Little Drummer Boy - Pentatonix
[Official Video] Angels We Have Heard On High - Pentatonix
[Official Video] Carol of the Bells - Pentatonix
Pentatonix Christmas Medleys
Tuesday, December 17, 2013
Monday, December 16, 2013
Index - Songs and Music
Lindsey Stirling Rejoices in the Lord playing "Hallelujah" & "Shatter Me"
Choral Arrangement: "My Song in the Night" by the Salt Lake Vocal Artists
Choral Arrangement: "My Song in the Night" by the Salt Lake Vocal Artists
Rejoicing with Tenth Avenue North
הללויה להקת חינוך - Hallelujah
Hallelujah Christmas Version by Cloverton
Sara Groves - Songs, Videos, Lyrics
Clayton Jennings - "What Will You Say?"
A Love Song from a Father to his Daughter
הללויה להקת חינוך - Hallelujah
Hallelujah Christmas Version by Cloverton
Sara Groves - Songs, Videos, Lyrics
Clayton Jennings - "What Will You Say?"
A Love Song from a Father to his Daughter
Saturday, December 14, 2013
Roger Olson, "Review of Apostles of Reason by Molly Worthen," Part 2
Review of Apostles of
Reason:
The Crisis of Authority in American
Evangelicalism (Part Two)
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/12/review-of-apostles-of-reason-by-molly-worthen-part-two/
by Roger Olson
by Roger Olson
December 13, 2013
Comments
Review of Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism
by Molly Worthen (Oxford University Press), Part 2
to read Part 1 click here
to read Part 3 click here
Before reading this you should have read Part One which was posted earlier. Each installment of this three part review focuses on one of the three parts of the book. This one focuses on Part 2: To Evangelize the World.
to read Part 1 click here
to read Part 3 click here
Before reading this you should have read Part One which was posted earlier. Each installment of this three part review focuses on one of the three parts of the book. This one focuses on Part 2: To Evangelize the World.
Part II - To Evangelize the World
 |
| Amazon.com book link |
“By the final decade of the twentieth century, commentators who insisted on drafting all American evangelicals into “red state” ranks did so only by ignoring the diversity, ambiguity, and contradiction among believers who had learned to produce so many versions of their own history that one self-described ‘evangelical’ barely resembled the next.” (173)
How true. And yet, I would add, diversity has always existed among evangelicals. Again, I return to my suggestion that historians of evangelicalism learn to distinguish between an evangelical “ethos” and evangelical movements including the neo-evangelical, postfundamentalist movement this book is mainly about. Much confusion could be avoided if people simply recognized and worked with that distinction.
What unites all evangelicals is a spiritual-theological ethos marked by five hallmarks (thanks to David Bebbington with the fifth added by me):
1) biblicism,
2) conversionism,
3) crucicentrism,
4) activism, and
5) respect for basic Christian orthodoxy.
Even each hallmark takes on a somewhat different flavor among different evangelicals.
In Part II Worthen surveys the twists and turns within the postfundamentalist, neo-evangelical movement during the second half of the twentieth century. Many of these twists and turns presented challenges to the hegemony of the (mostly) Reformed, rationalistic spiritual-intellectual habits of the movement’s founders and leaders. For example, she writes about
3) crucicentrism,
4) activism, and
5) respect for basic Christian orthodoxy.
Even each hallmark takes on a somewhat different flavor among different evangelicals.
In Part II Worthen surveys the twists and turns within the postfundamentalist, neo-evangelical movement during the second half of the twentieth century. Many of these twists and turns presented challenges to the hegemony of the (mostly) Reformed, rationalistic spiritual-intellectual habits of the movement’s founders and leaders. For example, she writes about
- the evangelical discovery of imagination and the arts (Wheaton College’s Clyde Kilby is her main case study),
- the neo-Pentecostal and charismatic movements and their impacts on American evangelicalism,
- the evangelical discovery of the importance of anthropology for missions,
- some evangelicals’ love affairs with liturgy (“bells and smells”) (including some evangelicals’ conversions to Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy), and
- evangelicals’ shaky encounters with ecumenism.
Worthen’s main point in this Part seems to be that the fragmentation of the neo-evangelical movement was inevitable as evangelicals left fundamentalist isolation behind and began to open up to the wider Christian and secular worlds. The neo-evangelical movement founded by Ockenga, et al., was primarily an intellectual-theological movement to enrich fundamentalist orthodoxy and shake off its cultic features. But an unintended consequence of this openness was defections from the fundamentalist habits of mind and heart the neo-evangelical founders and leaders kept from their fundamentalist backgrounds.
For example, the movers and shakers of neo-evangelicalism wanted (and still want) passionately to emphasize:
- the propositional nature of revelation, verbal inspiration of the Bible and its factual inerrancy,
- Christianity as the only coherent worldview (Weltanschauung),
- rational apologetics (either presuppositional or evidentialist),
- premillennial eschatology,
- calm, reasonable, orderly evangelism and worship, and
- a rather detailed vision of Christian orthodoxy tied to the “stout and persistent theology of Charles Hodge” (David Wells).
Unrecognized by them was the degree to which this idea of evangelical Christianity was Western, white, male, Enlightenment-based and even American (or at least Anglo-American).
Their rejection of fundamentalist isolation from culture and disdain of science and anti-intellectualism in general, however, led inexorably to a fraying of the edges of this monolithic and often totalizing evangelical narrative.
One case study of this that Worthen focuses on is the change wrought in evangelicalism by Bible colleges’ search for accreditation throughout the 1960s and 1970s. (I was in an evangelical Bible college when it went through this controversy with many conservative constituents and not a few students warning that accreditation would inevitably lead to a loss of the college’s distinctives.) Accreditation pressures eventually caused many fundamentalist-founded evangelical Bible colleges to either become liberal arts colleges (and then universities) or sink back into isolation and often oblivion. In the process of becoming liberal arts colleges and universities evangelicalism’s institutions of higher education imitated secular colleges and universities and absorbed elements that changed them and through them evangelicalism.
