Does God Care About the Bible As Much As We Do?

Without getting too hot or bothered about Zach Hunt's article in Huff Post today I would like to say that he's on to something. Sure, I might disagree with his (purported) supposition that Jesus blew off the Old Testament (OT) Scriptures to start a Love Movement on His own. Or that the OT Scripture is a jumble of problems best left unread and unfollowed if one is to follow hard after the living God. Or that the past 2000 years of church dogma has pretty much left society screwed up, fragmented, and more hardened to God than ever before. Or even that the best divine authority in life might better be found outside the Bible and especially outside of the people of God for whatever reason we wish to throw out there (and there are many).

On the other hand, might we have become a bit too cynical or disbelieving in our minds and hearts to do the hard work of theology, leaving lesser lights from the pulpit and civic podium to measure its contents and speeches for us? Or perhaps have discovered that in order to hear God's Word again we just might have to change our cultural perspectives and hardened mindsets (horrors!) so that we actually can hear God speak to us again? Or that with time-and-distance from the God-event of the OT, Jesus knew then, as I've been thinking myself, that God might have to speak in a new way that might shake up the church establishment in order to get both church and mankind to listen again to His heart's passions? That with years of indifference, spiritual disregard, casual worship, brotherly bickering, tribal in-fighting, national exile, and divine judgment, the OT Scriptures became so "lost" to its intended themes and topics that Jesus pretty much had to "re-interpret" God's Word... which, in this instance, was the very God Himself speaking His own heart and mind to mankind. Not simply as a great prophet. A revered priest. Or beloved scholar. But very God of very God come to live, and breathe, and example, God's redemption to those who would stop, hear, and listen.

However we may disagree or fuss over Zach Hunt's comments I think we would do him a great injustice if we didn't seriously consider his argument that the church has made the Bible a holy relic that cannot be touched lest the whole God-thing-system comes crashing down on its head. Its what we call in religious circles as "bibliolatry"... the worship of the book over the Author. The lifting-up of our own religion through its religious pages to the ill-and-fate of others less fortunate to be in our "happy band of merry men." From bibliolatry comes folk religion... a colloquial name bestowed upon popular Christian movements, cherished christened ideologies, unquestioned church norms and beloved traditions that would cause its followers, members, joiners, and congregants, to think and do very "un-God-like" things. Things which seem to ring true in our religious (or is it legalistic?) and prideful hearts, but are very untrue and false when held before the Light of the Lord as He hung on the Cross forgiving His betrayers. Abandoned even of His own Father when taking on the idolatrous sins of His people upon Himself. Torn and rent by the hard pride of religious sin and desperate lust for self-righteousness.

Hence, let's not be too hard here today. And don't think that we must swing to the deep end of mysticism and magic, dreams and trances, agnosticism and atheism, in order to hear God again (of course I might sympathize with Christian agnostics and atheists if they do go this route). However, I am a firm believer that God's Word is enough, and that the church is redeemable through His people as His earthly hands and feet. But it is also true that we need a little Spirit-filled common sense, a bit of a backward glance towards past church histories filled with both its mistakes and failures as well as its successes and gains (I think of Christian martyrs like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, for one). And some outside help - even it were to come from the ranks of the "heathen" speaking in the name of science, philosophy, and scholarship. God has given to us reason and experience to be used and not abandoned. Let's use them in good order beginning with a prayer of help to the Lord to illumine our darkened hearts. Amen.

R.E. Slater

January 22, 2014

The process of interpretation -
Its not all that easy!

Does God Care About the Bible As Much As We Do?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zack-hunt/does-god-care-about-the-b_b_4611410.html

by Zach Hunt

January 21, 2014

For many in the church today, using the Bible as the go-to, definitive, and final answer for everything is the whole point of the Bible.

Otherwise, God wouldn't have chopped it up into nice chapters and verses that we could weaponize at the drop of a hat, right?

(Fun fact: The chopping didn't start until at least a 1,000 years after the New Testament was finished.)

But what if God had other intentions for the Bible? What if God didn't intend for it to be the unquestioned final authority on everything that we've turned it into? What if, dare I say it, God doesn't care about the Bible as much as we do?

I don't mean God thinks that it's worthless, but what if we think more highly of the Bible and its authority than we should?

I know that might sound crazy, but I have a sneaking (biblical) suspicion why that might actually be the case.

My suspicion begins in the Gospels where time and time again we hear Jesus declaring, "You have heard it said... but I say...." Now, sometimes he's just talking about tradition or the teachings of other rabbis. But a lot of times, he's talking about scripture itself, what we would today call the Old Testament. We tend to gloss over Jesus' words as nothing more than a rhetorical device, but when we do we miss the gravity of what he's actually doing.

He's breaking the bonds of scripture to bring new truth and breath fresh life into the people of God. He's refusing to be held captive to the words on the page in order to get to the real heart of faith.

And he's calling us to go and do likewise.

But the liberation doesn't stop there.

It culminates at the birth of the church. In particular, the story of the apostle Peter and the sheet that fell from heaven.

