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  • How My Mind Changed

    [Editor’s Note: This is another post in our series of “Why I changed my mind.”]

    by  Bob Cornwall

    PicIf we keep an open mind, if we seek the truth wherever it might lead, then we will occasionally, even frequently, have a change of heart and mind. That has been true for me on more than one occasion. Among those changes is my understanding of the status of my LGBT brothers and sisters. Like many I grew up believing that the only appropriate coupling was a heterosexual one. I based this in part from what I imbibed from the surrounding culture. I was also informed by what I read in the Bible. God seemed to create the man and the woman for each other (Genesis 2). Then there were the passages that seemed to speak negatively of same-sex relations (were they not an abomination before God?). Finally, there was nature. Didn’t the church prove that man was intended for woman, and woman for man? It was a matter of plumbing. Thus, culture, Bible, and plumbing were in agreement. Or so I thought!
    I recently submitted a manuscript on marriage to Energion’s publisher, Henry Neufeld. It will be part of the Participatory Study Guide series. I wrote the study for a couple of reasons, one of which has to do with the conversations within my congregation about marriage equality in the aftermath of last summer’s Supreme Court decision. We have been fairly welcoming of LGBT persons, but we hadn’t come to a conclusion on marriage, especially whether they could take place in the sanctuary. What I realized was that the biggest hurdle in the way of full inclusion had to do with marriage. The question before us was what the Bible had to say about marriage. Thus, the book!
    So, how did I get to where I am today? How did I move from rejecting the idea that being gay and Christian was incompatible into embracing full inclusion?
    I need to start with the Bible. I do believe that the Bible is the foundational document for the Christian faith. You might call it our primal norm. It’s the starting point for our conversations. The problem facing us, in my estimation, isn’t whether the Bible is authoritative, but how we interpret it. That is where, I believe, the changes have occurred. Like I said before, for much of my life the issue seemed clear. One couldn’t be gay and Christian, at least not a good Christian and a “practicing homosexual.” I didn’t believe in discrimination in the public sector, but when it came to the church, well that was a different story. Membership was fine, but leadership and marriage—those were off limits. Then something happened that opened my eyes to a new reality.
    My change of mind began when my younger brother came out. His reality, and my relationship to him, forced me to go back to the text and ask new questions. He’s my brother. I love him. I can’t and I won’t shun him. If he was gay and he loved God, then what was I going to make of this reality? So I began to read the Bible anew. I read science anew. I read testimonies of people who had struggled with their sexuality. I learned that this wasn’t merely a choice. In fact, with all the prejudice against the gay community, especially against gay men, why would my brother put himself in this situation? He was in his 30s at the time. He was a Young Life leader. He lived in a small town. There was no benefit to him to come out as gay. Besides, he had an older brother who was a pastor, and he didn’t know how I would respond. After all, I had never shown any real sympathy for gay people. So with this new reality in my life, what had always been an academic issue became personal. What is true for me is true for so many others. Most people who have had a change of mind on the matter of inclusion have done so because of a personal relationship.
    So, I went to the text and I asked new questions. Many of these questions were the same ones that had led me to affirm the full equality of women and embrace God’s call of them to ministry. These were questions about cultural context. They had to do with questions of intent. We as a culture had wrestled with similar questions with regard to slavery. After all, the Bible told slaves to obey their masters. That was Bible, and it seemed to support slavery. When it came to this new question I had ask what was going on at the moment. Why would these passages that seemed so condemnatory be written, and did they speak to our own day?
    The passage of Scripture that helped me see things in a new light was the story of Peter and Cornelius in Acts 10 and 11. It took a vision from God to turn Peter’s heart toward the Gentile Cornelius. God had to tell Peter that what God deemed clean, Peter needed to receive as clean. Then, when the Holy Spirit fell upon Cornelius and his family, Peter felt he had no choice but to baptize this Gentile, opening the doors of welcome. I’m thankful for this change of mind on Peter’s part, because I would be counted among the Gentiles! My encounters with gay Christians has led me to believe that God has poured out the Spirit on all Christians—both gay and straight. So when it comes to full inclusion, where is God leading? Where is the Spirit? If I believe that God has given a blessing to inclusion, then what about marriage? That was my final hurdle. It is the final hurdle for many. But if God has declared, as I believe is true, that my LGBT brothers and sisters are clean, then who I am to bar their way into the life of the church? And if my brothers and sisters who find themselves both attracted to persons of the same gender, and who have demonstrated in their own relationships a strong covenantal bond, then how can we as the church withhold the blessings of covenant marriage?
    [slideshow_deploy id=’2343′] To review or order any of Bob’s books, just click on one.

  • Goodbye to Politics

    Goodbye to Politics

    [Editor’s Note: This is another post in our series of “Why I changed my mind.”]

    by Steve Kindle

    Head-Brown smallI am the grandson and great grandson of two North Dakota state senators. In fact, my great grandfather, Steen Nelson, was the first state senator in his district when the state was accepted into the Union in 1889. His son and my namesake followed him in office. Steve Nelson’s only child was a woman, so that ended our family’s lineage in the senate. (Women earned the right to vote six years after my mother was born,) Norman Brunsdale, the state governor at the time, was my grandfather’s best friend. My family ate dinner at the governor’s mansion so often, it was like a second home. Later, when Brunsdale became a U.S. Senator, he called on my brother where he was serving in the army in Germany. The chief justice of the North Dakota supreme court was often a guest in our home.
    My family was steeped in conservative Republican views. We loathed FDR and JFK. Barry Goldwater represented our views perfectly. I cast my first presidential election vote for him. I became the son and grandson that made the family proud. Naturally, I was encouraged to follow the men of the lineage into politics. This led me to a very conservative Christian college where I first majored in political science. My intention was to return to North Dakota with eyes on public office.
    But, something happened. I became a Christian. I was convinced that politics was a secondary pursuit, and that I should change my major to Bible and enter the ministry. However, Right Wing politics would be my handmaiden in my ministry, as I saw it as what God wanted for America. My controlling understanding was this: If America can get its politics right, everything else that follows would be good and right.
    A lot has happened over the years to move me away from right Wing politics in particular and politics in general. It parallels my move away from fundamentalism and into progressive Christianity. Where I once felt that what was best for the individual was best for the nation, I now believe that the community’s needs are prior. As an example, quality health care in America is based on one’s ability to purchase it. This leaves out millions of Americans who can’t afford it. For me, health care is a right, on par with any right articulated in the Bill of Rights. To achieve this end, those who can afford it, will be the source for those who can’t. My model for this is the idealized conception of early Christianity practiced by the Jerusalem church where everything was held in common, and everyone’s needs were met by the whole church.
    Today, I am as far removed from the political as possible. It has become increasingly apparent to me that not only is politics not the answer, it is largely the problem. As long as we believe that a political solution will cure our ills, we will never attempt to implement God’s realm on earth.
    I recently conducted a seminar I call “Jesus versus Caesar.” In it, I attempt to show that Jesus’ ministry was the counterpart to how Rome ruled the world. Jesus vision of how God wished the world to work was in opposition to Rome’s view, and led to his crucifixion as an enemy of the state. Rome’s use of military might, oligarchy and its patronage, usury, and income inequality, all reinforced by Imperial Religion, served as a contrast to Jesus’ message of the Kingdom of God as an egalitarian community ruled by Jubilee. Luke  4:16-19 In this community, the only rule is the Golden Rule. The only ethic is love God and our neighbor as ourselves. There are no enemies, only each other and our call to work for the well-being of one another.
    Politics works on another plane altogether. Its notions of “to the victor goes the spoils,” divide and conquer, us versus them, winners and losers, has no place in God’s vision for the world. Therefore, I engage in political conversations merely as a good citizen. I have no illusions that anything resembling the Kingdom of God will emerge from political activity. With the church’s consumerist mentality and unwholesome entrance into the political sphere, I have my doubts that it can do any better than Rome.
    [slideshow_deploy id=’2356′]

