I presently attend an Orthodox Presbyterian Church. They are proudly Reformed. In other words they take their doctrine seriously and have attempted to piece together a coherent and consistent theology based upon Scripture. They are liturgical. In other words they have thought about each aspect of the Lord’s Day (Sunday) worship service, and have structured it in such a way as to reflect their systematic theology. The sermons are typically a detailed exegeses of Scripture, so much so that we have been doing a study of Luke for about five years now and are only a little over half way through. We sing only hymns (typically written over two hundred years ago) and the psalms put to music. We sing only this type of music primarily for two reasons. One is the deep theological concepts that the words of these songs bring forth and because the church believes that the music of these songs are properly reverent for use in worship.
We are keenly aware that Sunday morning worship is first and foremost about God. He is the audience and we are the participants. It is not about us, it is about Him. We believe that there is a proper form to the worship God requires of us, and we should therefore conform our desires and our emotions to this proper form. If we don’t like this form then the problem is us, not the form. We are constantly told that we should not conform our worship to the surrounding culture. Therefore we eschew all forms of worship that attempt to contextualize the service to the culture.
I used to believe most of this and still do in part; however I now also believe that our form of worship, can become so rigid, unintelligible and unnatural to the participant’s everyday lives that it causes a stumbling block to our desire to worship. If this happens we become mere unthinking unemotional robots going through the motions of the service by rote, but never truly worshipping God. Unfortunately, Lord’s Day worship is NOT all about Him, as this neglects a key factor in worship that being the congregation doing the worship. As noted before, we are the participants of worship, and if the Church neglects this critical aspect, it will quickly find that the worship is dead in spite of our desires to truly worship, and instead of reaching the throne room of heaven, it reaches only to the ceiling. Perhaps we should not worry about the need to tweak the proper form, but we are called to worship in Spirit as well as in Truth, and we are fallen individuals who will constantly need the faith contextualized for us, or it will become so foreign that it will be unintelligible. Does God care about how we worship Him? Absolutely, but He cares more about our heart. I believe that a “contemporary” service with a praise band and praise songs, who truly believe and is singing with all their heart to Jesus is more pleasing to God, than a rigidly structured Episcopalian service (or pick your favorite proper form) where the congregation is just going through the motions. But can we have both, the proper form with the proper heart? I think we can, but we must walk a fine line, and unfortunately that line moves with the people that make up the congregation.
One of the hallmarks of the Reformation was that it made the Faith accessible to the masses. No longer would one need to know Latin to understand what was going on in the service. No longer would one need to be able to read Latin to read Scripture. No longer would the songs be chanted by the clergy in tunes foreign to the congregation’s everyday lives in a language in which no one could understand. In this the Reformers were returning to a prior notion of the early church of “baptizing” the culture. It was their desire to take the Faith from the purview of the elite clergy and return it to the everyday man. They had to do this because the Roman Catholic Church had insisted on the rigidity of their form, and had put this “proper” form of the worship in front of the needs of their congregation. In our effort to reform our worship let’s not make the same mistake.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Monday, August 22, 2011
Sunday Worship
“And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need. But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, He taught them these things, which we have submitted to you also for your consideration.”
Justin Martyr
I must admit that for me one of the attractions of Christianity is its ancientness. When I go to church, I am participating in a rite that has been continuous for close to 2000 years. It gives me goose bumps that I am participating in something bigger than myself, and that I am passing this Faith on to my kids so that they can in turn pass this on to their kids. This passage describes the typical worship service of the early church. It was written around 150 AD by a man who was eventually beheaded by the Roman Empire for being a Christian. A number of notable things here:
A. They actually met together for fellowship.
B. They met on Sundays.
C. They read the Scriptures.
D. They listened to a sermon.
E. They prayed.
F. They administered the Eucharistic celebration (communion).
G. They took up an offering to help orphans and widows and the needy.
Is this how your church service looks? If not why not?
Here is another quote taken from the same document concerning the Eucharist.
“And this food is called among us Εὐχαριστία [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.”