According to the book of Acts, the apostle Peter was at a house in the town of Joppa when he decided to go up to the roof and pray while lunch was being prepared. Not long after he had began praying, he fell into a trance and had one of those famous biblical visions from God. In the vision, he saw a sheet fall from heaven full of all sorts of creatures -- "four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air" -- and he heard a voice saying, "Take and eat." Peter said "no" because scripture forbade him from doing so. The voice told him again to take and eat and once more Peter refused. This happened three times and three times Peter said no, citing scripture.

It's an odd vision that only becomes odder when you step back and realize what's really going on.

That voice from heaven was God and God was telling Peter to violate scripture.

We like to gloss over this too as part of the whole "we're no longer under law, we're under grace" thing as if that was some how a fulfillment of scripture -- but it wasn't. Sure, there was a promised Messiah, but there was no sense in the Old Testament that the law would pass away and be replaced by a covenant of grace. Even if there was, the law was at the very heart of the people of God's identity. Saying the people of God are no longer under the Law, but under grace is nothing short of a revolution.

What's happening, then, in Peter's vision, the book of Acts, the Gospels, and throughout the New Testament is a fundamental and radical shift from the old way of doing things (no more sacrifices), from how God related to God's people (no more need for a high priest), and from scripture itself (no longer bound by the law).

It's not a complete break because the continuity is critical, but it is a seismic shift to something radically different than what had come before.

So why was God doing something so radical and so obviously contradictory to scripture?

Because God decided to do a new thing in Jesus and through the church, a Spirit thing that couldn't be bound by scripture, and either Peter (and the rest of God's people) could come along for the ride or stay shackled to the past.

When we hear this story taught in Sunday school, most of us respond the way we always respond when Peter sticks his foot in his mouth -- we're baffled that he could be so dense when God was being so clear in what God wanted and expected from him. But as much as we might like to think we would have responded differently if we had been in his position, I think the truth is most of us still use the Bible the same way Peter did -- as an idol to be blindly followed. An idol even God is answerable to.

Imagine if we had responded to the vision then like we do today to things we think are against the Bible:

• We'd start off with an internet rant about wolves in the church trying to deceive the faithful,

• then we'd string together a bunch of Bible verse to "prove" we're right,

• then follow that up with a thorough trashing of our opponent's knowledge of the Bible,

• and finally wrap things up by denouncing them as a liberal heretic.

And then when all our "righteous work" was done, just like Peter, we would have successfully quashed the movement of the Spirit.

I think our fundamental problem in all of this is that we've forgotten that the Bible is meant to be a guide on how to live and love in this life and the next, but instead we've turned it into a jailer that shackles us to ideology, dogma, and legalism.

Instead of letting the Bible lead us the Truth, we use it as a weapon to attack our enemies and defend our ideological idols.

If Peter had continued to use scripture the way we do today, instead of getting out of the way for God to move, then the power of the Spirit would have been stifled and the church would not have gotten off the ground. If Paul had used scripture the way we do today, he could have never taken the gospel to the ends of the earth and ministered to the Gentiles because they were outside of Israel's covenant as described in scripture. And if Jesus had used scripture like we do today, his ministry would have never left Nazareth.

Answering the call of God to join the new work of the Spirit doesn't negate the inspiration or authority of scripture. It simply puts it in proper perspective and allows it to serve its proper function -- as a guide to be followed, not an idol to be worshipped or a weapon to be wielded.

How do we let it guide us?

The same way the church has always let scripture guide us before we fell for the delusion of sola scriptura -- tradition can lead us, the church teach us, reason inform us, and experience shape us into the people of God formed but not shackled to the Bible.

So, does God care about the Bible as much as we do?

It doesn't seem so.

Though, of course, I can't speak for God, so I can't say for sure.

But I do think the Gospels and the story of Peter in particular should give us pause before we fill up anymore Facebook threads, message boards, comment sections, or Twitter feeds with never-ending strings of Bible verses.

In other words, we need to be careful.

Because God may be doing a new thing in the church today and, if God is, we may get left behind because we're so busy quoting Bible verses and holding God hostage to scripture that we can't see the work of the Spirit unfolding like a sheet from heaven right before our very eyes.

Grace and Peace,

Zack Hunt

Follow Zack Hunt on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TheAmericnJesus

Biologos - Evolution, Chance, and God

In introducing Neil Ormerod's article today I am reminded of several earlier articles I had published a year or two ago that dealt with these same issues. In the Index on Science and Religion, under the article entitled How God Created by Evolution: A Proposed Theory of Man's Evolutionary Development. I wrote specifically on four issues: the problem of original sin (category: The Fall); the uniqueness of humanity (category: the Image of God); the origin of sin (category: Metaphysics); the problems of typologies between Adam and Christ (category: Hermeneutics). Within each discussion I purposely incorporated an evolutionary point of view into popular church doctrines showing how one might integrate a plain Scriptural understanding of Genesis 1-3 with today's postmodern, contemporary sciences. Not in a typical one-to-one correlation but by creating a new set of hypotheses set within a broader (a-typical) reading of Genesis' creation texts (a literary reading of Scripture vs. a literal reading of its pages). Approached in this fashion, it allowed for popular biblical dogma to become enlarged by an external understanding of the biblical text without confusion to, or distrust of, the Word of God. It was a simple proposal that I couldn't find anywhere else  at the time. And it wedded the unnecessarily combative ideas behind theology and science in an elegant simplicity that I strongly needed to see written down by someone, somewhere.