Neo-evangelical leaders both promoted and resisted such changes. This is, I believe, the basic paradox of American evangelicalism in the last half of the twentieth century. Its leaders craved respectability within the larger culture but at the same time resisted such respectability when it required changes in their founding vision of evangelicalism. They claimed to transcend fundamentalism in biblical interpretation (being more open to biblical criticism so long as it did not depend on naturalistic assumptions), openness to the arts and science, cultural engagement, intellectual life, etc. But as soon as any of this began to challenge neo-evangelical (often fundamentalist) sacred cows they reacted negatively in often very ferocious ways.
For example, Fuller Seminary’s shaking off of inerrancy as an evangelical essential brought about the over reaction of Harold Lindsell’s The Battle for the Bible and the ensuing battle over the Bible among evangelicals.
For example, the 1960s and 1970s “young evangelicals’” social activism brought about harsh criticism from Carl Henry and other mainline neo-evangelical leaders for allegedly flirting with socialism and reducing the gospel to ethics.
For example, the 1980s flowering of “new paradigm churches” and “signs and wonders” and “spiritual warfare” brought about knee-jerk rejection from many evangelical leaders.
For example, “church growth” movement’s emphasis on using marketing methods to create “seeker sensitive churches” and grow them into mega-churches brought about harsh criticism from many evangelical leaders.
Perhaps the example Worthen offers that hits closest to home for me is neo-evangelicals’ reaction to the Jesus People Movement. Here’s an example. It was Easter weekend, 1971. I traveled with our college’s dean to the Tri-state Youth for Christ “rally” (convention) in Evanston, Illinois. Many colleges set up booths to recruit students there. The rally was held in a large arena and was organized and led by local Youth for Christ officials and pastors of supporting evangelical churches. Among the invited musicians were Larry Norman and Crimson Bridge. Almost all the musicians were radical “Jesus Freaks.” Larry Norman sang “I Wish We’d All Been Ready” and the youthful crowd went wild. Eventually the convention turned into a Jesus People event with lots of emotional praise and worship and hands waving in the air and even some speaking in tongues. Although Keith Green was not there, the event was a precursor to his style of music and worship. (If I recall correctly Green converted after this.) On Saturday afternoon the YFC leaders tried to shut down the event because of the non-traditional style of worship that was happening. One of the Jesus Freak musicians gently pushed the YFC official (in suits and tie) aside and took the microphone saying “Jesus isn’t done here yet!” The crowd applauded and shouted approval loudly and stayed long into the night. The YFC leaders left.
I witnessed this and now, looking back on it, I realize it was a microcosm of the tension Worthen is talking about—evangelicals seeking dynamic change and adjustment to God’s moving outside the confines of neo-evangelicalism while at the same time withdrawing as soon as things began to get out of their tight control.
I can personally resonate with Worthen’s argument about this tension within the neo-evangelical movement. The college I attended sought and gained accreditation but strongly resisted academic freedom. An adjunct professor who was hired because of his graduate degree(s) in psychology was let go because he taught behavior modification as legitimate (without naturalistic assumptions). An academic dean (the one who took me to the YFC rally in Indiana) was hired because he had a graduate degree from a mainline evangelical seminary but was fired because the president, who did not, was threatened by his intellectual prowess and openness to new approaches to hermeneutics (that he learned at the mainline evangelical seminary).
Almost every movement within the evangelical movement Worthen touches on in Part II has touched my life somewhere along the way. But most importantly, Worthen’s interpretation of all these events and their impact on the neo-evangelical movement (which I have been part of for much of my life) and neo-evangelical leaders’ reactions to them (which I have felt) resonate with me experientially as well as intellectually.
So what’s the “take away” for me? Some people view me as an “evangelical doyen (the senior member, as in age, rank, or experience, of a group, class, profession, etc)” (to quote one critic). I don’t see myself that way, but I guess I have some influence among evangelicals. I do not want to make the same mistakes the neo-evangelical movement’s founders and movers and shakers made in the face of loss of control of the movement as younger, differently thinking evangelicals came up through the ranks and challenged their hegemony.
continue to:
My response to Neo-Evangelicalism -
The Oracles of Postmodern Theology Must Reinterpret Scripture
or
continue to Part 3 of this series -
Roger Olson, "Review of Worthen's Apostles of Reason," Part 3
My response to Neo-Evangelicalism -
The Oracles of Postmodern Theology Must Reinterpret Scripture
or
continue to Part 3 of this series -
Roger Olson, "Review of Worthen's Apostles of Reason," Part 3
Brueggemann: The OT Law Pertaining to the Year of Release - The Forgiveness of All Debts
The Most Important Command in the Old Testament isn’t what you think
by UM Jeremy
December 6, 2013
What’s the most important command in the Old Testament?
C’mon, this is an easy question. Because Jesus was asked the same question so we can pretty easily rely on his answer. It’s the Shema: to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind. And to love your neighbor as yourself. Asked and Answered!
But no, Jesus was wrong.
At least, if you value grammar over the opinion of God-With-Us.
=====
In my Sunday School class, I’ve been teaching a video series featuring Dr. Walter Brueggemann, an Old Testament professor and author. In February 2012, Brueggemann gave the three-day Barton Clinton-Gordey Lecture Series at Boston Avenue UMC on the topic of “Scarcity and Abundance in the Bible.”
In the third lecture of the series, Brueggemann points to the following as the most important command in the Old Testament:
In Deuteronomy 15, you get a law about seven years. It’s called the Year of Release. It says that at the end of seven years, if a poor person owes you money, cancel the debt.
Uh, what? That’s the most important? A law about releasing debts? What about the Shema? The 10 Commandments? Whatever. If you break this seven-year-release law, the United Methodist Church won’t even put you on trial.