I’m not really sure what this all means, but it certainly sounds like they believed that the Eucharist was something more than a mere remembrance.
Justin Martyr
I must admit that for me one of the attractions of Christianity is its ancientness. When I go to church, I am participating in a rite that has been continuous for close to 2000 years. It gives me goose bumps that I am participating in something bigger than myself, and that I am passing this Faith on to my kids so that they can in turn pass this on to their kids. This passage describes the typical worship service of the early church. It was written around 150 AD by a man who was eventually beheaded by the Roman Empire for being a Christian. A number of notable things here:
A. They actually met together for fellowship.
B. They met on Sundays.
C. They read the Scriptures.
D. They listened to a sermon.
E. They prayed.
F. They administered the Eucharistic celebration (communion).
G. They took up an offering to help orphans and widows and the needy.
Is this how your church service looks? If not why not?
Here is another quote taken from the same document concerning the Eucharist.
“And this food is called among us Εὐχαριστία [the Eucharist], of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh.”
I’m not really sure what this all means, but it certainly sounds like they believed that the Eucharist was something more than a mere remembrance.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
TRUTH AND UNITY GO TOGETHER LIKE A HORSE AND CARRIAGE
In this post I wrote that we are strongly influenced by our presuppositions and the presupposition of the times and culture in which we live. This is no less true when we come to Scripture. We read Scripture through these glasses that both shaped and are shaped by these presuppositions. While Scripture itself is inerrant, our individual interpretation of Scripture is not. It is the height of pride and arrogance to assume that the way in which we personally interpret Scripture is the only way Scripture must be read to assume that the way in which we read Scripture is Scripture itself. There is no guarantee that we are immune from error in our interpreting. If we can get this principal, we will go a long way in healing the rifts in the Body of Christ.
Therefore, if for example the Ezekiel 37:1-14 should be read metaphorically and we read it instead literally WE not Scripture are in error. (By the way, one of the worst reasons for interpreting a passage a certain way is the slipper slope argument.) We are not perfect. We are all, every one of us, corrupted by our sin nature and are not immune to error. This corruption extends to every aspect of our being including our “logical and rational mind”. If this is true why then do we all of the sudden assume when we sit down to read the Scriptures that we are absolutely reading them aright? Why do we become dogmatic about our particular spin? I quite simply do not trust myself to state on my own authority that such and such verse definitely means this and those who do not agree with me are heretics outside the faith doomed to suffer eternal torment. Get this, NO ONE has that authority; not Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, Lewis or Sproul (and for you Roman Catholics out there not the Pope either.)
But doesn’t the Holy Spirit guild us individually when we read Scripture and remove these glasses and help us read Scripture alright? Either the Holy Spirit is doing a pretty poor job or this is not how the Holy Spirit works. While the Holy Spirit does comfort us and convict us individually of sin, it does not work to inform us individually of doctrine. History is replete with godly people who (and I personally know too many godly people who) have prayed for the Holy Spirit to illuminate the Scripture and have come back convinced that a particular doctrine or interpretation has the Holy Spirit’s stamp of approval, that this is what the Scripture must mean. The only thing is that each Holy Spirit inspired doctrine/interpretation has contradicted someone else’s Holy Spirit inspired doctrine/interpretation. Who is correct and how do you know? The only thing this belief does is entrench each camp in their own version of the truth, which destroys the unity of the Body.
So if we can not be certain that our interpretation of the Scriptures is the correct one due to our own failings, and the Holy Spirit doesn’t help us individually determine what is correct, then we should just throw away the Scriptures as useless and each believe whatever we want to believe, correct?
Absolutely not! While we can not be dogmatically certain of our individual interpretation, we still should seek out the correct interpretation to the best of our ability. The Holy Spirit does work through our collective efforts to help us arrive at Truth. Let’s look at the early Church’s example. The Church was split on the subject of whether or not Gentiles needed to follow the Jewish law prior to being able to become a Christian. In short the Jewish Christians were requiring the new Gentile male converts to become circumcised. Individual believers did not assume that the Holy Spirit would speak to them individually, but corporately. Through the Holy Spirit (Acts 15:28) illuminating Scripture (Acts 15:16-17) the unified Jerusalem council came to its decision. So you have even the Apostles making decisions of doctrine through a corporate effort of the entire Church.