Since those years I have steadily written about each of these issues from one perspective or another, speaking to a biblical dogma that can be enlarged without losing the God of the Scriptures. Consequently, I necessarily had to re-enter into discussions of sin and free will; chance and randomness within an evolutionary created order; God and creation; revelation and interpretation. But by allowing the possibility of evolution into the gilded pages of the biblical text required a further wholesale evaluation of biblical doctrines. When doing so, I surprisingly found a conservative interpretation that remained true to Christian orthodoxy but was now couched within a contemporary language that could speak relevantly to the church's postmodern generations. Rather than losing God and the Bible, I found God and His Word, in an amazing revelation of inspiration and illumination as led by the Holy Spirit.

And because of these studies and writings it has led to a bolder, clearer witness of biblically extrapolated thoughts and ideas I didn't think possible. As a result, I could now speak to the place of Open Theism and Evolutionary Teleology; to a Weak view (and not a Strong view) of the Anthropic Principle without diminishing God's power or provision; to God's Sovereignty without requiring the narrower Reformed idea of creational "control" that would misunderstand and confuse divine power, providence, plan, and purpose against scientific language; play chance and randomness off against one another within God's evolutionary design and still see the guiding hand of a wise Creator God throughout its processes, warp, and woof; and hear agnostic/atheistic arguments for what they were saying - as well as what they were not completely saying - about a God who isn't there based on their deterministic beliefs and/or modernistic conjectures. Overall, a good theology will allow for fuller arguments and better questions. Theologies that these would-be critics of the Christian faith don't have or hold except to point out their dissatisfactions and disagreements.

Hence, proceeding towards an Evolutionary Creational understanding of Scripture unlocked a lot of biblical confusion that had come with my older theology when based upon the idea of an immediate creation that had become so very out-of-touch with today's sciences, external discoveries, and scholarship. I needed a relevant Bible that was updated and contemporary. Not one held back in older systematic thought forms (epistemologies) and structures (hermeneutics). Some of these concerns will be evidenced in today's following article as you will see. And for those wishing further discussion on an area that once was so wide and troubling, I have attempted to guide readers within the documents of this site providing appropriate topical discussion along with an occasional index to those topics as I have had time to create or update those indexes.

To all I pray God's peace upon mind and heart. While hoping at the same time to provoke, prod, and poke towards a wider, fuller, approach to God's Word. One that might accord with our generation's more current scholarship will keeping the biblical witness and gospel of Christ in contemporary lockstep with today's generations of seekers and wanderers, lost and perplexed. Thank you for your consideration.

R.E. Slater

January 21, 2014

*It should be noted that Ormerod would like to retain classic theism in some sense. Many of my earliest articles have done the same in similar language. However, Process Theology has been utilized when, and where, it makes sense (Ormerod has noted this too). However, I suspect my theological position will be a bit more open to process theology and not as opposed to it as he seems to pose in his article below. For myself, my halfway house is found in the combine between classical theology and process theology which I describe as Relational Theology. In it, I will allow for a syncretism of thought between two disparate approaches to God... allowing neither position to hold the other hostage. Hence, Ormerod's arguments for a classical perspective are understood but when doing so his rejections to process thought will hold their own dilemmas when doing so. Thus my openness to either position, but not strictly, as I wish to seek a third, more mitigating language where possible, pertinent, or necessary. A position known as Relational (Process) Theology.

* * * * * * * *

Evolution, Chance, and God

http://biologos.org/blog/evolution-chance-and-god

by Neil Ormerod

January 20, 2014

Today's entry was written by Neil Ormerod. Please note the views expressed here are those of the author,

not necessarily of The BioLogos Foundation. You can read more about what we believe here.

In dealing with the theory of evolution the Christian believer must consider a number of difficult questions.

1- The first is how to remain faithful to the biblical text if one is to accept a scientific account which seems to negate the traditional interpretation of the creation account in Genesis 1-2.

2 - The second and perhaps more difficult question concerns the problem that arises in relation to Genesis 3, the account of the Fall, and the subsequent impact on our understanding of redemption.

3 - Finally there is the more general question of God’s relationship to the created order.

In this short piece I would like to focus on this third question, on the relationship between God and the created order. Put simply the question is, how does God act in the world? I want to be clear here that I’m not talking about instances of miraculous interventions whereby God acts with sovereign freedom, but about the “normal” course of events, the day-to-day out-workings of divine providence. Specifically the question is, Can God bring about the divine purpose through events which are chance events? Of course there are difficulties about how one might define “chance events” here, but the underlying issue concerns questions of randomness and its place in the relationship between God and creation.

Indeed it seems to me that this issue underlies some of the current debates around evolution. For example, the basic argument of people such as Dawkins is as follows:

• arguments for the existence of God depend on God being some sort of designer;
• evolution depends on chance (genetic mutations, natural selection);
• chance is incompatible with divine design;
• so God is not involved in evolution or in creation as a whole;
• therefore God is a redundant hypothesis.