  • In the Embrace of Change

    by Henry Neufeld, Publisher

    Henry picI believe the greatest fear we have of change is the way that changes cascade. One thing leads to another. We experience this in daily life when a simple change to our routine impacts other activities. My decision to go to bed later changes my morning routine, which changes the outline of my day, which impacts my family, friends, and co-workers. Those of us who are very careful about such things can get very annoyed with spontaneous people. How dare they change things in moment and alter so many other lives, even in only small ways.
    This fear extends to ideas. We may not work out all the consequences of changing our belief on one point, but we can feel those other changes looming. If I change my belief about one scripture, how many others will follow? We each have created a structure of beliefs, whether we did so consciously or unconsciously, and we tend to fear challenge.
    Of course, some of us like that feeling, just as some people like to pursue high risk recreational activity. It’s an intellectual version of free climbing. Though we hear frequent stories of a change from a more conservative to a more liberal position, change can move one in any direction, which only gets to make it more frightening—or more exciting and enjoyable!
    My story today is about cascading change. It didn’t look like it when I started, but it turned out that way. I’m a theistic evolutionist. I don’t really like the label—theist is a weak word for my beliefs about God, and evolutionist is merely the acceptance of a scientific theory—but it will have to do. I believe in God. I believe that God is the creator of everything, and the ultimate cause of everything.
    When I say that in Christian circles I am commonly challenged to investigate creationism in one of its various forms, from young age creationism to intelligent design. I am told that the only reason I can possible accept evolutionary theory is that I was brainwashed in college and never had an opportunity to hear the truth.
    But my cascading change was in the opposite direction. Both my BA and my MA degrees were granted by institutions with doctrinal statements that included a firm, young earth creationism, generally without even the 10,000-year wiggle room some young earth creationists use. The earth was created in a literal seven-day week of 24 hour days just like those in the present, so I learned from preschool age through graduate school, with a few questioning exceptions.
    As an elementary school student I memorized Genesis 1-3. I knew the names and ages of the patriarchs of Genesis 5 & 11 from memory. I could give precise dates for the creation, the flood, and of course later biblical events. I even memorized lists of texts from elsewhere in scripture supporting this view of creation, at least in the opinion of those who created the lists.
    Not satisfied with what was required, I began to collect and read materials by creationists, especially those in the Seventh-day Adventist church, such as George McCready Price and Frank Lewis Marsh. Creationism was not just a doctrine that I believed; it was the foundation of my doctrinal system. It was a cornerstone. This creationism was not a general belief in God as creator, but a combination of all the specifics: God created the entire universe in seven literal days of 24 hours each about 6,000 years ago.
    So I wasn’t indoctrinated into evolutionary theory by secularist instructors at a university. [ene_ptp] The next suggestion I hear is that I must have eventually taken a course or read a book in which I learned about evolutionary theory, found that it contradicted the Bible, and then chose evolutionary theory over the Bible. This suggestion (or accusation) is generally followed by the question of how I can reject God’s Word in favor of a scientific theory. That’s not what happened. It would be simpler if it had. One enormous change, over and done with. New worldview neatly put into place. Traumatic, but only for a moment!
    The change started with an assignment in college. The class, if I recall correctly, was titled “Problems in Exegesis.” It was designed for students who had a good deal of biblical studies and was designed to give us practice in looking at a disputed passage, looking at the options, researching the available information, and then proposing and defending a solution. Sort of thesis practice completed in less than five double-spaced pages. Yes, we used manual typewriters. Whiteout was new.
    The problem I chose to write about was the text of the genealogies of Genesis 5 & 11. I mentioned that I had memorized all these patriarchs and their reported ages. In my reading for another class I had discovered that the genealogies differed between the Hebrew Masoretic Text (MT) and the Septuagint (LXX). A trace of the differences can be seen in Luke’s genealogy.
    Which was right? I studied. I created charts. I examined the dating that would result for major world events. I realized that, unless on could do some major reworking, the Great Pyramid had gone through the flood. I calculated population growth rates required if the flood occurred on the date I thought it had and noted that simply having the people available to build such a major project would require some truly astounding growth rates.
    This was going well beyond the assignment. I was just supposed to propose a solution. Which text would I translate were I to translate the Bible?
    The bottom line? I thought I’d still translate the MT, though I could not be absolutely confident that it truly was the original text. I thought it most probable (and still do), but doubt remained.
    It’s likely that some readers are jumping to conclusions, and assuming that I immediately looked at evolution and a 4.5 billion-year-old earth, and became a theistic evolutionist. In reality, I didn’t actually start looking at evolution until I was out of graduate school.
    But there was a big change that took shape in my life at that point, bigger than a change in what I believed about how God created the universe. I came to understand that interpretation involves uncertainty.
    When I read my college papers, most of which I have kept, I am amazed at how arrogant I could be. But at that point I began to grant more and more credence to the idea that people could disagree on significant issues of interpretation. If we could disagree, how could we start to consider people heretics because of such disagreement?
    Now my beliefs about origins did change, and those changes also had their own cascade. At first I thought that it didn’t really matter how God created, but then further study of the fascinating way in which a universe created and empowered by God functions, changes, brings forth within it creatures who have freedom. That change, in turn, led me back to a study of God’s grace and the wonderful power of the incarnation, which I now hold as my central theological belief.
    I believe that my faith in God became deeper as I realized my own fallibility. There were many struggles to come. Losing some of my faith in my own ability increased my faith and my trust in God, the only one whose perspective is not limited.
    But my realization that interpretation involves uncertainty changed the entire way I looked at the Bible and the way I looked at nature. I went into that paper with the firm belief that I could find an answer for every question, an absolute answer, one that no reasonable person could question. I came out of it realizing (or rather with the beginning of the realization) that my finite knowledge was shockingly—finite! Limited. Imperfect. Subject to change.
    That was, I think, the most important change of my life. Many people have helped me learn about many things. They have helped me work my way through problems. But nothing has been more profound than learning that I might not only be wrong, but I might not be able to find a demonstrably right conclusion.
    Appearances to the contrary notwithstanding, I’m not a person who embraces change. I have learned to live with it, because having realized my limitations, I know I have to keep on doing my best to learn. If I can be in error, I probably am, and I want to learn how to be less in error.
    I may not embrace change, but change embraces me.
    I think that embrace is good.
     

  • Do atonement theories continue to speak to the human condition? —NO

    [EDITOR’S NOTE: This post is part of our series on controversial questions. A NO post will normally follow a YES post. Join in by posting your comments.]