It is therefore my belief that the Holy Spirit speaks through the Church unified and universal (universal through both space and time) and reveals Truth to us, not to each of us individually. It works through each member unified to every other member, because while we all err, we rarely err in exactly the same way. And while we all have giftings we rarely have giftings in exactly the same way. (I find it interesting that I know people who are fascinated by different aspects of theology. One in creation, another in the doctrine of hell, another in the correct practices of worship, another with the doctrine of God’s sovereignty, and another in God’s love etc.) This is why the Church is so important, for it is the Church that is the Pillar and Ground of the Truth. This is why our unity is so important. We need each other in ways we can not even begin to imagine. Christ fervently prays for our unity (John 17:20-23) and not surprisingly we see an emphasis on unity throughout the writings of the Early Church Fathers.
That being said that once a doctrine/principle has been solidified by the Church it is revealed Truth. We can not go back. We may be able to define it more precisely, but we can not retract it. For example the divinity of Christ was firmly establish by the Church at the Council of Nicaea. For us to now deny this reality is to deny the faith, and to put oneself outside of the Church. This is not my individual doctrine but the Church universal across time (throughout the centuries) and space (across geographical boundaries). This prevents us from being blown about by every wind of doctrine and keeps the cultural demons at bay. However, at the Council of Chalcedon the Church further refined what Christ divinity means. This is what is called the development of doctrine.
On the flip side if a doctrine has not been solidified by the Church we are free to believe it but I do not think we are free to be dogmatic about it. I think that this goes to being humble and treating each other with love.
There is some relationship between unity, truth and love that has something to do with the nature of the Triune God . . .
[In light of everything I have said in Ephesians Chapter 1-3] I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of your calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit – just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call – one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high, he led a host of captive, and gave gifts to men.” . . . And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carries about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ form whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Ephesians 4:1-8; 11-16
Therefore, if for example the Ezekiel 37:1-14 should be read metaphorically and we read it instead literally WE not Scripture are in error. (By the way, one of the worst reasons for interpreting a passage a certain way is the slipper slope argument.) We are not perfect. We are all, every one of us, corrupted by our sin nature and are not immune to error. This corruption extends to every aspect of our being including our “logical and rational mind”. If this is true why then do we all of the sudden assume when we sit down to read the Scriptures that we are absolutely reading them aright? Why do we become dogmatic about our particular spin? I quite simply do not trust myself to state on my own authority that such and such verse definitely means this and those who do not agree with me are heretics outside the faith doomed to suffer eternal torment. Get this, NO ONE has that authority; not Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, Lewis or Sproul (and for you Roman Catholics out there not the Pope either.)
But doesn’t the Holy Spirit guild us individually when we read Scripture and remove these glasses and help us read Scripture alright? Either the Holy Spirit is doing a pretty poor job or this is not how the Holy Spirit works. While the Holy Spirit does comfort us and convict us individually of sin, it does not work to inform us individually of doctrine. History is replete with godly people who (and I personally know too many godly people who) have prayed for the Holy Spirit to illuminate the Scripture and have come back convinced that a particular doctrine or interpretation has the Holy Spirit’s stamp of approval, that this is what the Scripture must mean. The only thing is that each Holy Spirit inspired doctrine/interpretation has contradicted someone else’s Holy Spirit inspired doctrine/interpretation. Who is correct and how do you know? The only thing this belief does is entrench each camp in their own version of the truth, which destroys the unity of the Body.
So if we can not be certain that our interpretation of the Scriptures is the correct one due to our own failings, and the Holy Spirit doesn’t help us individually determine what is correct, then we should just throw away the Scriptures as useless and each believe whatever we want to believe, correct?