So c’mon, how on earth is this the most important commandment? Brueggemann continues:
I’ll give you a little Hebrew grammar–I know you’ve been waiting for this. Biblical Hebrew has no adverbs. The way it expresses the intensity of the verb, it repeats the verb. So if it says give and you want to say “really give” it says “give give” right in the sentence–”give give.”
This law about the Year of Release there are five absolute infinitives that you can’t spot in English. There are more intense verbs in this law than anywhere else in the Old Testament. This is Moses saying I mean this.
[The law] says to not be hard-hearted (or tight fisted) about granting poor people space to live their lives, because you were slaves in Egypt and the Lord God brought you out into the good place.
So grammatically, the Old Testament scripture with the most emphasis as in “you must must must must must do this” is a passage about forgiving debts.
Fascinating.
=====
Is it the greatest command? Clearly not, I completely agree with Jesus on this point.
But the command in the Bible that warrants the most emphasis, the most literary focus, the crescendo that storytellers and givers of oral tradition gave the biggest exhortation to…is a little passage about releasing debts in the seventh year.
To Brueggemann, this emphasis means that for a society composed of God’s people that there should not be a permanent underclass but the economy should be organized so that everyone has a viable chance. So that every seven years, there’s a chance for the people to get a leg up and have past errors forgiven. It’s the original social safety net, and it’s more painful to the rich than any progressive tax code in American history.
To me, it means that we follow a God who knows our sins, who knows our hard-heartedness, who knows our short memory, who knows that we bully those most like us, who knows that the mighty will always try to hide injustice behind fairness.
And we are always called to live a life that follows God’s pattern: to strive for six days a week, and relax on the seventh. To build up for six years, and release it to be whatever it ought to be on the seventh. And to trust that our plans, our schemes, and our dreams should always be planned with space for God to work among us in that chaotic, uncontrollable seventh day, year, or moment…because that’s how a life centered on God just is.
Do you? Thoughts?
How to Read Torah in Light of Paul's NT Reading
To Comprehend Paul, Read This
by Scot McKnight
December 12, 2013
I have long thought Paul’s thought needs to be seen at work in particular passages and that his whole theology comes to expression all at once — dense, to be sure, but all there. One such passage is Galatians 2:15-21, which I quote here so you can see how Tom Wright explains it in his Paul and the Faithfulness of God. In his explanation below, there are plenty of points to observe but some of this will be controversial for some.
If you want to hear the “new” perspective in one simple post, this is it. (Question: How does the old perspective read this passage? Hint: personal anthropology is at the forefront, not Jewish history.)
If I were going to pick one passage to make my present point about the Torah, it might well be Galatians 2.15-21. This is all about redefinition, the radical redefinition that can only be captured in the dramatic picture of someone dying and coming up a new person:
"(19)Through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. (20) I have been crucified with the Messiah. I am, however, alive – but it isn’t me any longer, it’s the Messiah who lives in me. And the life I do still live in the flesh, I live within the faithfulness of the son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." (Gal 2.19-20)
Here’s a very important point for the old perspective and one that illustrates the new perspective — the “I” here is not human experience but Paul’s own theology in autobiographical terms:
Paul is not here recounting his own ‘religious experience’ for the sake of it. He is telling the story of what has happened to Israel, the elect people of God – and he is using the rhetorical form of quasi-autobiography, because he will not tell this story in the third person, as though it were someone else’s story, as though he could look on from a distance (or from a height!) and merely describe it with a detached objectivity. It matters of course that this was indeed his own story. No doubt the experience Paul had on the Damascus Road and in the few days immediately afterwards may well have felt as though he was dying and being reborn. But what we have here is not the transcript of ‘experience’, as though he was appealing to that (curiously modern) category for some kind of validation. Peter had ‘this [reborn] experience’ as well; so did Barnabas; so, not least, did James and the people who had come from him in Jerusalem. So, of course, did the Galatians. By itself, ‘experience’ proves nothing. ‘Yes, Paul’, they could have said; ‘That’s what happened to you, but for us it was different.’ No: what mattered, for Paul, was the Messiah, and the meaning of his death and resurrection in relation to the category of the elect people of God (852-853).
What’s the issue, then?
The issue at stake in Antioch consisted, quite simply, in the question: were Jewish Messiah-believers allowed to sit and eat at the same table as non-Jewish Messiah-believers? (230) Paul’s reconstruction of what happened goes in four stages.
First, the church in Antioch had been used to eating all together. They had made no distinction among Messiah-believers on the basis of their ethnic origin. We may assume, from the sequel, that this was a fairly radical move for Jews who had previously held to some form of the taboo which required them to eat separately from Gentiles. (231)
Second, Peter comes to Antioch and is happy to join in with the practice that has thus become established. Paul appears to regard this as in line with their earlier agreement.
Third, ‘certain people come from James’, in other words, from Jerusalem. Paul is careful not to say ‘James sent certain people’, leaving open the question of whether they represented James’s actual views. When they arrive, Peter changes his policy – whether because of something they say, or simply because Peter knows what they may think, or imagines what James might well say – and ‘separates himself, being afraid of the circumcision people’ (Gal 2.12).
Fourth, the rest of the Judaeans present (except Paul himself, we under- stand!), go along with Peter: Paul’s word for this is ‘co-hypocrites’, fellow play-actors (Gal 2.13). A note of sorrow enters: ‘even Barnabas’, who had shared Paul’s early missionary work and (according to Acts) had been of great help to him at a difficult time, went along with Peter and the others (854).