Dawkins’s rejection of a creator God is linked to the position that God cannot be involved in random processes.

On the other hand I think we can find the same assumption operative in those who adopt the position of Intelligent Design. Their argument is as follows:

• chance is not enough to explain the process of evolution (for which they provide apparent evidence, viz.,irreducible complexity);
• the only way to fix the gaps in the evolutionary process is to posit an Intelligent Designer who intervenes in the system;
• therefore God is still a viable option.

What I think is going on here is a fusing of Christian belief in an efficacious divine providence, with a scientific determinism that arose out of the success of the Newtonian worldview. The ghost of Deism, linking God’s action with the “necessary” and deterministic laws of nature resulting in a clock-work universe, haunts the debate. Indeed the logic is compelling: What God wills, necessarily happens; and this necessity is conveyed through the scientific determinism of Newtonian mechanics. There is no chance because God operates through necessary scientific laws. If there is chance, on the other hand, God cannot be involved.

The Tension of Semantics

Recognition of the force of the tension between divine design and contingency of outcome was not invented by Deism, though Deism did give the argument a certain scientific respectability. In the Summa contra Gentiles [henceforth SCG] medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas deals with questions concerning divine providence and its relation to chance and necessity. The objections raised by our modern debates are already evident.

If all things that are done here below, even chance events, are subject to divine providence [read: divine design], then, seemingly, either providence cannot be certain [read: there is no real design], or else all things happen by necessity [read: there is no chance]. (SCG, 3, c.94.)

This is the issue underlying the debate between Dawkins and Intelligent Design. However Aquinas does not accept either of their conclusions. Among his long and detailed response we find the following illuminating comment:

If God foresees that this event will be, it will happen, just as the second argument suggested. But it will occur in the way that God foresaw that it would be. Now, He foresaw that it would occur by chance. So, it follows that, without fail, it will occur by chance and not necessarily. (SCG, 3, c.94)

Certainly Aquinas could see no contradiction between God acting through chance events and the certainty of divine design.

This same conclusion was adopted in the document “Communion and Stewardship” published in 2004 by the International Theological Commission, a body established to advise the Catholic Church on theological debates. Its comments on the present debate over evolution are instructive.

But it is important to note that … true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation ... Divine causality can be active in a process that is both contingent and guided. Any evolutionary mechanism that is contingent can only be contingent because God made it so.

This notion of “radically differ in kind and not only in degree” corresponds to Aquinas’s distinction between God as primary cause of being, and secondary created causes, which are genuine causes in themselves, but are only able to operate because God causes them to exist as genuine causes (see Rev. Austriaco’s recent post on this issue).

Indeed it is not difficult to find analogies in our own experience which can help us understand the randomness and purposefulness are not opposed. Consider the link between smoking and lung cancer. It is well established that smoking causes lung cancer with a certain statistical frequency. We know that if we reduce the rate of smoking in the general public we will reduce the incidence of lung cancer. Suppose we introduce a public health advertising campaign to reduce the incidence of smoking. Some people will see the ad, others will not. Some people will be moved by the ad to quit smoking, others will not. Some will succeed in quitting, others will not. At each step along the way there will be an instance of chance variation around a statistical norm. In the end if the campaign is successful we will see a decrease in the number of deaths by lung cancer. We will have achieved our goal intelligently using a method full of chance processes. Perhaps the dichotomy between chance and purposefulness is somewhat overstated.

None of these ideas precludes the possibility of special creation, or the interventions of an Intelligent Designer, but it does remove anxiety that the adoption of an evolutionary perspective is necessarily to adopt a materialistic and atheistic worldview. The affirmation of genuine chance and randomness in the universe does not rob the universe of meaning and purpose. In fact it creates the opportunity for genuinely novel things to occur, not in a mechanical and pre-determined way as the necessary outcome of pre-existing conditions but as truly “unpredictable” in terms of those pre-existing conditions. And so, novel events of quite low probability can still arise because in a universe as big, and as old, as the one we live in, even things with a very low probability of occurring can happen somewhere, sometime. And all this can occur within a framework of divine providence utilising statistical means to achieve God’s purpose.

Is Process Thought Necessary?

Significantly all this can be accommodated within the framework of classical theism, the belief that God is eternal, immutable, and omnipotent. Some, particularly those who have adopted the process framework of Alfred North Whitehead, argue that in order to accommodate the contingent, the novel and genuinely unpredictable, it is necessary to posit contingency in God. As process theologian Charles Hartshorne puts it:

The entire history of philosophical theology, from Plato to Whitehead, can be focused on the relations between three propositions:

1. The world is mutable and contingent;
2. The ground of its possibility is a being unconditionally and in all respects necessary and immutable;
3. The necessary being, God, has ideally complete knowledge of the world.

[Together] they imply the contradiction: a wholly non-contingent being has contingent knowledge. 

(Charles Hartshorne, Aquinas to Whitehead: Seven Centuries of Metaphysics of Religion (Milwaukee: Marquette University Publications, 1976), 15.)

The difficulty that Hartshorne is alluding to is the apparent paradox of how this “wholly non-contingent being has contingent knowledge”; that is, How can God know things “in advance” that occur by chance?