Absolutely not! While we can not be dogmatically certain of our individual interpretation, we still should seek out the correct interpretation to the best of our ability. The Holy Spirit does work through our collective efforts to help us arrive at Truth. Let’s look at the early Church’s example. The Church was split on the subject of whether or not Gentiles needed to follow the Jewish law prior to being able to become a Christian. In short the Jewish Christians were requiring the new Gentile male converts to become circumcised. Individual believers did not assume that the Holy Spirit would speak to them individually, but corporately. Through the Holy Spirit (Acts 15:28) illuminating Scripture (Acts 15:16-17) the unified Jerusalem council came to its decision. So you have even the Apostles making decisions of doctrine through a corporate effort of the entire Church.
It is therefore my belief that the Holy Spirit speaks through the Church unified and universal (universal through both space and time) and reveals Truth to us, not to each of us individually. It works through each member unified to every other member, because while we all err, we rarely err in exactly the same way. And while we all have giftings we rarely have giftings in exactly the same way. (I find it interesting that I know people who are fascinated by different aspects of theology. One in creation, another in the doctrine of hell, another in the correct practices of worship, another with the doctrine of God’s sovereignty, and another in God’s love etc.) This is why the Church is so important, for it is the Church that is the Pillar and Ground of the Truth. This is why our unity is so important. We need each other in ways we can not even begin to imagine. Christ fervently prays for our unity (John 17:20-23) and not surprisingly we see an emphasis on unity throughout the writings of the Early Church Fathers.
That being said that once a doctrine/principle has been solidified by the Church it is revealed Truth. We can not go back. We may be able to define it more precisely, but we can not retract it. For example the divinity of Christ was firmly establish by the Church at the Council of Nicaea. For us to now deny this reality is to deny the faith, and to put oneself outside of the Church. This is not my individual doctrine but the Church universal across time (throughout the centuries) and space (across geographical boundaries). This prevents us from being blown about by every wind of doctrine and keeps the cultural demons at bay. However, at the Council of Chalcedon the Church further refined what Christ divinity means. This is what is called the development of doctrine.
On the flip side if a doctrine has not been solidified by the Church we are free to believe it but I do not think we are free to be dogmatic about it. I think that this goes to being humble and treating each other with love.
There is some relationship between unity, truth and love that has something to do with the nature of the Triune God . . .
[In light of everything I have said in Ephesians Chapter 1-3] I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of your calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit – just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call – one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it says, “When he ascended on high, he led a host of captive, and gave gifts to men.” . . . And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carries about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ form whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love. Ephesians 4:1-8; 11-16
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Speaking of Origins
This is an interesting post by Ken Ham critiquing a 2006 review by Susan Wise Bauer of a Peter Enns book. Who are all these people you ask? Ham is the president of Answers in Genesis an organization which believes in a literal seven day creation of the universe. His organization owns and runs the Creation Museum in Kentucky. I have heard Ham speak once, but other than the above information I don’t know much about him. Susan Wise Bauer is one of the leaders of the “classical education” (not important what this is for the purposes of this post other than to say that she is a big wig in Christian education) movement, and the publisher of the aforementioned Enns’ book. I’ve read one book by Bauer a good primer on classical education, but other than that I don’t know anything about her. Enns is a Christian (if one may be so bold to use that term) that believes in evolution. He was the professor of Old Testament studies at Westminster Theological Seminary until writing the aforementioned book. Thereafter he was canned by the school. Before this controversy, I had never heard of him (Not quite accurate, I vaguely recall hearing about a Westminster professor getting fired over his belief in evolution a while back. I am assuming it was the same guy.). In other words I don’t know any of these people too well so I don’t have an axe to grind. I am using them as an illustration only.
A few weeks ago Ham began a war of words against Enns and Bauer over what he believes is a movement to undermine the Scripture. He “outed” Enns’s views on evolution to the homeschool community on the eve of the homeschool convention in Cincinnati, allegedly criticizing not only Enns, but also Bauer and the group that ran the convention for allowing Enns to participate. Ham was told he was no longer welcome at the convention where he was scheduled to speak. I’m not sure whether Enns or Bauer have made any statements on the controversy, but Ham is still on the offensive, this time clearly going after Bauer. I was able to track down a link to Bauer’s review in full. My comments are interspersed in hers via parenthesis.