    by Steve Kindle

    Head-Brown smallAs with most of the controversial questions in this series, they must be qualified in certain ways due to the wide range of possible approaches. Even then, we can only scratch the surface. This is especially true of this question. So my effort will not be to convince as much as it is to open possibilities for reevaluation.
    Just what is the human condition? The Bible’s answer, albeit here in condensed form, is that human beings are separated from God by personal and corporate sin. As long as this condition obtains, humans are destined for an eternity apart from God. In order to take away this guilt and remove this separation so that God and humans can be at one again, a penalty must be paid. It was Jesus “whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.” (Romans 3:25) Through faith in this self-sacrificial act, humans can appropriate salvation, or at-one-ment (atonement), with God.
    Beginning with the New Testament and down to our day, people have struggled to understand how the sacrifice of Jesus accomplished atonement. This struggle has produced several theories, none of which has become the only orthodox explanation. This is partly due to the fact that the New Testament, itself, puts forth competing answers, and that no one theory has captured the imagination of the church. These were doctrinally formative years where disciples were trying to figure out the meaning of Jesus for the community. We are still engaged in that endeavor.
    Generally, the atonement theories have this in common: they each assume that human beings are sinners who deserve eternal punishment (hell), and that the death of Jesus is the only means of relief from the wrath of God. The human condition, then, is to either live a life under the curse of death, or by faith in Jesus, appropriate salvation.
    What kind of a world presumes such a curse and cure?
    Atonement theories originated when the world was young, at least in the minds of their originators. For Augustine, it was a mere 4500 years old when he first conceived of an original Adam passing on to humanity (through sex) the inescapable human condition of depravity, known as Original Sin, which could only be alleviated by the sacrifice of Christ. All one had to do was trace the biblical genealogies and one could arrive at the first parents. This was essentially the view until the rise of modern geology in the 18th century. We now know our world, the planet Earth, to be 1,000,000 times older than Augustine imagined (4.5 billion years old). The literalness of the Genesis primordial accounts were quite plausible in those days, but only biblical literalists continue to believe them today.
    Also complicating the picture is the emergence of Charles Darwin and his biological theory of evolution1. This leads to the conclusion that there were no such people as the historical first parents, Adam and Eve2; that, in fact, humanity’s rise took millions of years and many iterations before homo sapiens emerged about 200,000 years ago. Ergo, no “original” Adam, no “original” sin. This suggests that all doctrines adduced from a literal Adam need to be reevaluated, including those of the apostle Paul. A savior who saves us from a primordial “fall” that never happened is credulous in a pre-Darwinian age and impossible to imagine in ours.
    Reevaluations remind me of the adage, “having your cake and eating it, too.” Most are efforts to keep evolution and a literal Adam. One suggestion is that God chose a “first couple” out of the pool of existing humanoid creatures and invested them with souls. It was this couple who rebelled against God and ushered in sin. Unfortunately, missing in this construction are the rib from which Eve came, the Garden of Eden, and the assertion that “there was no one to till the ground,” until God formed ha ’adam from the ground.
    In those Christian traditions that reject Original Sin as a doctrine, they, nevertheless, hold to a sense of universal sin that no human can escape from. “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” So whether one comes corrupted into the world through Original Sin, or sins by nature of a corrupted mind, all humans are in need of redemption.
    None of this has addressed the presumed answer to the dilemma of fallen humanity: sacrifice. During the time the Bible addresses, sacrifice was the order of the day. By sacrificing crops or animals, and, yes, humans, the petitioner believed that God or the gods were temporarily assuaged.
    All but one or two atonement theories have, at their base, the conviction that humanity needs to be redeemed, is incapable of redeeming itself, and that a supernatural imposition in history is required to affect a cure. But is this truly the human condition?
    G. K. Chesterton once averred that, “Certain new theologians dispute original sin, which is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved,” He saw original sin as the one Christian doctrine that is empirically verifiable and validated by 3500 years of recorded human history.
    Evolutionary theory has another answer to humanity’s seemingly irresistible proneness to violence. It’s called the “selfish gene,” and (regardless if it’s a gene or a syndrome) its purpose is to protect the survival of the individual through any threats to its demise. Rather than our propensity to sin, we have a propensity to survive as a way to insure the perpetuation of the species. If this is true, no atonement theory can spare us of it.
    In another post on EDN, Allan Bevere quotes John Polkinghorne:

    A creation allowed to make itself can be held to be a great good, but it has a necessary cost not only in the blind alleys and extinctions that are the inescapable dark side of the evolutionary process, but also in the very character of the processes of a world in which evolution takes place. The engine driving biological evolution is genetic mutation and it is inevitable in a universe that is reliable and not capriciously magical, that the same biochemical processes which enable germ cells to produce new forms of life will also allow somatic cells to mutate and become malignant That there is cancer in creation is not something that a more competent and compassionate Creator could easily have eliminated, but is the necessary cost of a creation allowed to make itself.
    God acts within the open grain of nature and not against it. God interacts with creatures but does not overrule them, for they are allowed to be themselves and to make themselves. It follows from this that not everything that happens will be in accordance with God’s direct will. The divine sharing of the causality of the world with creatures will permit the act of a murderer or the incidence of cancer, though both events run counter to God’s desires.3

    Certainly if you lived in the pre-scientific eras up to the modern age, the notions of sin and sacrifice could inform your life. It would have been as close to you as the air you breathed. The death of Jesus as somehow the answer to your life’s predicament would make sense. Today, we live in a totally different world. “New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth.”
    It is important to bear in mind that not only has the Christian church never camped on one particular atonement theory, it put forward through the centuries a variety of theories. This should make us pause and reflect on how elusive the notion of the work of Christ is in its exactness and detail, even the literalist interpretation of Paul, notwithstanding. Add to this that the Gospels provide different meanings to the death of Jesus. One is entitled to ask, ‘Are these options the only ones possible, and must we be restricted to choosing only among these?’
    In premodern times, “man’s inhumanity to man,” was described as sin and its antidote was atonement. There was very little else that could serve as an option We have to take into consideration that human beings have only been at this civilization game for about 10,000 years. For most of that time, we have not needed anything more than our tribe for our survival, whether that be an actual tribe, clan, village, city, or nation. The idea that all of humanity can now be wiped from the face of the Earth is very recent. We have not begun to face up to that reality. Problems are no longer limited to here or there, or them or us. Where once the various disputations had no bearing beyond the disputants, now no one is immune from serious harm inflicted anywhere. All problems may be local but they have worldwide consequences. This means that it now takes the cooperation of the entire world to solve its failures. We are just now realizing that an “us versus them” world needs to be reconsidered. To revise Chesterton, “This new world has not been tried and found wanting, it has not been tried.” The “selfish gene” just may become our best ally as we learn to work together for our own good. For we will either survive or perish together.
    The “new physics” helps us place humanity in proper perspective. It provides us a context into which we can place not only ourselves but also all of creation—we are all connected. Moreover, not just humans, but every particle of the universe from the furthest star to the minutest sub-atomic particle are part of the same Oneness. This is true “at-One-ment”: we are all one. There is no dividing us between those who are in and those who are out. We can have no enemies, as this would make us enemies of ourselves.
    “Sin” needs to be recharacterized, or better still, broadened. Since all things are connected, or One, any act that is against the well-being of any part of creation is sin. What is sin? Anything that places distance between any part of creation. Another way of putting this is sin is anything that serves to disrupt the Oneness that is by working against its well-being. The Golden Rule becomes the rule for the cosmos, not just for humans.
    Forgiveness between humans can serve as a model for transcending the “human condition.” No atonement (as blood/life sacrifice) is necessary. Forgiveness is the act of the offended one foregoing retribution and willing the well-being of the offender. I find this works well with at least one atonement theory, Moral Influence. It sees the whole life of Jesus, including his teachings, gathering of disciples, death and resurrection, as a model for how the world can be saved from itself. Not by blood sacrifice (penal substitution, etc.), but by a servant model that encourages followers to live for the well-being of all, even if it means losing your life in the process. This was Luke’s view and it is now mine. In this way, Jesus is my savior. He taught me how to live properly before God in an “us against them” world. Doing so, I am “at one” with God and God’s world.
    NOTES
    1Bear in mind that evolution is scientific fact; natural selection as its mechanism remains a theory.
    2The so-called “Mitochondrial Eve” is often mistaken as representing the first human woman. She is, rather, the mother of all humans now living as descending from her in an unbroken line. However, she had parents, siblings, cousins, etc., but their descendants, also humans, are no longer represented in the human genome.
    3Polkinghorne, Science and the Trinity, p. 72.