What the process position does not take into account is that God’s knowledge is not a passive receptive knowledge, but an active and creative knowledge. God’s knowledge creates reality, it does not simply grasp a reality as already existing. As with the positions of Dawkins and Intelligent Design, the underlying assumption is that this divine creative act precludes chance and contingency. To accommodate contingency, the God of process thought is no longer a genuine creator of all that is, but can be surprised by novelty as new things emerge in the world. It is difficult to see how this aligns with the sovereign God of Christian belief.

---

[note by R.E. Slater: I do not share the same sympathies here as Ormerod does.... My inference from process thought is that "divine creative act precludes chance and contingency" only on the basis of an evolving world set alone upon itself (the s-c-i-e-n-c-e side of the discussion). However, as set within the metaphysical affirmation for the Sovereignty of God (the t-h-e-o-l-o-g-y side of the discussion), this cannot be the case because all things proceed from Him by His designs and commands. Hence, Ormerod's argument is an argument of epistemological preference and not a factual statement leading to any closing arguments.]

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Significantly, process thought also makes God subject to time, temporal, and changing. In our book, Creator God, evolving world (Fortress Press, 2013), we argue in fact that such a position is incompatible with an Einsteinian account of relativity, because it privileges one timeframe (God’s time) above all others. So in seeking to accommodate itself to the scientific account of evolution, in fact process thought falls foul of what we know from Einstein’s account of relativity. See Chapter 3 for details.

---

[note by R.E. Slater: This is true. Process theology in fact proposes that God IS subject to time, temporality , and is changing in His experiential relationship with His creation. It is what gives to us an OPEN universe and an OPEN future. However, this does not discount that God is not leading all time and space, event and history, to a purposeful conclusion. Just a conclusion that is open, temporal, and changing. Classic Theism's definitive eschatologies would allow this too, and must allow it as can be seen in the general confusion of the church in just HOW God will redeem all creation. The future is known only so far as God is there. It is unknown as to its end and destiny except for the fact that all will be redeemed.

Choosing classical theology's closed system (or, non-open system) prevents these kinds of discussions. It leads to a closed bible. A closed faith. And a closed God. None of which are desirable. Process Theology opens up the bible. Opens up one's closed faith with its set boundaries. And opens up a closed God who is impassive to our peril and mechanistic in His response to our human / creational dilemmas. The charm to process thought is this very aspect of holding to a God in experiential relationship to His creation.

As such, this God feels our pain. Is in sympathy with our suffering. And wishes to provide meaning to a life that can appear meaningless when held in the colder streams of classical theology. Free will is everything in this discussion. Both with God and with His creation. Nothing is predetermined and yet all is being determined by a Sovereign God whom we can't explain and should not box in within our preferred metaphysical systems.]

* * * * * * * *

Neil Ormerod is research Professor of Theology at Australian Catholic University, Sydney Australia, and co-author with Cynthia Crysdale of Creator God, evolving world (Fortress Press, 2013). He is widely published in leading international theological journals and has another book, A Public God: Natural Theology Reconsidered, under contact with Fortress Press, to appear, 2014.

Is God Just Playing Dice?

Differences between Evolutionary Creationism and Darwinian Scientific Naturalism

How God Created by Evolution:

A Proposed Theory of Man's Evolutionary Development

Teleology Then and Now: The Place of Open Theism within Evolutionary Teleology

Evolution and the Separate Problems of Teleology and Human Consciousness

What Do We Mean by God as "Creator-Redeemer"?

Index to past articles on "Science & Religion"

The Problem of Divine Violence in the Bible (as vs. Marcionism)

Pete Enns, like many of us, have some very real doubts about what many Christians mean when they say that "God is in control." Just what kind of control are we advocating that God must have in our lives when seeing our loved ones die? Or when reading of unjust murders of community members in the daily papers? Or  in watching the everyday violence that goes on around us in this world through news reports and videos? Are these events the kinds of events that can tell us who God is? Or whether this God is really in control of a sinful, wicked world gone out-of-control?

No, I don't think so. It makes the all-too-common mistake of misreading events surrounding our lives as telling characteristics of a God we claim to see through those events. And like the biblical stories written by latter day observers of God, ethics, events, and creation, we make the all-too-common mistake of forming opinions about God based upon our casual observations about life as we think it is, and what it may mean to us based upon this information. It is a very subjective approach to theological study and not one especially filled with theological insight when done in such a cavalier, off-the-cuff, opining of the person of God, or the nature of the universe that we live in.

Preachers make this same mistake when reflecting upon the horrific circumstances of this life and then filling in what they think they know with a "interpretive system" that they think best describes the bible's God they would proclaim. "If not a butcher, than a hedonist. Or a God who is apathetic and callous." Perhaps a God who lost control, or never had control (to use a word that I personally would never use again when speaking of God). A God who is far from us and not near. Who has left us callously in the throes of sin and evil. Who is helpless to protect and save. Who cannot be a refuge for His people. Who is vengeful and wicked Himself as divine judge and dictator.