It is important to be fully clear on what the issues were. This was not a matter, as some have absurdly suggested, of people ‘learning table manners’. (233) The question was as central as anything could be: is the community of Messiah-believers one body or two? Which is the more important division: that between Jews and non-Jews (because Messiah-believing Jews would still be able to eat with non-Messiah-believing Jews), or that between those who believed and those who did not? Was Messiah-faith simply a sub-set of Judaism, leaving the basic structure untouched, or did it change everything? (854-855)
And now this means “justification” is redefined — notice this:
Paul would be up for the quarrel. He knew the moves. The opening statement says it all:
(15) We are Jews by birth, not ‘gentile sinners’. (16) But we know that a person is not declared ‘righteous’ by works of the Jewish law, but through the faithfulness of Jesus the Messiah.
At a stroke, Paul has told us what it means to be ‘declared righteous’. It means to have God himself acknowledge that you are a member of ‘Israel’, a ‘Jew’, one of the ‘covenant family’: the ‘righteous’ in that sense. Yes, ‘righteous’ means all sorts of other things as well. But unless it means at least that, and centrally, then verse 16 is a massive non sequitur. ‘We are Jews by birth, not “gentile sinners”’; to say that, in the setting of a dispute about who you can eat with, and in the context of a statement about people ‘living as Jews’ and ‘living as Gentiles’ where what they have been doing is eating together (or not), leaves no elbow room for the phrase ‘declared righteous’ to mean anything else at its primary level. The whole sentence, in its context, indicates that the question about two ways of ‘being declared righteous’ must be a question about which community, which table-fellowship, you belong to. Do you, along with your allegiance to Jesus as Messiah, belong to a table-fellowship that is based on the Jewish Torah? If you do, says Paul, you are forgetting your basic identity. What matters is not now Torah, but Messiah. Justification is all about being declared to be a member of God’s people; and this people is defined in relation to the Messiah himself (856).
I predict this next paragraph could be contentious for some, perhaps many:
Paul’s overall point, throughout Galatians 3 and 4 is narratival, as we saw in chapter 6. Once you understand how the story works, the great covenant story from Abraham to the Messiah, you can see (a) that the Torah was a necessary, God-given thing, with its own proper role within that story, and (b) that the God-given role of Torah has now come to a proper and honourable end – not that there was anything ‘wrong’ with it, but that it was never designed to be permanent. The latter is what Paul specially needs to stress, but the former point is vital (despite the long and loud chorus of dualistic readers) to avoid any slide towards Marcionism [(a Gnostic ascetic sect that flourished from the 2nd to 7th century a.d. and that rejected the Old Testament and denied the incarnation of God in Christ)]. Granted (b), any attempt to go back to Torah would be an attempt to turn back the divine clock, to sneak back to an earlier act in the play – and thereby to deny that the Messiah had come, that he had completed the divine purpose, that in him the Abrahamic promises had now been fulfilled. It is the same choice that faced Peter: either belong to the redefined elect family, the people of Abraham, or rebuild the walls of Torah around an essentially Jewish ethnic family – which would imply that the Messiah would not have needed to die (2.21) (862).
Continue to
Index -
Friday, December 13, 2013
How Do You Read the Bible? Incarnationally, Inspirationally, Inerrantly, or Inexpertly?
Today's posting brings out some important questions for us to think about concerning the nature and relationship of biblical inerrancy to Christ's Incarnation.... I'll commence by asking the following questions:
- Is Christ more important than the Bible?
- Is theology be first centered in Christ or in the Bible?
- How were the early Christians informed of Christ?
- How were the believers in the OT informed of Yahweh?
- Was it necessary to have a Bible to believe in Christ (or Yahweh?)
- What place does the Bible have in relationship to Christ?
- Did the Bible inform the early church of Jesus her Lord?
- Or rather, did Jesus inform His church of Himself through the Hebrew Scriptures?
- Did Jesus add to these Scriptures, subtract from them, or simply re-interpret them?
- If Jesus did add or subject was it from the Pharisaical interpretations of Scripture?
- Did early Christianity function without a Bible in the early church?
- If not, what did they use? What place and purpose did the Holy Spirit have?
- What place and purpose did the Holy Spirit have in the Old Testament?
- Is Christ's Incarnation more central to theology than doctrinal inspiration?
- Is biblical inspiration based upon Christ's Incarnation or the other way around?
- How is inspiration and incarnation mutually accommodating or reactive?
In reading Wallace's argument I could not determine whether he removed the projected need for inerrancy, or simply reinforced its need based upon his own circular argument? I suspect the latter, however, a commenter did think this same about Wallace when saying: "Reading the Scriptures as mere ancient documents (no more inerrant than any other ancient documents) one can get to Jesus is Lord. Then, given that Jesus is Lord and that He considered the Scriptures to be the word of God, you can arrive quickly at inerrancy. We must believe that the Bible is the word of God because Jesus is Lord. For if we believe that Jesus is Lord because the Bible is the word of God, then, as it was with Bart Ehrman, the collapse of inerrancy leads to the collapse of faith in Christ."
What is clear to me is the importance of interpreting Scripture, both i) by itself internally, and ii) externally through outside sources lost to us its readers over the long millenias of time. I have argued before in earlier posts that it is basically an impossible task try as we may to determine the import of Scriptures as it is portrayed through its many cultures and events of the Bible. Even so, must we do the hard work of exegesis as it is possible, however limited or arcane. One may be a committed Jesus follower but it is important for Jesus' followers to know the Word of God - unreferenced by their own predispositions, suppositions, dogmas, or epistemologies. But in order to do that one needs to know oneself and one's group of believers, their needs, wants, and frame of reference. When boiled down we may have produced our own (religious) beliefs about God, His Word, and His Incarnation rather than God's Word itself. Thus the challenge to "interpret the Word" without getting in the way of it with our own wants and needs, views and opinions. Subscribing to the view inerrancy can do just that... it can obscure God's Word by our wooden (or literalistic) reading of its pages.