    Steve’s books can be viewed and ordered here: https://energiondirect.info/authors/authors-d-k/steve-kindle

  • Do Atonement Theories Continue to Speak to the Human Condition? —Yes

    by Allan R. Bevere

    Bevere picAtonement is the overarching word Christians use to refer to what it is that Jesus Christ has accomplished for the world in his death and resurrection. It literally means “at-one-ment,” and denotes the reconciliation, the bringing together of God and humanity and by extension the entire world and cosmos. Through the centuries Christians have disagreed over the exact nature of the atonement, that is, they have debated the mechanics of Christ’s atonement—what exactly did Jesus accomplish in his death and resurrection? In other words, they were asking how the atonement works.
    Some have suggested that ancient theologies of atonement—specifically theories that involve Jesus’ death as a sacrifice or as a substitution, or as providing satisfaction to God—no longer speak to the human situation in the twenty-first century and they, therefore should be disregarded in favor of understandings that speak to current sensibilities. And while, I believe wholeheartedly that the significance of Jesus’ work should speak to current concerns that by no means requires a rejection of the theological wisdom that we have inherited through the centuries. In other words, the meaning of Paul’s words that “Christ died for our sins according to the Scripture” (1 Cor. 15:3) cannot be understood in the twenty-first century if we cannot understand its meaning in previous centuries. So do I believe that classical atonement theories speak to the human condition today? Yes, indeed they do. I offer several reasons in defense of my position.
    First, the atonement that Jesus brings is so rich and multi-faceted that we find several theories in the New Testament and the church in its wisdom never took an official position on which theories were right or more central.
    It is true that individual theologians rejected various atonement theories in favor of others. Peter Abelard (1079-1142), for example rejected the idea that Jesus’ death made satisfaction to God and paid a ransom and instead embraced the moral influence theory in which Christ’s death provides a moral example for his followers. Others embraced the various theories of atonement, but put a particular one at the center as being the most significant as did the Protestant Reformers in reference to penal substitution.
    But the point that must be made is that the church universal has never issued an official ecumenical statement on the exact nature of atonement. Why? Simply because the several aspects of the atonement can all be found in Scripture, and the work of Jesus Christ on the cross is so rich and vast in scope that it speaks to and offers salvation to all the sordid ways human beings find themselves to be broken and estranged from God. The various theories of the atonement are like the facets of one diamond that sparkle no matter how one looks at it and from what direction one views it. No one facet captures the beauty of the whole diamond, but each facet is necessary to maintain its beauty. To reject one or more theories to focus only on one or two facets is to attempt to cut a diamond that already sparkles threatening to turn it into a rock that hardly shimmers.
    Second, every theory of atonement has its strengths that illuminate the work of Christ for our salvation, and every theory, if taken too far or focused on at the expense of the other theories distorts the meaning of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The problem has not been any of the different theories of atonement, but the over-emphasis on one at the expense of others.
    For example, in regard to ransom theory, it can be shown that the image of our salvation as being purchased through Jesus, who paid the price through his death is found throughout the New Testament (Mark 10:45; 1 Corinthians 6:20; 7:23). Its strengths emphasize that fact that sin deceives and enslaves people. We do not have the power to free ourselves. Sin has kidnapped us, or better, we have allowed ourselves to be kidnapped by sin. The problem with this theory is when some have gotten lost on the question as to the object of the ransom. This is to take the theory too far. The focus is on the price paid by someone else and the victory of resurrection.
    If the ransom theory emphasizes that human beings are enslaved to sin, the satisfaction theory focuses on the truth that we human beings are perpetrators of sin. Both theories held together expressed the complexity of the human condition—we are both victims of sin and its perpetrators at the same time. The problem, however, is that if satisfaction is pushed too far God ends up sounding like an over-bearing ruler concerned more about his honor than the humanity he created.
    Penal-substitution reminds us that God is righteous and requires righteousness according to the law that God has established. Sin breaks the law and such violations bring consequences. Sin is a serious matter. It causes injustice and God is just. On the cross, Jesus Christ is the justice of God (Romans 5:2; 2 Corinthians 5:16-17; Colossians 1:19-20). The problem with penal-substitution taken too far is that too often the motivating factor of Christ’s death is the Father’s forced sacrifice of his Son and not the Son’s free choice to die for humanity (more on that below).
    The moral influence theory rightly emphasizes God’s love as the basis for Christ’s work. It reminds us that apart from God’s love God and humanity would have no hope of relationship. If God did not love us, there would be no basis for divine suffering on our behalf. The problem with moral influence when pressed too far is that it emphasizes God’s mercy at the expense of God’s justice. When God’s justice is eclipsed we lose the proper context in which God’s love is demonstrated.
    So, the point here is that the problem is not with traditional atonement theories in and of themselves, it’s how atonement is distorted when we put all of our “theological eggs in only one atonement basket.” And that leads to my third point.
    Third, all too often when individuals reject certain atonement theories what they are reacting to is not the best theological articulations of those theories, but the caricatures of those theories. I quote Scot McKnight,

    About a decade ago it became avant garde theology to contend the classical Christian theory of atonement was nothing less than divine child abuse. That is, the image of a Father punishing a Son, or exacting retribution at the expense of his own Son, or punishing a Son for the good of others—each of these became a way of deconstructing classical atonement theory.

    Unfortunately, this approach works from a very simplistic image: a father, a son, and a brutal death and attributes intention to the father as one who brutalizes a son. As an image, it connotes abuse. The image, however, abuses the Bible’s image.
    If the critics were to say each time that they are criticizing not penal substitution theory itself but the caricatures of PSA, then one might be more sympathetic for there clearly are abuses of the theory and imagery. But the critics do not frequently say that; in fact, my read is that the Father requiring death for sin (the consequences of sin), and putting the Son in the place of others, is an image of the Father using violence against the Son. So I’m not convinced the “caricature of a caricature” theory solves the problem. If there are consequences for sin (death, suffering, etc.), then there is some kind of “punishment” theory at work in sin-language and atonement-language.(1)
    So the problem is that all too often critics of penal substitution are not responding to the best and deepest theological reflection given to the church through the centuries, but to those whose accounts are as theologically suspect as those who offer the critique. The cross of Christ is not what the Father perpetrated on the Son, but it is the freely chosen offering of the Son. In both Western and Eastern theologies the cross is a Trinitarian act of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
    Fourth, when critics of classical atonement theories say that they do not speak in the twenty-first century, they provincially mean that they do not speak to twenty-first century Western autonomous individualists that don’t really believe they’re all that bad, and know little of real sacrifice.
    Zimbabwe pastor, Qwinyai Muzorewa writes of how the sacrifice of Jesus, the firstborn Son speaks to his African context not infected with modern autonomous deceptions:
    The firstborn son is prepared to sacrifice for the sake of his family’s spiritual and physical well-being. He is cognizant of the fact that he will receive blessings and yet also shoulder curses on behalf of his family. A responsible firstborn son would rather die than watch his father perish before his face…. Bluntly put, he holds a position that comes with glorious benefits and rewards, but also with great responsibilities. What pleased God was not the death but the atonement; Jesus’s death was not punishment by God or payment to God for the sins of the world. Rather; it was the saving act that only the firstborn Son could perform efficaciously. Thus, it was the Son’s pleasure to save everybody in the family. It was an act of self-actualization. It was an accomplishment, rather than punishment imposed on him by his father.(2)
    The irony here is that such atonement theories are usually rejected by those who complain the loudest about colonial attitudes, but all too often Western liberalism is the worst form of paternalism there is because it disguises itself as enlightened.
    Fifth, one cannot separate the work of Christ from the person of Christ. Soteriology (the doctrine of salvation) can only be coherent in the context of Trinitarian doctrine and a Christology that affirms Jesus as the God-Man—truly divine and truly human.
    All too often critiques of classical atonement theories separate too widely what the cross means from who Jesus is. In the early centuries, questions concerning the person of Christ were always placed within the context of the work of Christ. “If we say this about who Jesus is, what does it mean for our salvation—what Jesus has done? Jesus must be truly divine for only God can save, but Jesus also must be truly human for in the words of Gregory of Nazianzus, Jesus “cannot save that which he has not become.” All too often contemporary critiques of classical atonement lack the theological depth of the rich wisdom passed on to us by those who thought about these matters in ways that truly speak to the human condition in every age. We throw that wisdom out at our peril.
    After all, the human condition hasn’t changed over two thousand years. We still believe we know better than God what we truly need to be saved—actually like previous generations we are not so sure we actually need to be saved. Instead of preaching Christ and him crucified we affirm humanity and it improved.
    The cross remains a scandal to Jew and Greek (1 Corinthians 1:23) and to all the enlightened cultured despisers of classical Christianity.
    ___
    NOTES