In all these ways, and many more, we would do the God of the Bible an injustice when not rightly dividing the Bible by throwing our own personal views and outlooks of life into its very seams and pages. As good theology and good hermeneutics go hand-in-hand, so does a good biblical system that may be holistic and more helpful to the postmodern contemporist's of our generation who think that the older biblical systems (and doctrines) of the Bible may not be as helpful as they once were thought to be (if ever they were).

Of course, I'm referring to the older Calvinist system and its ragged theological edges, having used the countering balances and arguments of Arminianism (not Armenian, which is a Eastern European people) to help re-weight (or re-balance) our ideas of God, free will, man, sin and evil. Or of a creation gone "wild" - as many mistakenly think - when in itself it is acting out its own sets of natural laws across the spectrums of biology, geology, cosmology, and so forth.

Or to reconsider love-based theologies like relational theology built around the subtler themes of open theology and process thought, which give to us a God who is present with us in the throes of sin and evil. Who walks with us. Who is there to help as He can against the evil that would harm us at the hands of others or by a universe "perceived" to be in chaos and disorder. Hence, we aren't looking for a God who is in control but for a God who is Sovereign. And to know the difference between these terms.

Even as we are to know the difference between what it means to divide the Scriptures in a way that allows for its own internal theological continuities and discontinuities. Or, to allow it to speak of God through the mouths of the ancients struggling with the very same issues we struggle with today (divine ethics v. human morality; divine purpose v. the human dilemma). Who wrote and spoke within their own, very human, contexts of society, inflecting a variety of literary devices or guiles that might use a triumphalist-conquest narrative context to speak against the very atrocities that were claimed of God by its priesthood and citizenry. In effect, saying "our God is bigger than your God. He can do more horrible things than your God can!" And in so doing, perhaps drive home the more salient point that the "bigness" of God is not found in military war and atrocities, but in the antecedal affects of tolerance, communication, loving, and the meting of justice across all spectrums of human lust and greed, violence and hate.

The ancient Near-Eastern (ANE) subtleties of writing are hard for us to perceive, removed so many centuries and millenias from the events and attitudes of their day. On first reading of a biblical passage, what seems so obvious becomes less obvious in hindsight and in theological conjecture (dependent upon the system you're using, grew up with, or may be schooled within). All of a sudden we begin to doubt ourselves and begin to ask God's Spirit for help in trying to understand what we think we understand but don't really understand. Sure, its easy to fall in with a particular (bible) school of thought that is popular, but eventually that attitude begins to ring a bit hollow when reflecting upon the questions of our lives. It's dilemmas, mysteries, provocations, and riddles.

Hence, Pete Enns does a good job here in stepping outside what we think we know about God - especially as it is popularized (perhaps quite innocently) by preachers and media - by asking the harder questions of observation and subtlety. Questions that demand better questions to help guide and direct us based upon our own contemporary, postmodern reading of previously engaging sciences, philosophies, theologies, psychologies, and sociological studies. The question is not whether "God is in control." But perhaps the better question is to ask whether we are in control. Whether we are looking for a God who might control life's ebbs and flows like we would. Who would answer its vexing pains and sufferings as we might.... Now that's an awesome question. And a much better telling insight as to what we may wish to avoid in future searches and explanations of the Bible. Its passages and phrases, thoughts and concerns, rhetorics and speeches.

Why? Because by seeing God as unlike ourselves might be the beginning of seeing God aright for the first time. Someone who is like us. But unlike us in significant ways. And that's a theology that might have a broader vision for the God we read of in the Bible. A theology which might allow for a God we think we know to be beyond what we think or imagine in the depths of our faithless hearts. A God whose ways are mysterious. Whose thoughts are beyond our own. Who loves us with the ferocity of a mother and father. With mercies that are new everyday. With wisdom beyond our own. Who forgives. Grants hope. Brings peace to our broken lives. Here is a God that is full of passion for us and not lost in the heavens out of earshot and uncaring. Who gives to us an open future with meaningful spiritual promise against the misery of our souls and lostness of our being. Against the hatreds we bear and the wrongs suffered. Who is our Shepherd. Our Guide. Our Father. Our Counselor and Prince of Peace. Our Redeemer. This is the kind of God that is far greater than we can imagine when so callously reading the Old Testament for its judgments and imprecations upon a sinful and lost mankind.

R.E. Slater

January 19, 2013

God as Sovereign

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Is Pete Enns a Marcionite?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2014/01/is-pete-enns-a-marcionite/

by Peter Enns

January 17, 2014

Comments

Marvin the Marcionite

I’ve been hearing this question–a thinly veiled accusation–for quite a while now, and I find it utterly ridiculous and irresponsible.

If my accusers would bother to do some research, like look into my birth records, they would see that I was born on this planet like everyone else–in Passaic, NJ, to be exact. This insinuated accusation assumes an inconceivably elaborate 24-esque terrorist conspiracy scheme involving forged birth records, which would require my German immigrant parents, who knew little English, to have deep government connections. Give me a break.

I hope we can put this to rest so we can move on and…

Oh wait…. I just Googled it….

OK. I see.

Apparently being a Marcionite means adhering to the teachings of the 2nd c. heretic Marcion, who saw in the Bible two different Gods: the wrathful God of the Old Testament and the happy gracious God of the New.

