jesus. He was broken for broken people. This is the mystery of the Eucharist: Our wholeness is found in Christ’s brokenness. God knew the Church would live in this tension, this paradox, and yet be a place where He is still King.

 

And so, Jesus took the bread and the wine and said, “This is my body broken for you and my blood shed for you.” And when we eat the bread and drink the wine, we not only remember His death, but we also participate in being broken open and poured out for our broken world.

 

 

 

What would a new Church for the 21st Century look like?

Kierkegaard Wants a New Church

Part 2 of 2

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/tonyjones/2013/07/06/kierkegaard-wants-a-new-church/

 

by Tony Jones

July 6, 2013

*res = re slater 

 

 

This is the second of two excerpts from a book that I happily endorsed: Emerging Prophet: Kierkegaard and the Postmodern People of God by Kyle Roberts. Kyle is a professor at Bethel Seminary and a fellow Patheos blogger.

 

 

BOOK EXCERPT

 

Kierkegaard was a prophet who critiqued "Christendom," the perversion of authentic, New Testament Christianity into the institutionalized, materialistic, triumphalist, and flabby religion of modernism. Emergent Christianity is attempting to carve out a more authentic way of being Christian and doing church within--and beyond--the ineffectual, institutionalized church of modernity.

 

In many ways, Kierkegaard's critiques, concerns, and goals overlap with emergent Christianity and the emerging church. For the first time, this book brings Kierkegaard into a dialogue with various postmodern forms of Christianity, on topics like revelation and the Bible, the atonement and moralism, and the church as an "apologetic of witness." In conversation with postmodern philosophers, contemporary theologians, and emergent leaders, Kierkegaard is offered as a prophetic voice for those who are carving out an alternative expression of the New Testament today and attempting to follow Christ through works of love.

 

- Kyle Roberts, Bethel Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota

 

 

* * * * * * * * * * * *

 

 

The emergent movement comprises communities of Christ-followers who desire to recover a sense of authenticity, passion, vulnerability, and intimacy in their lives together. They organize their communities in an intentionally organic way, such that these ideals become (at least conceptually) more attainable that they have appeared to be in institutional forms of church.

 

The caveat here, from a Kierkegaardian point of view, is that when the alteration of the organization becomes the means whereby these aims can be attained, too much freight is given to change in “circumstance” as the hope for renewal, authenticity, and the recovery of the essentially Christian. Nonetheless, it does seem that at some point action must be taken; this is very Kierkegaardian, too.

 

Emergent Christianity’s attempt to creatively rethink the nature of the church in this changing world will serve the larger (established) church well—to the extent they take notice. Even if the transiency of emergent communities and the lack of institutional structure make propagation a serious challenge, the burst of creativity and critical reflection within emergent Christianity offers—at the very least—an important renewal resource for more empathetic traditional churches.

 

In any case, the question recurs and the refrain continues: How can we attain an existentially authentic faith, both individually and communally? In the context of our ecclesiology discussion, the answer may well lie in a theological de-construction (and subsequent attempted re-construction) of institutional forms of church life which often seem to inhibit authenticity, intimacy, vulnerability, and genuine community. Emergent Christians are working hard to find a better way for this journey. For others, the least they can do is empathize with their quest.

 

Consistent with the trajectory set forth in Practice in Christianity, albeit intensified in his final years, Kierkegaard pointed the way to the dis-establishment of the church in favor of the emergence of Christ’s kingdom. The church exists in service of in-breaking of the kingdom of God into temporality [sic, God's rule becomes present now. - res]. The confrontation with the world occasioned by the action of the historical Christ in his abased life (suffering) and crucifixion opened the way for a new mode of being in the world—one characterized by deep subjectivity and authentic community.

 

This community exists in the eschatological space between the eternal and the temporal, the infinite and the finite, the bound and the free. Kierkegaard’s Christology of paradox suggests that the church, as an institution—or establishment—must be provisional and temporary, and must give way to the priority of the redemptive presence, or Kingdom of God, brought about disruptively in the world through the reign of Christ as the paradoxical one. This means that the church cannot serve itself and ought not understand its mission to be self-preservation.