So what do you think? The way you answer these questions will pre-inform you how you may read the Bible... and how you read the Bible will affect how you think of our Lord. In the article today by Dan Wallace comes the evangelical argument for biblical inerrancy using a Christological method of argumentation based upon Christ's incarnation. I found it specious and unhelpful. Rather than answering the obvious question that Jesus didn't read the Hebrew Scriptures inerrantly Wallace instead went on to place precedence of Scripture over our Lord Himself.
For myself, I do assert the authority and inspiration of the Bible, but stop short of asserting the need for its inerrancy. It's only inerrancy lies within its description of God's salvation for man who has given to us abundantly this saving knowledge through His Son Jesus. As such, the word inerrancy is a slippery slope disallowing further biblical research and contextual construction... that is, it prevents asking further questions of God by stopping our asking questions all together. Which is never a good thing.
Too, it preferences a simplistic reading of the Bible that becomes clouded by personal nuance and prejudice. I'd rather God's Word be a more objective guide than one so simplistically, or subjectively, informed. One that grants latitude over literalism with its concomitant arguments for legalism over love, even as Jesus did so long ago when confronting the Scribes and Pharisees' own private (unloving and legalistic) interpretations of the Word of God.
Even so, doctrines like inerrancy can do just that - provide a harsh/hardened basis for unmitigated legalism preventing sight or sound of the divine words love, mercy, forgiveness and judgment. Let us not fall into this trap of doctrinal thinking. God's Word is larger than that. It's scope broader than we can often understand. And if we fail in this regard than we have darkened God's own council by our own fleshly words of wisdom and justice. Words that should never stand in the place of God's words when bounded by our own councils of what is "right" and "wrong." The bible isn't about that... its about opening up our hearts in submission and service to the councils of God against all the hell that we hold within our sinful hearts to act graciously and firmly in love towards those we would feel naturally inclined to hate, harm, banish, and mistreat. Let us not be the Pharisees of our day. It would be unworthy of our great God and King, our Lord and Savior.
R.E. Slater
So what do you think? The way you answer these questions will pre-inform you how you may read the Bible... and how you read the Bible will affect how you think of our Lord. In the article today by Dan Wallace comes the evangelical argument for biblical inerrancy using a Christological method of argumentation based upon Christ's incarnation. I found it specious and unhelpful. Rather than answering the obvious question that Jesus didn't read the Hebrew Scriptures inerrantly Wallace instead went on to place precedence of Scripture over our Lord Himself.
For myself, I do assert the authority and inspiration of the Bible, but stop short of asserting the need for its inerrancy. It's only inerrancy lies within its description of God's salvation for man who has given to us abundantly this saving knowledge through His Son Jesus. As such, the word inerrancy is a slippery slope disallowing further biblical research and contextual construction... that is, it prevents asking further questions of God by stopping our asking questions all together. Which is never a good thing.
Too, it preferences a simplistic reading of the Bible that becomes clouded by personal nuance and prejudice. I'd rather God's Word be a more objective guide than one so simplistically, or subjectively, informed. One that grants latitude over literalism with its concomitant arguments for legalism over love, even as Jesus did so long ago when confronting the Scribes and Pharisees' own private (unloving and legalistic) interpretations of the Word of God.
Even so, doctrines like inerrancy can do just that - provide a harsh/hardened basis for unmitigated legalism preventing sight or sound of the divine words love, mercy, forgiveness and judgment. Let us not fall into this trap of doctrinal thinking. God's Word is larger than that. It's scope broader than we can often understand. And if we fail in this regard than we have darkened God's own council by our own fleshly words of wisdom and justice. Words that should never stand in the place of God's words when bounded by our own councils of what is "right" and "wrong." The bible isn't about that... its about opening up our hearts in submission and service to the councils of God against all the hell that we hold within our sinful hearts to act graciously and firmly in love towards those we would feel naturally inclined to hate, harm, banish, and mistreat. Let us not be the Pharisees of our day. It would be unworthy of our great God and King, our Lord and Savior.
R.E. Slater
December 13, 2013
* * * * * * * * * * * *
A Bibliology Grounded in Christology
by Dan Wallace
December 6, 2013
The center of all theology, of the entirety of the Christian faith, is Christ himself. The Christ-vent—in particular his death and resurrection—is the center of time [(I call this the mid-point of salvation history - r.e. slater)]: everything before it leads up to it; everything after it is shaped by it. If Christ were not God in the flesh [(sic, the Incarnation)], he would not have been raised from the dead. And if he were not raised from the dead, none of us would have any hope. My theology grows out from Christ, is based on Christ, and focuses on Christ.
Years ago, I would have naïvely believed that all Christians could give their hearty amens to the previous paragraph. This is no longer the case; perhaps it never was. There are many whose starting point and foundation for Christian theology is bibliology. They begin with the assumption that the Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God. I can understand that. Starting one’s doctrinal statement with the Bible gives one assurances that the primary source of theology, the scriptures, is both true and trustworthy. I don’t start there, however. I have come to believe that the incarnation is both more central than inspiration and provides a methodological imperative for historical investigation of the claims of the Bible.
Sometimes the reason why doctrinal statements begin with scripture is because the framers believe that without an inerrant Bible we can’t know anything about Jesus Christ. They often ask the question, “How can we be sure that anything in the Bible is true? How can we be sure that Jesus Christ is who he said he was, or even that he existed, if the Bible is not inerrant?”
Inductive vs. Deductive Approaches to Inerrancy
My response to the above question is twofold. First, before the New Testament was written, how did people come to faith in Christ? To assume that having a complete Bible is necessary before we can know anything about Christ is both anachronistic and counterproductive. Our epistemology has to wrestle with the spread of the gospel before the Gospels were penned. The very fact that it spread so fast—even though the apostles were not always regarded highly—is strong testimony both to the work of the Spirit and to the historical evidence that the eyewitnesses affirmed.