Which brings me to God’s violence in the Old Testament vis-a-vis Jesus’ non-violence in the New.

My view, as I’ve articulated roughly 47 billion times on this blog (see next article directly below), is that the New Testament leaves behind the violent, tribal, insider-outsider, rhetoric of a significant portion of the Old Testament. Instead, the character of the people of God–now made up of Jew and Gentile–is dominated by such behaviors as faith in Christ working itself out in love, self-sacrifice, praying for one’s enemies and persecutors. You know, Jesus 101.

Definitely not killing off a people group or one’s enemies to acquire land or hold on to it.

To speak this way is not Marcionism–not even quasi, latent, or incipient Marcionism, but an articulation of a perennial theological problem of Christian doctrine: the very real presence of both the continuity and discontinuity between the Testaments.

The Old Testament rhetoric of God sanctioned (or at least God tolerated) plundering of towns and taking captive children and virgin women is, I would dare to suggest, an area of profound discontinuity.

To suggest, even remotely, that this view is Marcionite in any sense of the word is only slightly less ridiculous and theologically irresponsible than the thought that I or others who think this way were born on Mars.

I don’t think the Gospel permits, condones, or supports the rhetoric of tribal violence in the Old Testament. But this does not mean I believe the Old and New Testaments give us different Gods. They give us, rather, [two] different portrayals of God.

Different portrayals of the one God are not simply seen between the two Testaments. They are also seen within each Testament. Israel’s Scripture does not present God in one way, but various ways–depending on who is writing, when, and for what reason. Same with the New. This is what keeps theologians so busy, trying to make that diversity fit into a system of some sort.

To say that there are two Gods, one of the Old Testament and one of the New, is Marcionism. To say that the one God is portrayed in various–even conflicting–ways is simply a matter of reading the Bible in English with both eyes open.

My big concern in all this is that the charge of Marcionism simply deflects from the real theological-hermeneutical problem of divine violence by giving a false sense of having solved the problem.

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John Piper, Preacher, Theologian

John Piper on Why “It’s Right for God to Slaughter Women and Children Anytime He Pleases” and Why I Have Some Major Problems with That
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2012/07/john-piper-on-why-its-right-for-god-to-slaughter-women-and-children-anytime-he-pleases-and-why-i-have-some-major-problems-with-that/

by Peter Enns

July 17, 2012

Comments

Author and pastor John Piper, in a relatively recent interview on his website Desiring God: God-Centered Resources from the Ministry of John Piper, discusses the vexing problem of God ordering the mass killing of every Canaanite man, woman, and child.

Here is the opening quote.

“It’s right for God to slaughter women and children anytime he pleases. God gives life and he takes life. Everybody who dies, dies because God wills that they die.”

Words fail me. Apparently, Piper sees no problem.

What’s more, Piper feels his thinking applies to all deaths everywhere.

“God is taking life every day. He will take 50,000 lives today. Life is in God’s hand. God decides when your last heartbeat will be, and whether it ends through cancer or a bullet wound. God governs….

If I were to drop dead right now, or a suicide bomber downstairs were to blow this building up and I were blown into smithereens, God would have done me no wrong. He does no wrong to anybody when he takes their life, whether at 2 weeks or at age 92.

God is not beholden to us at all. He doesn’t owe us anything.”

Words fail me even more.

Certainly everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion (and what would the internet be without it), and people are always free to accept or reject what others say.

Actually, on one level, it is helpful that Piper is willing to offer his views so clearly in a public forum. Characterizing God this way is, in my estimation, its own refutation, and in the end will serve the truth more than obscure it.

But still, Piper’s position raises some serious issues that won’t stay buried for long, and are worth drawing out–at the very least so people can to work through the issue themselves and not be swayed by a public figure taking such a strong stand, or conclude that Piper represents the only option before us.

Each of these issues outlined below, to be sure, engenders it’s own discussion–and I can only be very brief here–but they are part and parcel of the broader discussion of God’s violence in the Old Testament.

1. It is unguarded to make a general principle of God’s character on the basis of the treatment of the Canaanites in the Old Testament. Of course, Piper would likely retort that all of Scripture is God-breathed, does not mislead us, and reveals the character of God. But then he would need to address squarely Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount that “death to our enemies” is no longer valid.

The "insider-outsider premise" that undergirds Canaanite slaughter (and the killing of many of Israel’s enemies in the Old Testament–see #3) is the very thing Jesus squashed: “My kingdom is not of this world.” That alone should give Piper pause from venturing forward with his assessment of God’s character on the basis of how Canaanites are dealt with.

2. Following on #1, “the Bible said it, that settles it” answer to God’s violence in the Old Testament not only runs into problems with respect to the New Testament but the Old Testament as well. There is a fair amount of theological diversity in the Old Testament regarding the nature of God’s judgment on the nations that would need to be taken into account. (For example, compare Jonah and Nahum on the fate of Assyria; the glorious fate of Egypt in Isaiah 19:23-25.) To make one view on such a thorny issue the model for how God acts throughout time runs the danger of privileging certain texts that support one’s theology.