 

So Jürgen Moltmann says: “It is not the Church that ‘has’ a mission, but the reverse; Christ’s mission creates itself a Church. The mission should not be understood from the perspective of the Church, but the other way round.” The church must regularly check its own accumulated habits, its acculturations, commitments, and partnerships with the “powers” and economies of society. It cannot offer itself as an end or become preoccupied with its own self-preservation. Christianity, as an established, institutional, cultural phenomenon, is non-essential. The church defers, bends, and even disappears; like John the Baptist, it must decrease while Christ must increase.

 

When the church becomes its own self-perpetuating institution, when its mission begins to displace the pure, prophetic, and disruptive presence of Christ, it must be disestablished - deconstructed, even - while Christ and his Kingdom re-appears and re-emerges.

 

OK, who’s ready to start disestablishing churches?

 

 

 

* * * * * * * * * * * *

 

 

Proper Doubt

Part 1 of 2

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/tonyjones/2013/07/05/proper-doubt/

 

by Tony Jones

July 5, 2013

 

 

Doubt is the other side of faith…This ethos may be one of the defining features of emergent Christianity—the willingness to countenance doubt. These doubts can arise from questioning the sincerity of religious faith (i.e. Freud’s “great apologetic challenge” to Christianity), the truthfulness of the Bible, the exclusivity of Christianity, or engaging in philosophical challenges to core Christian doctrines (such as those posed by the “problem of evil and suffering”). The acceptance of a positive role for doubt in the Christian life is consistent with the emergent ethos.

 

Because emergent Christianity is not terribly anxious about epistemological certainty, such questions are encouraged—or at the very least accepted and engaged. Furthermore, there is no rush to answer the questions in a final, authoritarian way. This openness to the reality of doubt in the Christian journey need not imply a glorification of doubt nor a complete disregard for objectivity (properly placed) in Christian theology….

 

An epistemologically humble approach to theology and faith allows for deeper authenticity and for the de-construction of the idols of certainty, dogmatism and closure. Experimental psychologist, Richard Beck, asks, “What would religious faith look like, experientially and theologically, if it were not engaged in existential repression or consolation?” Presumably, that kind of faith might be open about the reality of doubt and would courageously struggle with existential questions regarding the attainment of “truth.”

 

That kind of faith would not try to rely on or use religion instrumentally to assuage existential anxiety, but would attempt to be existentially authentic in the face of the lack of epistemological “objective” certainty; it would be open and honest about the pain and distress involved in the human experience and would not try to suppress the anxieties that arise from the fragmentation, brokenness, and brevity of human life.

 

Collectively, in terms of the experience of Christian community:

 

- it might have the character and courage to deal with pain, sorrow, and longing head-on, even in (or especially in) the context of church liturgy,

 

- it would engage the Bible with seriousness and honesty; neither avoiding its prophetic strangeness nor minimizing its difficulties, from the perspective of the modern world,

 

- it would utilize both celebration and lament as representations of the full nature of the human experience,

 

- ultimately, it would find both discomfort and solace in the central figure of Christian faith: the paradoxical God-man, who makes comfortable faith impossible but who alone can make authentic faith possible.

 

 

 

Reconciling Contemporary Christian Ethics with Social Justice in the OT

The Old Testament and Contemporary Christian Ethics

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/

by Roger Olson
July 7, 2013

Comments

The background issue here, of this post, is the problem I see of appealing to the Old Testament, especially the Pentateuch and historical books, to establish Christian ethics.

 

One does not have to deny the divine inspiration of the entire Old Testament to argue that it cannot serve as a basis for contemporary Christian ethics. Jesus himself offered corrections to Old Testament ethics (e.g., divorce).

Early Christians, after the apostolic age (and some would argue during it—in some of Paul’s epistles), handled the tensions between Christian ethics (e.g., the Sermon on the Mount) and the Old Testament by means of allegorical hermeneutics. They based their ethics primarily on Jesus and the apostles and sometimes on Greek philosophy.

Reconciling God's Grace and Goodness to Human Violence

Today, for the most part, that avenue (allegorical interpretation) is closed off to us. We have to find new ways of handling the tensions and most Christians do. Those of us in the Anabaptist tradition (which includes many Baptists who were known as Anabaptists during their earliest years) do it by “reading the Bible backwards”—the Old Testament in the light of the New. We freely and joyfully admit that much of the Old Testament, especially in the realm of ethics, must be relativized in light of the New.

Very few Christians take literally, as straightforwardly applicable to today, the entire body of God’s commandments to Israel in the Pentateuch and historical books.... This is true even of some of Jesus’ sayings which Christians have always interpreted non-literally (e.g., Matthew 5:29).