Second, we can know about Christ because the Bible is a historical document. (Even if one has a very low regard for the Bible’s historicity, he or she has to admit that quite a bit of it is historically accurate.) If we demand inerrancy of the Bible before we can believe that any of it is true, what are we to say about other ancient historical documents? We don’t demand that they be inerrant, yet no evangelical would be totally skeptical about all of ancient history. Why put the Bible in a different category before we can believe it at all? As one scholar wisely articulated many years ago, we treat the Bible like any other book to show that it is not like any other book.
Warfield’s Two Premises
We are not asked to take a leap of faith in believing the Bible to be the word of God, or even to believe that it is historically reliable; we have evidence that this is the case. I enlist on my behalf that towering figure of Reformed biblical scholarship, Benjamin B. Warfield. In his Inspiration and Authority of the Bible, Warfield lays out an argument for inerrancy that has been all but forgotten by today’s evangelicals. Essentially, he makes a case for inerrancy on the basis of inductive evidence, rather than deductive reasoning. Most evangelicals today follow E. J. Young’s deductive approach toward bibliology, forgetting the great, early articulator of inerrancy. But Warfield starts with the evidence that the Bible is a historical document, rather than with the presupposition that it is inspired. This may seem shocking to some in the evangelical camp, but one can hardly claim that Warfield was soft on bibliological convictions! Let me prove my point with a lengthy quotation from his Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1948), p. 174:
“Now if this doctrine is to be assailed on critical grounds, it is very clear that, first of all, criticism must be required to proceed against the evidence on which it is based. This evidence, it is obvious, is twofold. First, there is the exegetical evidence that the doctrine held and taught by the Church is the doctrine held and taught by the Biblical writers themselves. And secondly, there is the whole mass of evidence—internal and external, objective and subjective, historical and philosophical, human and divine—which goes to show that the Biblical writers are trustworthy as doctrinal guides. If they are trustworthy teachers of doctrine and if they held and taught this doctrine, then this doctrine is true, and is to be accepted and acted upon as true by us all. In that case, any objections brought against the doctrine from other spheres of inquiry are inoperative; it being a settled logical principle that so long as the proper evidence by which a proposition is established remains unrefuted, all so-called objections brought against it pass out of the category of objections to its truth into the category of difficulties to be adjusted to it. If criticism is to assail this doctrine, therefore, it must proceed against and fairly overcome one or the other element of its proper proof. It must either show that this doctrine is not the doctrine of the Biblical writers, or else it must show that the Biblical writers are not trustworthy as doctrinal guides.”
Notice how often Warfield speaks of evidence here as the grounds for believing in inerrancy. The evidence is historical, exegetical, and doctrinal. Two statements stand out as crucial to his argument: “If they [the biblical writers] are trustworthy teachers of doctrine and if they held and taught this doctrine, then this doctrine is true…” and “If criticism is to assail this doctrine… It must either show that this doctrine is not the doctrine of the Biblical writers, or else it must show that the Biblical writers are not trustworthy as doctrinal guides.” Warfield’s argument is one of the most profound paragraphs ever written in defense of inerrancy. If you’re reading this quickly, go back and let it sink in for awhile.
Metzger’s Challenge: The Bible Doesn’t Affirm Its Own Inerrancy
In 1992, when Bruce Metzger was on campus at Dallas Seminary for a week, delivering the Griffith Thomas lectures, students would often ask him whether he embraced inerrancy. Frankly, I thought their question was a bit uncharitable since they already knew the answer (he did not). But as one who, like Warfield before him, taught at Princeton Seminary, and as a Reformed scholar, Metzger certainly had earned the right to be heard on this issue. His response was simply that he did not believe in inerrancy because he felt it was unwise to hold to any doctrines that were not affirmed in the Bible, and he didn’t see inerrancy being affirmed in the Bible. In other words, he denied Warfield’s first argument (viz., that inerrancy was held by the biblical writers). It should be pointed out that Metzger did not disagree with Warfield’s second argument. In other words, he had a high view of the Bible, but not as high as, say, the Evangelical Theological Society, precisely because he did not think that the biblical writers held to the doctrine of inerrancy.
The Role of 2 Timothy 3.16
I felt the import of Metzger’s argument even before I had heard it from him, because I had long ago memorized the passage from Warfield quoted above. When I was working on my master’s degree in the 1970s, I was convinced that Warfield’s twofold argument needed to be examined and either affirmed or rejected. So I wrote my master’s thesis on an arcane point of Greek grammar. It was entitled, “The Relation of Adjective to Noun in Anarthrous Constructions in the New Testament.” I chose that particular topic because it directly affected how we should translate 2 Timothy 3.16. Should we translate this verse “every inspired scripture is also profitable” with the possible implication that some scripture is not inspired, or should we translate it “every scripture is inspired and profitable,” in which case the inspiration of scripture is directly asserted?
I spent over 1200 hours on that thesis, working without the benefit of computers—in the Greek New Testament, in the Septuagint, in classical Greek, in the papyri—to determine whether adjectives in anarthrous constructions (constructions in which no definite article was present) could be predicate or whether they had to be attributive. All of this related to 2 Timothy 3.16 because the adjective “inspired” was related to the noun “scripture” in an anarthrous construction. Further, of the dozens of New Testament grammars I checked, not one gave any actual evidence that adjectives in such constructions could be predicate. A predicate adjective would be translated as an assertion (“every scripture isinspired”) while an attributive adjective would be translated as a qualification or assumption (“every inspired scripture”).
I felt an obligation to the evangelical community to wrestle with this issue and see if there was indeed genuine evidence on behalf of a predicate “inspired.” I charted out over 2200 Greek constructions in the New Testament, as well as countless others in other corpora—all by hand—then checked the primary sources a second time to make sure I got the statistics right. When an ice storm hit Dallas in the winter of 1978–79, cutting down power lines in our neighborhood, I had to work by lamplight for a week to get the first draft of the thesis in on time. My conclusion was that “inspired” in 2 Timothy 3.16 was indeed a predicate adjective. And I supplied over 400 similar examples in the appendix to back it up! These 400 examples had never been discussed in any New Testament grammar before. I believed then, and I believe now, that supplying this kind of evidence is a worthy use of one’s time. The main part of the thesis ended up being the first piece of mine accepted for publication. It appeared in Novum Testamentum (one of the world’s leading biblical journals) in 1984 as a lengthy article. And the editors kept my opening comment that my motivation for the article was to help resolve some disputes about bibliology raging at the time in American evangelical circles.