  • Say good-bye to the "divine passive"

    [Editor’s Note: Often on the weekends, we will stray from our series of the moment and engage in interesting posts that catch our eye.]

    by David Alan  Black

    PicWhen was the last time you changed your mind about something? I mean something important? For me that was on Tuesday. I had just cracked open the latest issue of Filologia Neotestamentaria. In it was an essay called “The passivum divinum: The Rise and Future Fall of an Imaginary Linguistic Phenomenon.” Authors Smit and Rennson argue that the so-called “divine passive” construction in Greek exists only as an urban myth. Agentless passives with God as their implied agent are due, not to a desire to avoid pronouncing the Divine Name, but rather to other motives (e.g., the agent is already clearly implied in the context; the agent is not in focus but instead the subject is, etc.).
    Besides being obviously impressed by the authors’ arguments, I was a bit perturbed to think that I had been teaching the “divine passive” for years. Get this wrong, and you’re probably going to be just as guilty of eisegesis as this preacher who insists that non-tithers have opened themselves up to demons. My, oh my! So keep on thinking, dear reader—and remember that Jesus came to lift every noose from your neck, both the ones you put there and the ones others put there. (See David Croteau’s excellent book, Tithing After the Cross—what one Amazon reviewer calls “… a Biblical but not dogmatic approach to a complicated topic that was treated with great care and biblical support.” Go David!)
    People, we need each other. We need iron sharpening iron. So once again, I stand corrected, and I’m glad for that. Being open to correction helps us to run our races well and to practice the grace-filled living we were created for. Amen?

    Tithing after the Cross is published by Energion Publications. David Croteau was interviewed long with fellow Energion author Steve Kindle on stewardship and tithing. The video is embedded below. Steve will discuss stewardship as proper care of the earth  on the February 2, 2016 “Energion Tuesday Night Hangout.”
    David’s books can be viewed and ordered here: https://energiondirect.info/authors/authors-a-c/david-alan-black

  • The Christology of the Gospel of Mark

    [Editor’s Note: Often on Fridays, we will stray from our series of the moment and engage in interesting posts that catch our eye.]

    by Drew Smith

    The Christology of the Gospel of Mark has been and continues to be a point of debate among biblical scholars and theologians. Indeed, we could say this about all four of the canonical Gospels. Recently, New Testament scholar Michael Bird sparked an online debate when he offered his summary of Mark’s Christology:
    The Marcan Jesus participates in the kyricentricity of Israel’s God. He is identified as a pre-existent heavenly figure who has come to earth, who carries divine authority, who embodies royal and priestly roles; and in his person, words, and deeds he manifests the holy presence, the redemptive purposes, and the cosmic power of the Lord of Israel.
    I am not going to quibble with much of what Bird offers as his summary of Mark’s Christology, but I do believe he has no evidence that Mark’s Gospel offers a view of Jesus that is pre-existent. Unlike Matthew and Luke, there is not in Mark a birth narrative communicating the miraculous nature of Jesus’ birth. Moreover, certainly unlike John, Mark does not even slightly suggest that Jesus is the Word that was in the beginning and who was God, but who has become flesh. No, it seems to me that Mark’s Christology is more restrained in the claims the narrative makes about Jesus.
    What I do think is going on in Mark’s presentation of Jesus, Mark’s Christology, is actually an aspect of the presentation of God, Mark’s theology. In other words, while Jesus is not portrayed as pre-existent, that pushes the evidence too far, Jesus is certainly presented in close relationship to God. Indeed, while there is a distinction between God and Jesus in that both play roles in the narrative, there is also an inseparability between God and Jesus.
    This might be seen from the beginning of the narrative, where the narrator of the Gospel introduces a mixture of quotations from the Old Testament and attributes them to the prophet Isaiah (1:2-3). Mark’s use of these Old Testament passages, and the attribution of them to Isaiah, is for the purpose of persuading the audience to understand the following narrative within the context of the eschatological hope found in Isaiah 40, and to see this hope coming to fulfilment.
    The use of these quotations at this juncture in the story picks up the story of the past and continues the hope begun at that former time in the time of Mark’s audience. In appropriating the context of Isaiah in their understanding of Mark’s beginning, the audience would understand that God is at work within Mark’s story, fulfilling the promises of the past.
    In particular, the narrative introduces the voice of God, through the quotation of scripture, who announces that “I”, God, “am sending my (God’s) messenger ahead of you (Jesus).” The one who sends is God. The one sent is interpreted by the Gospel as John. And the one who John goes before is Jesus.
    But, the narrative says that the purpose of the messenger (John) is to “Prepare the way of the Lord (kyrios)”. To whom does kyrios refer in this verse in Mark’s opening? It seems somewhat ambiguous.
    Certainly the Old Testament text that Mark is quoting here refers to God as the Lord, and, in my view, the narrative does not remove this title from God. Rather, it seems that in extending the term to Jesus, Mark intends to demonstrate the inseparability of God and Jesus. Thus in his identity as the kyrios Jesus acts with the authority of and in concurrence with God who is also kyrios.
    Moreover, God is presented as the sender of the messenger, John, who is to prepare the way of the Lord, and to make straight the paths of Jesus. The paths of which God, through scripture, speaks is the way Jesus will walk through the narrative. Thus in sending John, the messenger, ahead of Jesus to prepare the way for Jesus, God is presented as the one who also sends Jesus. Moreover, the absence of any birth narrative or genealogy of Jesus in Mark communicates to the audience that the origin and significance of the one coming is found completely in God. God gives Jesus the authority to act and speak as representative of God throughout the narrative.