For most Christians, both conservative and liberal, biblical principles override biblical rules when they conflict.

The demand to provide clear, straightforward, explicit proof texts of Scripture to justify all ethical norms is simply wrong headed. There are many behaviors virtually all Christians regard as unethical, even evil, for which no clear, straightforward, explicit ethical prohibitions can be found in Scripture (e.g., abortion as a means of birth control, torturing a person’s spouse to extract information from him or her, birthing humans with the sole purpose of harvesting organs, selling organs for profit, etc.).



Social Justice, Jesus, & Adultery

So too, there can be little doubt that the Old Testament represents God as commanding Israel to practice ethnic cleansing—including the slaughter of non-combatant women and children. (And it won’t do to argue that it wasn’t true “ethnic cleansing” because it was limited to a certain time and place. The same could be said of much contemporary ethnic cleansing such as took place in the Balkans in the 1980s and into the 1990s.) And yet, the vast majority of contemporary Christians would consider ethnic cleansing absolutely wrong and Christian support for it and participation in it heresy.

Here’s the rub for those who wish to jump to the Old Testament and things God commanded there to establish or support contemporary Christian ethics. That makes it impossible to say that every particular contemporary instance of holy war or ethnic cleansing is unequivocally evil. How could a person know that God did not command it? The belief that holy war with ethnic cleansing (to be very specific with this case study) is always unequivocally evil must be based on a hermeneutic that bypasses and supercedes the Old Testament Pentateuch and historical books. The same could be said of many behaviors virtually all contemporary Christians condemn as evil: enforced racial segregation/apartheid, polygamy, slavery (one person owning another), totalitarian monarchy, etc.

(Side Bar: In at least one example I can think of we contemporary Christians almost all condemn as unequivocally evil, wrong, bad, condemnable, heretical something that at least some Christians (“King James Only”) think is commanded in Scripture and that nobody could argue is explicitly condemned in Scripture: snake handling as part of Christian worship.)

Just-War theory, developed primarily by Christians (such as Augustine) borrowing elements from Greek and Roman sources, stands in direct conflict with holy war/ethnic cleansing as practiced according to divine commands by the Hebrews as recorded in the historical books of the Old Testament. It stands as an example of the [social] evolution of Christian ethics beyond anything explicitly taught in Scripture. And “Christians” who practice holy war with ethnic cleansing can claim that their behavior is more consistent with Old Testament ethics, even divine commands recorded in the historical books, than is just war theory. Just-War theory is a clear example of Christians developing ethics away from commands and rules found in Scripture on the basis of principles found in Scripture. (However, even those principles upon which Just-War theory is based have shaky biblical support. Just war theory was clearly developed for a totally new situation not found in Scripture—Christian involvement in creating public policy.)

I would even go so far as to suggest (these are my musings) that contemporary Christians need to take seriously philosopher Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative (one version of it) that “One ought always to treat other persons as ends in themselves and never as means to an end” without embracing all of Kant’s philosophy. Early Christians found much in Greek philosophy that was consistent with and even helpful for Christian ethics. Capital punishment clearly violates that principle, that imperative (to say nothing of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount). The abolition of capital punishment is, I believe, an imperative now partly because it is never necessary. There may have been a time when it was necessary (e.g., to protect other life), but it is now never necessary.

Book Recommendation: Penguins, Pain and the Whole Shebang

 

 

Penguins, Pain and the Whole Shebang:

By God As Told to John Shore [Hardcover]

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1596270195/?tag=johnshorebook-20#reader_1596270195

 

by John Shore

 

 

One year after his sudden and utterly out-of-the-blue conversion to Christianity (which he describes in the riveting afterword of this book), John Shore reportedly found himself overwhelmed by the desire to write something that Christians could give to non-Christians by way of proving that just because one is Christian doesn't automatically mean that one is irrational. The result is the delightfully profound "'Penguins, Pain and the Whole Shebang: Why I Do the Things I Do,' by God (as told to John Shore)," in which God (who, it turns out, is excruciatingly funny: who knew?) directly answers the dozen objections to Christianity most typically raised by non-Christians. The book's opening dialogue between God and the archangel Michael on the eve before God introduces Adam onto planet earth is worth the price alone.

 

There is no finer, accessible, or creative Christian apologetic. This is the book for which Mr. Shore is most likely to be remembered.