I mention the above autobiographical note for two reasons. First, the question of the nature of the Bible has been, and still is, a very precious issue to me. Obviously, to spend over 1200 hours on where to put the “is” in one verse of scripture shows that I regard such a text to be rather significant! And that such a passage is a major verse on verbal inspiration should show that this doctrine is important to me. Second, the conclusion I came to is equally important: I can affirm, with Warfield, that the biblical writers do indeed embrace a high view of the text of Holy Writ. To be sure, this verse is not all there is in defense of inerrancy. But it is a crux interpretum, deserving our utmost attention. I must therefore respectfully disagree with Professor Metzger about Warfield’s first argument.
Christological Grounds for a High Bibliology
Where does this leave us with reference to inerrancy? I arrive at inerrancy through an inductive process, rather than by starting with it deductively. My epistemological method may therefore be different from others, but the resultant doctrine is not necessarily so. At bottom, the reason I hold to a high bibliology is because I hold to a high Christology. Jesus often spoke of the Bible in terms that went beyond the reverence that the Pharisees and Sadducees had for the text. They added traditions to the Bible, or truncated the canon, or otherwise failed to handle scripture appropriately. Jesus had a high view of the text, and it strikes me that I would be unwise to have a view different from his. Indeed, I believe I would be on dangerous ground if I were to take a different view of the text than Jesus did. Thus, my starting point for a high bibliology is Christ himself.
Some may argue that we can’t even know what Jesus said unless we start with a high bibliology. But that approach is circular. Making a pronouncement that scripture is inerrant does not guarantee the truth of such an utterance. If I said the moon is made of green cheese, that doesn’t make it so. At most, what such pronouncements can do is give one assurance. But this is not the same as knowledge. And if the method for arriving at such assurance is wrongheaded, then even the assurance needs to be called into question. A web of issues brings about the deepest kinds of theological assurance: evidence (historical, exegetical, hermeneutical, etc.), affirmations, the role of the Spirit, etc. One does not have the deepest assurance about inerrancy simply by convincing himself or herself that it must be true. Indeed, I would argue that such a presuppositional approach often caves in on itself. Now if inerrancy is true, what harm is there in examining the data of the text?
Now, someone may say, “But how do you know that Jesus actually held to a high bibliology unless you start with that presupposition? How do you know that the Gospel writers got the words of Jesus right in the first place?” I think that’s an excellent question. I would use the criteria of authenticity to argue that he did indeed hold to a high view of the text. The criteria of authenticity, when used properly, are criteria that Gospels scholars use to affirm whether Jesus said or did something. Notice that I did not say, “Gospels scholars use to deny whether Jesus said or did something.” The criteria of authenticity should normally be used only for positive results. To take one illustration: The criterion of dissimilarity is the criterion that says if Jesus said something that was unlike what any rabbi before him said and unlike what the church later said, then surely such a saying is authentic. I think this is good as far as it goes. It certainly works for “the Son of Man” sayings in the Gospels. The problem is that the Jesus Seminar used this criterion to make negative assessments of Jesus’ sayings. Thus, if Jesus said something that was said in contemporary Judaism, its authenticity is discounted. But surely that would create an eccentric Jesus if it were applied across the board! Indeed, Jesus said things that were already said in the Judaism of his day, and surely the early church learned from him and repeated him.
How does this apply to Jesus’ bibliology? Since his statements about scripture are decidedly more reverential than those of the Pharisees or Sadducees, the criterion of dissimilarity requires us to see that Jesus did, indeed, hold to a high bibliology. Of course, I am not arguing that the average Christian for the past two thousand years needed to think about whether Jesus said something. But I am arguing that even the evidence from a historical-critical perspective points in the same direction. And I am arguing that in the modern world, and even postmodern world, for evangelicals to ignore evidence is tantamount to a leap of faith.
I must confess that I did not at first embrace a high bibliology because of applying the criteria of authenticity to the sayings of Jesus. No, I initially embraced a high bibliology because I believed that the Bible’s testimony about itself was sufficiently clear and certainly true. But when I came to grips with Warfield’s inductive approach and Metzger’s denial of Warfield’s first argument, I realized that, for those engaged in serious biblical studies, historical evidence needed to be assessed before dialogue with those of a different perspective could begin. The fact that many evangelical students abandon inerrancy may in part be due to them not wrestling with more than a fideistic claim. What harm is there in adding historical evidence to one’s arguments for a doctrinal position? Why are so many afraid, or unprepared, to do so? The impression this gives to many students is that such views are defenseless.
Incarnation as Methodological Imperative
Permit me to address one other issue. If Christ is at the core of our beliefs, then the incarnation has to loom large in our thinking about the faith. When God became man and invaded space-time history, this served notice that we dare not treat the Bible with kid gloves. The incarnation not only invites us to examine the evidence, it requires us to do so. The fact that our religion is the only major religion in the world that is subject to historical verification is no accident: it’s part of God’s design. Jesus performed miracles and healings in specific towns, at specific times, on specific people. The Gospels don’t often speak in generalities. And Paul mentioned that 500 believers saw the risen Christ at one time, then added that most of these folks were still alive. These kinds of statements are the stuff of history; they beg the reader to investigate. Too often modern evangelicals take a hands-off attitude toward the Bible because of a prior commitment to inerrancy. But it is precisely because I ground my bibliology in Christology rather than the other way around that I cannot do that. I believe it is disrespectful to my Lord to not ask the Bible the tough questions that every thinking non-Christian is already asking it.