Messy Revelation
Why Paul would have flunked hermeneutics.
[Note to the Ken Hams of the world, Bauer is not really saying that Paul was bad at hermeneutics, but that our modern hermeneutics are incorrect.]
by Susan Wise Bauer
Sometime this past year, I was reading Sumerian poetry (for work, not for pleasure) when I came across a 4,000-year-old epic describing the Sumerian paradise, a garden city free of evil and sickness where
the raven utters no cry
the lion kills not,
the wolf snatches not the lamb,
unknown is the kid-devouring wild dog.1
If this doesn't bring you up short, turn to Isaiah 11, where the prophet tells us that when the Messiah returns, the wolf will live with the lamb, the lion will eat straw like the ox, and that the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. The words in which Isaiah describes the great hope of the believer, the words that inform John's own vision of the new heavens and earth: those words don't seem to have originated with, well, with God.
This is the opening dilemma of Peter Enns' Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. The uniqueness of the Old Testament as a piece of literature has been seriously dented by the discovery of more and more ancient texts that predate (and anticipate) biblical forms. Creation story, flood story, prophecy, proverb: all of these were in use in Mesopotamia long before the first biblical book was penned.
[The things written in the Old Testament are true. They are truths that everyone on earth at one time knew. They were stories told to each succeeding generation. They are yearnings that whisper in the heart of every person ever born. Why shouldn’t we expect those truths, those yearnings to echo, if only faintly and corrupted, in other cultures even prior to the time they were written down in the Old Testament? These facts far from causing me to doubt the veracity of the Old Testament, only serve to bolster it. If the Old Testament were completely unique, then I would begin to get worried . . . As if the Jews or the Christians had the corner on the Truth market . . . sheeesh.]
So how can we claim that the Old Testament - and it alone from all the texts of that pre-Christian age - is divine communication from God to man?
[Because the Incarnate Christ and his apostles said it was.]
It's an interesting question, but it turns out to be small potatoes compared with the next problem that Enns, professor of Old Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary, sets before us: It seems as though the Old Testament was also puzzling for Matthew and Luke and Paul. In fact, from where we sit, it looks as though the apostles were lousy at exegesis.
[For the Ken Hams of the world, she is not saying that Paul was lousy at exegesis. She is claiming that what we call exegesis is not the proper method of interpreting Scripture, and she is using the examples of the apostles to bolster her case. The key words here are “from where we sit”. Where we sit is wrong according to Bauer.]
Enns gives us a number of startling New Testament passages that use the Old Testament by wrenching the original words violently out of context and even altering them. For example, Matthew 2 tells us with confidence that Jesus' trip down to Egypt as a boy (and his eventual return to Galilee) fulfilled Hosea 11:1, "Out of Egypt I called my son." But Hosea 11:1 is simply describing the Exodus; it is a passage, Enns points out, which "is not predictive of Christ's coming but retrospective of Israel's disobedience." In other words, Matthew is shamelessly proof-texting, in a way that would get any student enrolled in Practical Theology 221 (Expository Skills) sternly reproved.
Or consider Paul's use of Isaiah 59:20 in Romans 11, where he winds up an argument by announcing, "And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: 'The deliverer will come from Zion.' " But Isaiah says something quite different: "The Redeemer will come to Zion," he tells us.
[Matthew and Paul had every right to make these assertions. I speculate that they were merely passing on to the reader something the Christ and the Church had always taught, and/or they were interpreting the Scripture under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. In other words he had the authority to do so. You and I do not.]
Changing the words of Scripture to suit your own purposes? Paul wouldn't get past the first week of New Testament 123 (Hermeneutics) like that. He is breaking every rule of thoughtful evangelical scholarship, which holds that the proper way to approach inerrant Scripture is with careful grammatical-historical exegesis: painstaking analysis of each word of the Scripture and its relationship to other words, the setting of the sentence in the verse, the verse in the chapter, the chapter in the book, and the book in the historical times of its composition.