 

 

Editorial Reviews

 

"Do yourself a favor and read this book. You will be both entertained and inspired." -- Roger McClellan, The Progressive Christian Alliance

 

"Brilliant, quirky, perverse, exciting, and quintessentially Californian: John Shore's unique style is a delight to read-a literary feast!"-- Michael Flachmann, 1995 Carnegie Foundation United States Professor of the Year; author of Beware the Cat: The First English Novel (Huntington Library Press).

 

I know that for both chronological and biological reasons it s not possible, but if St. Augustine and Soupy Sales had a son, I think he would write almost exactly like John Shore. Shore is a madman and a genius, and this book is so happily wrought I don t know what to say about it except that this is the book many, many folks have been waiting for. It s a genuine triumph, a killer combo of astronomical wit and wisdom. I, for one, would like twenty-five copies immediately. --Eric Metaxas, author of bestsellers Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery, and Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed this very funny book: its style, its tone, its construction everything about it. Penguins is a winner. --Richard Lederer, author of more than thirty books on the English language, including the bestselling Anguished English series and The Miracle of Language.

 

Excellent! This is one funny book, in an era when religion isn t funny--but should be, if it s serious. --Richard Louv, author of international bestsellers Last Child in the Woods, and The Nature Principle.

 

 

About the Author

 

John Shore is an award-winning book author. His articles for The Huffington Post's Religion section are among its most popular. His blog, JohnShore.com, is one of the most read and commented upon in the blogosphere. He is the founder of  the growing movement known as Unfundamentalist Christians.

 

Dan Savage ("Savage Love"; It Gets Better) calls John Shore "America's preeminent non-douchey Christian." Rob Bell ("Love Wins") has declared Mr. Shore "awesome," and "a brilliant writer." "John Shore is a gadfly," wrote famed theologian John Shelby Spong, "calling the Christian Church everywhere to act the way it says it believes about love and justice, which of course makes him an uncomfortable presence in those churches that do not like to be forced to face reality. So were the prophets of old. So was Jesus of Nazareth."

 

 

 

Product Details Hardcover: 128 pages Publisher: Seabury Books; First edition (September 15, 2005) Language: English ISBN-10: 1596270195 ISBN-13: 978-1596270190

 

 

 

Peter Enns - Historical Criticism and Evangelicalism: An Uneasy Relationship

http://www.respectfulconversation.net/ae-conversation/2013/7/1/historical-criticism-and-evangelicalism-an-uneasy-relationsh-2.html

 

by Peter Enns

July 1, 2013

 

 

An Introduction.

 

Modern biblical scholarship—also referred to as historical criticism, and less often today “higher criticism”—has an uneasy history with evangelicalism. In fact, evangelicalism’s intellectual component is largely a sustained response to the methods, philosophy, and conclusions of historical criticism. In some cases that response has come in the form of the rejection of historical criticism, in other cases a synthesis or adaptation of its methods and conclusions with evangelical theology.

 

The tensions are rooted, I feel, in the core commitment of the evangelical movement to the authority of Scripture. Since Scripture is divine revelation, i.e., God’s self-disclosure, its “authority” is tied explicitly to inerrancy and a number of corollaries such as historical accuracy and the essential theological harmony of Scripture.

 

Scripture’s function in evangelicalism is to lay down the basic map of Christian thought and practice, what we are to understand about God, Christ, Scripture itself, the human condition, and Christian practice. The task of historical criticism, on the other hand, is to peer “behind” Scripture and inquire as to its origins and meaning as understood within the cultural context in which the various texts were written. These two diverse approaches to Scripture are not easily compatible.

 

In principle, evangelicalism is not inimical to historical inquiry. In fact, one of evangelicalism’s hermeneutical pillars is the interpretation of Scripture in its historical context and in line with its original, intended, meaning—what is typically referred to as “grammatical-historical interpretation.” The tensions with historical criticism are not over the mere idea of investigating Scripture in the context, but in manner in which historical critics get there and the conclusions that they reach. In both respects, historical criticism has tended to undermine evangelical premises of biblical authority.

 

What complicates matters considerably for evangelicals, however, is that the general contours of historical criticism are widely persuasive, even universally so outside of evangelical (and fundamentalist) communities. I see four general, interrelated, aspects of historical criticism that are well established in biblical scholarship and also, in various ways, at odds with mainstream evangelicalism’s understanding of the nature of Scripture.