* * * * * * * * * *
Select Reader's Comments
for more go here
* * * * * * * * * *
Reader 1 - To assume that having a complete Bible is necessary before we can know anything about Christ is both anachronistic and counterproductive. Our epistemology has to wrestle with the spread of the gospel before the Gospels were penned…. If we demand inerrancy of the Bible before we can believe that any of it is true, what are we to say about other ancient historical documents?“
Reader 2 - It seems to me from reading the original article that Dr. Wallace keeps interchanging the terms "inspiration" and "inerrancy." In fact, he uses Warfield's book to make his case for inerrancy when the book's title is INSPIRATION AND AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE, not INERRANCY AND AUTHORITY OF THE BIBLE.
Reader 3 - Like others previously, I concur that Wallace never demonstrates "inerrancy" in his article. And, his work on 2 Tim. 3 does not demonstrate inerrancy that I can see.
My own view on Paul's use of "God-breathed" (a term research to date indicates that he himself coined) is that he is calling to mind the life-giving nature of Scripture. "God-breathed" meant that God was giving life to a being. So, in Gen. 2 - God 'breathes' into humanity the breath of life. In Ezekiel God breathes life - through the Spirit (spirit, breath, and wind are all the same word in the OT - significantly) - into the dead, dry bones - a resurrection! And, in John 20 Jesus "breathes on the disciples" and says "receive the Holy Spirit." This is a new creation breath of life.
I think that is really all that Paul is getting at in 2 Tim. 3. That the Scripture can bring us "life" - not just physical, but real life, eternal. Life in God. Why? Because, as Wallace ably points out - the Scripture points us to Jesus. That, in fact, is also Paul's point in the context. V. 15 "and that from childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus." The sacred writings, the God-breathed (life-giving) Scripture leads to salvation through Christ Jesus. They point us to Him and it is faith in Him, as the risen king, that transforms our lives and brings us victory.
Reader 4 - I would echo two points made here in previous posts and elaborate on one of them:
(1) Wallace does appear to assume that "inspired" entails "inerrant" but that begs the question.
(2) It seems to me that the most one can derive from Wallace's "incarnation" approach to the question is the general conclusion that we, as followers of Jesus Christ, should adopt the same attitude toward Scripture as did our very Lord. I would agree with that. Taking such a view does have significant consequences. For example, b/c Jesus cites the Old Testament as authoritative for right conduct and revelatory of true God, so also should we--and hence reject all forms of Marcionism ("a Gnostic ascetic sect that flourished from the 2nd to 7th century a.d. and that rejected the Old Testament and denied the incarnation of God in Christ.")
But this view has limitations as an argument for inerrancy. First, and obviously, it entails nothing (directly, at least) about the New Testament.
Second, it also does not even follow from this view that Jesus believed that the Old Testament is inerrant. That Jesus appealed to the OT in instructing his followers and refuting his critics entails only, as Wallace's labored-upon text (2 Tim 3:15-17) itself actually says, that the OT scriptures are competent and capable of instructing us in God's way of salvation and righteousness for the purpose of making us effective doers of the good.
Third, and perhaps most problematic for Wallace's argument, Jesus himself did not grant the OT absolute authority in matters of right conduct but, evidently, took a critical attitude toward it, at least in part. In his most important sermon, Jesus explicitly repeals an OT law, forbidding his followers to retaliate evil for evil as was permitted by the Torah (Matthew 5:38-42). If Jesus believed the OT scriptures were inerrant, how then could he even qualify any text of scripture, much less reject a text of the OT as properly instructing us in the way of righteousness?
Reader 5's reply to Reader 4 - Well stated. I agree with you until your third point (last paragraph). There is no indication in the antithesis that Jesus is contradicting the Torah but the Scribal and Pharisaical interpretation and application of that law. Mt. 5:38-42 may be interpreted quite differently (and several commentators do) from the one you give. It seems much more in keeping with the whole series of antitheses and the context (5:21-48, coming in the context of Jesus calling for righteousness to exceed that of the Pharisees - 5:17-20) and even within the statement itself that Jesus is arguing against personal retaliation. They "eye for an eye" was not a license to take Torah into one's hands as a vigilante. But, was to be executed within the confines of a decision of the community. Jesus is not contradicting the punishment of the community; but the abused interpretation of the Scribes and Pharisees.
Reader 4's reply to Reader 5 - I quite agree that Jesus is addressing the legal practices of the covenant community. The lex talionis governed the reparation of harms and punishment of crimes within the Torah. The intent of the lex talionis was not to justify retaliation as an absolute standard of justice but to limit retaliation to the measure of equality ("one for one"). Even within the Torah, therefore, the lex talionis did not express the ideal of justice for the covenant community. That ideal, as Jesus himself taught, was the law of love: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Indeed, the Torah itself points this way: the law of love for the neighbor is prefaced by a prohibition of taking vengeance against the neighbor (Lev 19:17-18). Jesus, who teaches the full intent and highest measure of the righteousness that Torah desires (Matt 5:17-20), thus instructs the community gathered around him that what is to define right relationship among them must exceed the lex talionis. The community of Jesus is to go beyond retribution against evildoers and enemies as the standard of justice; and transcending retribution leads us to complete love, including both neighbor and enemy, which is what God intends for us (Matt 5:38-48).
Reader 6 - I don't think that scripture attests to its own inerrancy in a Chicago Statement sense. And Wallace's grammatical analysis of 2 Tim 3:16 is irrelevant because all the verse attests is that Scripture comes from God for a purpose and serves that purpose. Yes that means a serious regard for Scripture ... but doesn't speak at all to most of the arguments that cause feuds in evangelicalism (historicity of Adam, nature of flood, genre of Jonah, whither the wandering saints of Matthew, etc. etc. etc.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)