    This is brought into clearer view for the audience through the voice from heaven proclaiming Jesus as “my beloved Son”. This vision serves as the authentication of Jesus by God to act as representative of God throughout the narrative. For the audience of Mark, all the actions and teachings of Jesus follow from this experience. Thus, the baptismal scene serves the Markan audience as the basis on which they are able to view Jesus as the one sent by God, who is the Spirit empowered Son of God.
    This is also evidenced in the statements where Jesus, the narrator, or another character refers to Jesus’ coming (See 1:14-15; 24; 38; 2:15-17; 10:45. Cf. 9:37 where Jesus speaks of one who sent him and 12:1-12 where, in parable, the owner of the vineyard sends “a beloved son”, a reference not lost on any reader of Mark’s narrative.). In presenting Jesus as the one who has come and the one sent from God, the narrator sets Jesus in relation to God as the one who represents God on earth. Thus the actions Jesus carries out on earth are to be viewed by the Markan audience as God’s actions, or actions done by and for God.
    Indeed, my own summary of Mark’s Christology, though a longer summary than Bird’s, while being more cautious than Bird’s view of Jesus’ preexistence, does view the Gospel’s Christology as an aspect of the Gospel’s theology in the sense that from the beginning of Mark Jesus is associated with God and God is associated with Jesus.
    First, as God is presented in the narrative as the authenticator of Jesus, so Jesus is presented as the authoritative actor and speaker for God. Jesus is clearly presented as the one sent from God. Moreover, his miracle working activity is understood in light of the coming of God’s rule. Certain themes and characteristics exist in the miracle stories that serve to highlight Jesus as acting on behalf of God.
    Regarding Jesus as speaker for God, Jesus speaks with authority from God, and presents himself in relation and submission to God. His teaching is focused on the coming rule of God, and the actions required by all who wish to be part of that rule. Moreover, via some of his sayings and actions, Jesus is presented as standing in place of and on behalf of God. Those who desire to participate in the coming rule of God must meet the requirements voiced by Jesus, and indeed must recognize Jesus as the authoritative envoy of God. Thus through his actions and words, Jesus is presented as the one who is authenticated by God.
    Second, as God is presented as the commissioner of Jesus, so Jesus is presented as the Son of Man/Son of God who carries out the divine commission. Jesus is clearly presented in Mark as understanding the task for which he has been sent. Although he does view his miracle activity, as well as his preaching and teaching as commissioned by God, it is ultimately his suffering and death which are understood in the narrative as the primary purpose for his coming.
    Through the narrative presentation of Jesus’ suffering and death, as well as the Markan Jesus’ words concerning his death, the audience is presented with the clear portrayal of God as the one who acts to bring about this death for God’s purposes. From the Markan Jesus’ perspective, it is God’s will that he suffer, God who ultimately stands behind the “handing over” of Jesus, and God who abandons Jesus to death. Jesus, however, is not to be viewed here as a character without freedom of choice, for he freely and intentionally gives his life away, submitting to the will of the Father (14:36).
    Finally, as God is presented as the vindicator and exalter of Jesus, so Jesus is presented as the risen and glorified Son of Man/Son of God. The resurrection of Jesus is no surprise in the Markan narrative, for Jesus clearly speaks of it (8:31; 9:31; 10:33-34; 14:28). In each setting it follows on the prediction of his death, and is thus tied to the activity and will of God. The specific use of the passive verbs by Jesus in 14:28 and by the young man at the tomb are intended to focus the audience’s attention onto God as the one who can and does raise and vindicate Jesus.
    Moreover, as the Son of Man, who is the Son of God, Jesus envisions his final vindication as that which God accomplishes. His future testimony before the Father and the angels (8:38) implies the authority given to him via his vindication by the Father. He is the one who is the Messiah, who as David’s Lord (kyrios used in reference to Jesus) sits at the right hand of the Lord (kyrios used in reference to God), as this Lord places the enemies of the Messiah (Jesus) under his feet (12:36).
    His victory is pictured as a cosmic event which brings about the shake-up of the heavens, in which he takes his authoritative position over the angels, sending them forth to gather the elect of God (13:24-27). The enemies of the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One, will witness this event, as the Son of Man is exalted to the right hand of the Power, a circumlocution for God (14:62). Thus in God’s faithfulness to the Son, God conquers the enemies of humanity, death and evil, and thereby vindicates and exalts the Son.
    Through the genre of narrative Mark presents a portrait of Jesus which is an aspect of its portrait of God. God plays the main role in the narrative being the sender, authenticator, commissioner, and vindicator of Jesus. Jesus is presented in terms reflecting this presentation of God. He is presented as the one sent from God, the one who has authority to act and speak for God, the one who gives his life in obedience to the commission from God, and the one who is vindicated by God.
    Thus, the significance and identity of Jesus in Mark is an aspect of the narrative presentation of God. As God is the one who authoritatively identifies Jesus as the beloved Son (1:11; 9:7), so Jesus is the one who authoritatively identifies God as Abba-Father (esp. 14:36). Christology and theology are interrelated in Mark.
    Mark’s theology is a christological theology; a theology centred on the presentation of Jesus as the one who speaks and acts for God. Mark’s Christology is at the same time a theological Christology; Jesus is presented as finding significance and identity in his relationship to God. Thus, although theology and Christology are often considered separate concerns in Mark, as indeed God and Jesus are separate characters in the narrative, there is also the clear presentation of their inseparability within the second Gospel.
    Does this mean that Mark’s Christology frames Jesus as divine in the sense that John frames Jesus as divine? Does Mark’s clear association of Jesus with God carry a pre-existent emphasis? I think not. That, again, reads into the narrative what is not clearly there. Mark clearly presents Jesus in close association with God, but that close association does not decidedly equate Jesus as God, particularly in terms of a pre-existent divine figure.