3. Related to #s 1 and 2, Piper would also need to address the historical reality of the ancient tribal setting of these Old Testament stories. I realize that for a literalist like Piper, this point is wholly out of bounds, for it requires that we allow what we have learned [from outside the Bible] archaeologically about the ancient world of the Bible to influence how we understand the Bible.

Still, for those interested, we know that the rhetoric of a patron high god fighting for his people and insuring their military successes (and failures if they are unfaithful) is a common ancient manner of envisioning the activity of the divine realm vis-a-vis politics. I suspect Piper may not have much use for such information, but placing the biblical accounts of military conquests next to those of other ancient peoples leads to the following reasonable and commonly accepted conclusion:  how Israel described God’s activities was influenced by cultural givens and therefore not to be applied willy-nilly for all time and places.

4. Following on #3, Piper would need to take seriously the conclusion drawn overwhelmingly by archaeologists that the systematic slaughter of the population of Canaan around 1200 BC did not happen. As with many issues surrounding archaeology, there is further discussion to be had, and I am guessing that Piper will not be swayed by what archaeologists say.

Nevertheless, there were likely only a few small battles in a few places (like Hazor). The stories of mass extermination of Canaanites that God ordered (Deuteronomy 7:1-5 and 20:10-20) do not depict brute historical events, but Israel’s culturally influenced way of making an important  theological statement (see #5). If that is true, it complicates Piper’s assumption that one can point to the book of Joshua and say “God is like this.”

5. It is not at all clear that these biblical stories were even written to depict “what God did.” Recent work has made the case that the book of Joshua is not a “conquest narrative.” Rather, using conquest as a narrative setting, Joshua is a statement about what it means to be an insider or an outsider to their community.

The conquest stories are symbolic narratives that point to a theological truth. For example, the fact that Rahab, the Canaanite prostitute, is spared but the Israelite family man Achan and his family are treated as Canaanites (Joshua 6-7) is designed to make people think long and hard about what [the concepts of] insider and outsider even means. (See Douglas S. Earl The Joshua Delusion?: Rethinking Genocide in the Bible and Daniel Hawk Every Promise Fulfilled: Contesting Plots in Joshua.)

6. More practically speaking–and without intending to implicate Piper–history bears witness that those who envision God the way Piper does are only one small step away from forming their own Christian Taliban to be God’s agents of wrath in this life.

Some [Such proponents would] kill abortion doctors and gays, but more commonly the end result of such thinking is a brand of Christianity that is agitated, judgmental, suspicious, and ready to draw blood whenever a perceived offense to God is committed. A faith in God that is governed by such a posture toward others is something Jesus clearly taught against.

7. Piper would need to engage the common response that the killing of a population to take their land is resolutely condemned not only in modern culture but among Christians around the world. In other words, Piper would need to address the ethical implications of a God who does what every fiber of our being and shared experience says is wrong–shedding innocent blood to take their land and resources.

8. According to Deuteronomy 20:10-20, God orders the Israelites to kill every living thing within the borders of  Canaan, but that is only half the marching order. An equally disturbing fate awaits those in cites outside of the borders of Canaan.

First Israel is to offer terms of peace. If they accept, the people are enslaved. If they refuse, the men are to be killed but the women, children, livestock, and anything else are kept as booty. To be consistent, one would need to think that, “God is enslaving people every day. He will make 50,000 slaves today. Slavery and freedom are in God’s hand. God decides whether you will be slave or free.” [Thus, the question of ethics and God].

9. How does Piper or anyone know, really, that all deaths are “willed” by God? Nothing in the Bible can compellingly be interpreted this way, and the whole matter seems to be more a matter of mystery than theological certitude. I suspect that perhaps Piper is pre-committed to this view by virtue of a Calvinist premise of God’s “sovereignty.” But sovereignty, even in a Calvinist sense, does not imply that God is necessarily “taking life everyday.”

10. Finally, I am not sure how this sort of view of God translates into effective ministry. I don’t think it is pastorally effective (not to mention theologically sound) to tell people: “God is the sovereign God of the universe and he may snuff out your life - or the life of your loved ones - at any time by cancer, a bullet, kidnap/murder, slow starvation, a plane flying into a building, etc. He isn’t beholden to you. He doesn’t owe you anything if you drop dead.”

Piper’s hyper-literalistic defense of Canaanite genocide may score some points (temporarily) against atheist attacks on the Bible, but how will this play with real people who are struggling to find ways to make it through life day to day? Is not “God is love… the very hairs of your head are numbered… cast your cares on him… he desires that no one perish… you are his sheep” more in keeping with building up God’s people?

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The morality of God killing Canaanites has been joyfully thrown in the face of Christians in recent years by such prominent atheists as Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, which is what Piper is reacting to. 

But Canaanite genocide has been a topic of concern ever since the earliest theologians of the church began to wrestle with it in the 2nd century. It has always been and remains a tough issue for anyone who takes the Bible seriously.

I feel that Piper’s comments in his interview obscure the genuine complexities of this important conversation and leave us with a God that, at the end of the day, I contend is not the God of the gospel but the very caricature of God we should avoid.

- Pete