 

 

1. Biblical origins. The Old Testament we know today has a lengthy developmental history, both oral and written. The drawing together of these traditions that did not commence in earnest until the Babylonian exile (6^th c. BC) and did not come to an end until sometime during the Persian period (roughly 5^th and 4^th centuries BC) at the earliest. This does not mean that the Hebrew Bible was written out of while cloth during this period. Some books or portions of books clearly were, but many others were added to or updated in some way.

 

[Similarly,] issues surrounding the formation of the New Testament are similar, but involve a much shorter period of time.

 

 

2. Perspectives of the biblical writers. When speaking of their past, the Old Testament writers were not working as modern historians or investigative journalists to uncover verifiable facts (as we might put it). They were more storytellers, conduits for generations—even centuries—of tradition, which they brought together to form their sacred text. In the Old Testament we have Israel’s national-religious story as seen through the eyes of those responsible for giving it its final shape.

 

This is not to say that they invented these traditions on the spot, but they “packaged” their past as they did to address their present crisis—exile, return, and an uncertain future. Israel’s inscripturated story both accounts for this crisis and also points the way forward to the hope that God has not abandoned his people but has a glorious future in store for them.

 

A similar issue holds for the New Testament, where the Gospels reflect the experiences and thinking of various Christian communities a generation and more after Jesus’ ministry on earth. They, too, are presentations of Jesus and the early missionary activities that reflect the perspectives and needs to the respective communities.

 

 

3. Theological diversity. Given historical criticism’s focus on matters of biblical origin, the diversity of the various biblical texts is highlighted with no pressing concern, as we see in evangelicalism, to draw these diverse texts into a harmonious whole. Hence, historical criticism speaks freely of the different theologies contained in Scripture.

 

One practical implication is that the evangelical hermeneutical methodology of allowing “Scripture to interpret Scripture” tends to fall on deaf ears among historical critics. Reading Genesis, for example, through the eyes of Isaiah or Paul in order to understand the meaning of Genesis would be like reading Shakespeare through the eyes of Arthur Miller and expecting to gain from it an insight into what Shakespeare meant.

 

 

4. The problem of historicity. This last aspect of historical criticism in effect summarizes the previous three: the Bible does not tell us what happened so much as what the biblical writers either believed happened or what they invented. This is not to say that historical critics think nothing of historical importance can be found in Scripture, but that any historical information is inextricably bound up with the perspectives and purposes of the biblical writers.

 

 

In Summary.

 

There are other ways of outlining the nature of historical criticism, of course, but this will do to highlight why tensions exist between historical criticism and evangelicalism. The former presents us with a Bible that the latter is loathe to accept in toto because of its significant theological ramifications.

 

Yet, most evangelical biblical scholars understand the persuasiveness and positive impact that at least some aspects of historical criticism have had on our understanding of Scripture. One need only glance at a decent evangelical Study Bible or commentary to see that impact.

 

The tensions between evangelicalism and historical criticism have not been settled, nor will they be in the near future, at least as I see it. There seems to be an implicit détente, where it is acceptable to mine historical criticism and appropriate its theologically less troubling conclusions but to draw the line where those conclusions threaten evangelical theology.

 

This sort of back-and-forth dance can ease tensions temporarily, but it virtually guarantees that each generation of thoughtful evangelicals, once they become sympathetically exposed to historical criticism, will question where lines should be drawn and why seemingly arbitrary lines have been drawn where they are.

 

The fact that these inner-evangelical tensions keep coming up anew each generation suggests that older solutions to these tensions are not persuasive but more a temporary stopgap measure to maintain evangelical theological stability. A possible way forward is to promote an explicit synthesis between evangelical theology and historical criticism in order to achieve, potentially, a more lasting peace. The difficulty here, however, is that such synthesis might threaten the very structure of evangelicalism to the breaking point.

 

I am an advocate for such a synthetic discussion, though I would also stress that historical criticism is not the end all of biblical interpretation for the spiritual nourishment of the church. But where historical matters are the focus, historical criticism is a non-negotiable conversation partner.

 

As I see it, the pressing issue before evangelicalism is not to formulate longer, more complex, more subtle, and more sophisticated defenses of what we feel God should have done, but to teach future generations, in the academy, the church, and the world, better ways of meeting God in the Scripture we have.