  • Has the multiplicity of interpretations made the bible incomprehensible? —NO!

    [EDITOR’S NOTE: This post is part of our series on controversial questions. A NO post will normally follow a YES post. Join in by posting your comments.]

    by Edward W. H. Vick

    Inspiration coverIn the sixteenth century there was a major conflict within Christianity. It was over the Bible. Before then it was only available in Latin, and so only for the clergy, who then told their followers what they interpreted it to mean. So there was an interesting but dangerous disagreement between the Catholic church and the Protestant advocates of translation of Scripture into native languages.
    The interesting agreement was that it was possible for ordinary people, the laity, to read and to understand the message of the Bible by anyone who could read it, or have it read to them. The danger was that the translators considered it necessary to make the opportunity available to everyone who could read or be read to. That incentive was violently opposed. So the Catholic church opposed the translation into European languages because it realized that it would pose a most serious challenge to some of its basic teachings.
    The Reformers for their part, particularly Tyndale and Luther, also realized that lay people, if they had access to Scripture in their own language, would understand its teachings, its message. And that message called into question basic teachings of the church.
    So there was enthusiasm on the part of both parties: the ruthless efforts to repress the translation and distribution of the translated Scripture, the Reformers patiently and persistently, but at great cost, determined to make those writings available to all. The following conviction motivated their sacrificial efforts to translate the Scriptures and then to get the translations distributed. It also motivated the ruthless opposition.
    Scripture if made available can be readily understood by laypersons.
    We must not forget at what great cost in the sixteenth century the efforts of the translators and their supporters, printers, and distributors, resulted in making Scripture available to us all. We should not take it for granted.
    We now realize that the availability of Scripture has made possible a multitude of different interpretations. That poses for some the problem,  having read, how to understand i. e. interpret Scripture faithfully. The first rule should be that I read Scripture for myself, and think about what I read. Then I may have some ground for considering alternative suggestions. But for some readings the obvious sense will satisfy you.
    Do you know how many kinds of apples there are? I don’t. But, like you, I am sure I know very well the ones I like. You no doubt will have a favorite. I am also quite sure that the fact that there are so many kinds of apples did and does not put you off either eating apples nor indeed preferring the one you like best. It is rather naïve to suggest it! But you have to make choices.
    But before you can make rational choices you will have to have tasted a range of apples. You then, and only then, unless you rely on what others recommend to you, will be in a position to make your decision. But even if you accept a suggestion you will still get hold of the recommended apple and try it out for yourself. Otherwise, how will you know what to make of the other’s recommended assessment, to accept it or to reject it?
    The question we are to consider is also rather naïve. Take the first alternative. Why would one refuse to consider an interpretation of Scripture and give as the reason that there are so many interpretations and so the confusion between them makes the quest to find an adequate position so difficult as not to be worth the trouble to find. But you are the one who says ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ to the suggestion you accept. You are the one who chooses not to pursue it any further.
    A second alternative is not to make a choice. To shelve the question and close the questioning, in short to make a negative decision. It amounts to excusing yourself not to make any effort to discover your own satisfactory answer.
    The third alternative is to make a worthy attempt at evaluation, however much labor and struggle it might cost you. You make the effort freely and so the decision is yours. Making the attempt is a worthy thing. Many have made it before you, and many are in the process of making it.
    I now ask you to consider what a costly, blood-stained process it was to provide the Scripture in the language of the people. That we can read Scripture and understand its message is a privilege offered us at the cost of many lives devoted to the task of translating the Scriptures into spoken languages and in the attempt to distribute the text, initially by such remarkable figures as William Tyndale and Martin Luther.
    So let us consider how we come to make choices in such contexts. There are three alternatives:
    Number one : You let someone make the choice for you. But that is no solution for you since you do not know the considerations that person has taken to come to the suggestion. When you accept a recommended alternative you may even plead the authority of your informant as the reason. Or is it rather a pretext than a reason? So and so knows the truth. I accept it as given. Your choice is to accept the suggestion of the other person. But that is a choice, and a poor one when the alternative is to search for yourself.
    The second alternative is not to make any decision, not simply to defer it, but to make a decision not to consider further. This is the negative argument. The Bible is the source of many and divergent interpretations and contrary beliefs. There are so many different positions that it is difficult if not impossible to make a rational choice between them.
    The third alternative is to make the attempt to find the meaning for yourself. That is the first positive step that promises to yield a satisfactory result. But you will know that you may have to do some work to find your satisfaction.
    This is a short response.
    That there is a multitude of teachings derived from the Bible should not be taken to imply that none of them is worthy of belief and so the effort to discover which are to be accepted is not a worthy activity. It is the result of bad logic, an example of non sequitur. Does the proponent really mean to suggest that the more interpretations there are the less any are likely to be reasonable? Or, is it not rather the unwillingness to be involved in expending a great deal of effort in the quest?
    Or is the idea that the Bible is untrustworthy because its writings give opportunity for different interpretations. Should not that fact be taken as a merit of the writings. Good literature is always suggestive of appropriate interpretations in different contexts.
    That we have the Bible in our own modern language is an inheritance that was achieved at enormous cost. For most of the Christian era the Scriptures were not available to the ordinary believer. And so there was no alternative for them but to hear and to respond to what the church taught them was proper to believe, and often threatened them if they did not conform. The cost many paid for your freedom to read the Bible in your own language, in our case English, on the European continent Luther’s German, was imprisonment, ostracism, deprivation, betrayal, isolation, death.
    That was before Tyndale and Luther. After them the Bible was becoming available to everyone who could read. In step with this development was the conviction, made into a Reformation principle that the Bible could be understood by the ordinary Christian reader. As we now know, a very large percentage of what became the Authorized Version, the King James version, was the work of Tyndale. It was simply taken over from his translation.
    William Tyndale paid an enormous price for his persistent efforts as a scholar in translating and circulating the translated Scriptures, as did those who supported him by printing, distributing and reading his work. They were under the constant threat of being apprehended and severely punished for so doing. The price Tyndale paid for his efforts was to be hounded all over Europe by Thomas More and his spies, and finally by being betrayed and put to death for heresy and treason. Those who read the English translations were considered heretics, and heresy was considered treason since it stood in opposition to the interpretations and the established teachings of the church. Death was the fate of those who disagreed.
    That the Bible was now available for all who could read or have it read to them resulted in the emergence of various interpretations of what it taught, each interpretation often being taken as the true one.
    For the simple believer, there was now the freedom to read and to understand that the love and grace of God was available without the mediation of the church and its agents. That constituted reformation. It was inevitable that different interpretations emerged and with them many different Christian communities.
    The new freedom made its own demands. What was now needed was to find a way to assess the different interpretations, since some were incompatible with others. The new situation demanded a new attitude on the part of those aware of such diversity. Two essential demands were recognized:
    Accept the authority of the Bible,
    Recognize the diversity of interpretations and teachings.
    This meant seeing the need for discernment and for making decisions about those that were reasonable and worthy of belief. In the immediate context of the availability of the translations one was faced with a choice: to accept or to reject the authoritative pronouncements of the church. Take two examples. About sacraments and about the church. It was a matter of different interpretations being given on the one hand to the gospel statement, ‘This is my body’ (to be taken literally as re-enactment in the communion service by the Roman Catholic, or as indicating remembrance or memorial of the event of Jesus’ death by Tyndale. The other is whether Jesus’ word to Peter, ‘I will build my ekklesia’ (Matthew 16:18) is be translated by the term ‘church’ (the Catholic version) or ‘congregation’ (the Tyndale translation). The different translations of the same term reflect different doctrines concerning church and church authority. Tyndale’s translation ‘congregation’ was considered heretical as it expressed a quite different understanding from the Catholic (and heresy meant death).
    After this preamble let us take a look at the negative argument, stated briefly above and now expanded
    The Bible is the source of many and divergent interpretations and contrary beliefs
    There are so many different positions that it is difficult if not impossible to make a rational choice between them.
    That impossibility makes any thought of examining the issues fruitless.
    In terms of the Bible, the proliferation of interpretations, some in contradiction to others, leads to the conclusion that it loses what authority it may have had, giving occasion for multifarious and divergent beliefs and communities.
    The question, ‘What does the Bible teach?’ is therefore not a rational question.
    So, there is no point in engaging in a fruitless quest.
    The following is a reasonable response to this negative argument.
    Would it not be rather better to inquire about the rationality of the various positions as having their source in the Bible? For it is of urgent concern to those who hold the Bible to have a special and unquestionable authority that they relate their interpretations to the text in a convincing, reasonable way.
    This raises the serious question of the relationship between understanding, acceptance, and belief. While it is possible to believe what one does not understand, it is also possible and preferable to believe what one understands, and to understand as adequately as possible.
    The problem is that it takes time and effort to arrive at an adequate understanding. For some that is too much, and some are even put off by just realizing that there are many alternatives, or by the thought that to make a choice would mean not only a lot of careful consideration but might in the end lead to a change in their present outlook, with which they are quite content. So they simply dismiss the enterprise as either beyond them or as not worth the effort, even if they are capable of making it and achieving a result. “No thanks, I don’t want to talk about it!”
    The alternatives are:
    (1) to take on board without too much thought one or another teaching at second hand, so to speak. So and so believes and teaches this. So I accept it! No further thought or discussion is then permitted.
    (2) to rest content with the status quo of my thinking (or lack of it) or, if not really content with it, to repress the thought of the challenge and give the matter no further consideration.
    Nothing we have said here should be taken to imply that the devotional approach to the Bible, for encouragement and succor as well as challenge to action, good deeds, etc., is not important. The sincere believer reads the Scripture not to get doctrine as a result, but for encouragement in living life from day to day, for rebuke and for strength just to carry on in Christian faith. None of this is here being down played.
    The Reformation made the Bible available to the public by translating it into their own language. This was a major achievement. One result is that a multitude of interpretations resulted. The question became urgent, ‘How can opposing interpretations of what the Bible teaches be claimed to be the Bible teaching?’ An affirmative explanation justifies this consequence. To put it simply: That various interpretations are made of a given passage, or chapter or book need not call into question the status of the text and then further involve applying a negative judgment to the collection of writings we call the Bible. Consider that often it simply points to its importance and relevance for changing contexts.
    That there is a multitude of teachings derived from the Bible should not be taken to imply that none of them is worthy of belief. The effort to discover which are worthy is itself worthy activity. The negative assessment is the result of bad logic. Does the proponent really mean to suggest that the more interpretations there are the less one or some are likely to b e reasonable?
    It is a very strange idea that the Bible is untrustworthy because its writings give opportunity for different interpretations. Should not that fact be taken as a merit of the writings. Good literature is always suggestive of appropriate interpretations in different contexts. And reasonable discussion of issues raised is not a bad thing, surely!
    Always enjoy the apples you prefer!

    Dr. Vick’s books can be viewed and ordered here: https://energiondirect.info/authors/authors-t-z/edward-w-h-vick
  • Creativity in Emotional Extremes

    Creativity in Emotional Extremes

    Girl showing different emotions with icons“Often our best creativity comes from the extreme emotions that we work so hard to avoid.”

    I believe it was legendary music producer Phil Spector that once said that there were only four songs we could ever write; I love you, I hate you, go away, or come back.  He wasn’t all that wrong.  Those emotional extremes probably produced most of the songs that you love.

    Often we are taught in our lives to avoid our emotional extremes, but in my short life it’s been in those places that I feel like I’ve created some of the best art of my life.  Whether celebration or hurt when I allow myself to feel those things deeply it produces something in me and something emerges that clearly and powerfully communicates what I’m feeling.

    As a Christian I believe I should constantly be creating better art because as a Christ-follower my goal is to live in a perpetual state of emotional extremes.  Let me explain.  On the positive side I have a hope beyond all hope.  I have a hope in Jesus Christ and because he is my Savior I will live forever in eternity.  There is no g9781893729919reater joy, no higher high, no more euphoric sense than to know Jesus as Lord.  So there I seek to draw from the emotion of that truthful and extreme joy. But on the negative side I also live in a state of brokenness. Broken for my own sin and the sin of this world.  Broken for the lost who without Christ will be sentenced forever to the most broken place.  That brokenness draws me to an extreme place of sorrow and sadness only to be restored to extreme joy by the fact that I have been rescued by my Savior and the sin I weep for has been atoned for in full.  It’s not cyclical.  It’s paradoxical.  One doesn’t lead to the other, but the truth is that both exist simultaneously and drive me to deeper realities of each other.

    So here I sit in a state of perpetual paradox desiring to exist in 2 emotional extremes simultaneously.  That is my desire as a believer in Christ.  I want to live in the highest state of celebration and create art from that place, but I also want to live in the state of brokenness that God desires (Psalm 51:17) and create from that place as well.

    I believe this desire to be exclusively Christian because only through Jesus can I find joy in brokenness and brokenness in joy.  It is a paradox of extremes that I am grateful to navigate.  Most people who sing of brokenness do so to alleviate it, but as a Christian I do so to celebrate it.  Most people who sing of joy do so in hopes that it will never leave, but as a Christian I do so that it may drive me to deeper brokenness.  As these extremes grow in my life I hope the power of their expression grows as well and that the power of that expression would better serve the Kingdom of God.

    (This post is from thoughts on worship leader creativity and is reposted here by permission.)

  • Has the multiplicity of interpretations made the Bible incomprehensible? —YES

    [EDITOR’S NOTE: This post is part of our series on controversial questions. A NO post will normally follow a YES post. Join in by posting your comments.]

    by Steve Kindle

    Head-Brown smallFor those of us in the West, once the Roman Catholic Church lost its hegemonic hold on the content of the faith, it’s become “every man for himself.” Or in the words of pope of the Reformation period, “With every man his Bible, soon every man his own church.” Quite prophetic, wouldn’t you say?
    The Reformation’s emphasis on the right of every believer to interpret the Bible soon became warrant for any old interpretation that suits the interpreter. Who is there to suggest otherwise?
    Add to this that the scholarly biblical academy can’t seem to come to a consensus on, well, you name it. We’ve arrived at a point where biblical inquirers are presented with a smorgasbord of options, and we pick and choose as it suits us, with no better reason than choosing a Ford over a Chevy, merely personal preference.
    This all begins with the complicated nature of the Bible itself. In order to make sense out of the 31,102 verses, 1,190 chapters and 66 assorted books, it is necessary to employ a schema, or template, to organize its contents into a manageable whole. This is truly a “can of worms,” as the options for this are mind boggling. Additionally, the Bible is a product of people with a worldview quite different from ours. It’s a very difficult task to enter into that ancient world and think as they did. It requires immersing ourselves in cultures two to three thousand years in the past. Many bypass this step and just read it like the daily newspaper. This “what it means today must be what it meant then” approach is sure to yield disappointing results.
    What this has done to the church is create oases of partisanship based not on what is found to be the highest truth, but on, as we know from H. Richard Niebuhr on down, economic and political confederacies. It means, “I belong to my denomination because I was raised in it,” or “The people were good to me and so nice.” No matter that you are led by a Jim Jones (Peoples Temple), or a Martin Luther King, Jr. People who, indeed, attempt to find the church closest to the Bible soon learn that it is a fool’s errand. Even the New Testament churches present a wide range of doctrines and differ in many ways. What would the doctrinally perfect church look like? The fact that there are hundreds of options (if not thousands) reflects the difficulty, if not the impossibility, of making sense of the biblical data to anyone but the interpreters.
    The classic creeds from the Nicaean forward were attempts to cull the basics from Apostolic Christianity to bring order and clarity to the church. All they did was divide the church then, and today make understanding them as difficult as understanding the Bible. Homoousios anyone?
    A literal understanding of the words in the Bible is no help either. Whether the literalist understands it or not, there is no such thing as an uninterpreted text. Whatever lens we view the Bible through will control the outcome. And we all wear lenses.
    Now, as to the meaning of incomprehensible. The dictionaries basically define it as “unable to make sense.” My overall point is this: Because the Bible does not speak with one voice, but covers a variety of points of view, and even contradicts itself from time to time, one can’t expect its interpreters to do any better. This cacophony of interpretations is bewildering and finally debilitating to the average Bible reader who ultimately surrenders to what seems best, unable confidently to sort out the best among its many contenders. “This makes sense to me,” serves as the final judgment, because we make it make sense.
    Any “sense” made from the Bible, is a derivative sense, derived primarily from the approach taken in the reading. There is no obvious sense lying on the surface for any fool to see.
    None of this is, of course, the Bible’s fault. It has the inconvenience of being made up of words. Words are, after all, symbols, and symbols are capable of wide meaning, especially when read by people with different backgrounds and experiences. The meaning taken from the Bible varies greatly among women, minorities, third world, poor, oppressed, and oppressor (to name only a few). The meanings are so dissimilar that one sometimes wonders if they are reading the same book.
    The real question is, is this a problem? Not if you understand that diversity of interpretive outcomes is inevitable. In fact, diversity of interpretation, for those who remain tentative in their work, is welcome. Why? Because it acts as a corrective. If we remain humble before the text and are willing to listen to others, inch by inch, we may actually come to a more suitable outcome than simply camping on what seems good to us.
    This diversity of interpretations is also good for us. Paul’s advice that we “work out our own salvation with fear and trembling,” puts the burden on seeking and finding for ourselves, but not just by ourselves, but in community with other seekers. Only in community can we be exposed to correctives and also the motivation to live out our discovered truths. Even though we may never find the ultimate answer (we see in a mirror, darkly), journeying together has its own rewards. In a very substantial way, the enigma of the Bible is also its greatest good.
    Now I know what you’re thinking. I may be right about some of the more difficult areas of biblical interpretation, but the Bible is very clear on what we need to know for our salvation. Oh, really? Is Paul the authority that we are saved by grace through faith–not of works? Or is it James who says that we are not saved by faith alone? Or are the Restoration churches correct in insisting that baptism for the remission of sins is necessary for salvation, or the Baptists who believe that baptism follows salvation? And all are against the Calvinists who insist that humans have nothing to do with the decision! (We could go on, couldn’t we.)
    Therefore, in the words of Micah,
    “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? Or, as Ecclesiastes would say, “This is the end of the matter.”

    Steve’s books can be viewed and ordered here: https://energiondirect.info/authors/authors-d-k/steve-kindle
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