[It is this method of interpretation that Enns and Bauer have a problem with, and which Ham is seeking to defend in his own unique way. Of course Ham thinks that he is not defending his interpretation of Scripture but arrogantly, he believes that his interpretation is Scripture itself. Thus in his eyes he is merely defending Scripture. This is why he does not get the point.]
Of course Paul breaks those rules, Enns says; they are our rules, not Paul's.
[Absent authority to read Scriptures otherwise, they are cautious conservative rules which in general we should follow; however, we should never automatically assume that they are correct method to use in interpreting a passage.]
Inspiration and Incarnation offers us passages from such extrabiblical texts as the Wisdom of Solomon and the Book of Biblical Antiquities in order to show that, far from doing something extraordinary and super-apostolic, Paul and Matthew were doing exactly what most of their contemporaries did. Both apostles had been trained by the scholars of their day, the so-called "Second Temple" period, to come to a text looking for the "mystery" beneath the words: the deeper truth that an untrained reader might not see. Both of them came to the Old Testament already convinced that they knew what that mystery was: the incarnation, death, and resurrection of God in Jesus Christ.
[Both were under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, thus the difference in outsome between them and their contemporaries.]
Paul knows, by faith, that this truth underlies all of the Old Testament. He knows that it will be in Isaiah; he looks for it in the 59th chapter, and - as we might expect - he finds it. And if he has to change a preposition or two to make this "mystery" clear to the rest of us, he is not violating any sort of interpretive rule. His own principles of exegesis allow him to "read into the prophet's words," as Enns puts it, what he "already knew those words were really about."
[And how did he know what those words were about? Hmm . . . could it be . . . SATAN?]
This is the exactly the kind of exegesis that terrifies most evangelicals. The man who admits that meanings can be "read into" Scripture stands on the fabled slippery slope, right above a sheer drop-off, while below him churns a sea of relativism, upon which floats only a single overloaded lifeboat, captained by a radical feminist gay & lesbian & transgender activist who is very anxious to make the final decision about who gets pitched overboard.
[When an apostle does it I’m not particularly terrified. When someone else does this, I ask the question by whose authority do you interpret this passage? If they have no authority to do so, then I get worried . . . or I just dismiss them as kooks.]
Nevertheless, Enns is willing to plant his feet on the slope and stand there long enough to ask two disturbing questions.
[How very brave of him. He is willing to stand there long enough to ask his questions and then he dives right over the cliff.]
The first is this: Are we really saying that the apostles used an interpretive method that was not particularly inspired, and which in the hands of many Second Temple scholars led to enormous distortions of the original texts?
[The method used in the hands of the right person was absolutely inspired.]
And that this "mishandling" of the Old Testament produced, somehow, an inspired and trustworthy New Testament? Enns' answer to this is an unequivocal yes.
[For the Ken Ham’s of the world the scare quotes are there for a reason. She really doesn’t think that the apostles mishandled the Old Testament. She is saying that it is mishandled only if you assume that the above method is always correct one to use. Yippee! Enns believes that the New Testament is inspired and trustworthy, but Bauer doesn’t explain why.]
"This makes revelation somewhat messy," he writes, "but it would seem that God would not have it any other way.
[For the Ken Hams of the world, this statement is not stating the Scriptures are messy. They only appear to be messy from our perspective.”]
For the apostles to interpret the Old Testament in ways consistent with the hermeneutical expectations of the Second Temple world is analogous to Christ himself becoming a first-century Jew."
[Context is everything but Enns gets it wrong. The context for correct interpretation is the Church, not whatever culture you happen to live in. More on this later.]
In other words, the God who spoke to man through Christ also speaks to man through Scripture, and in much the same way: he enters into our world and uses our own cultural patterns to reveal himself.
[I don’t think I understand this, but then again I don’t have a PHD. God doesn’t use our own cultural patterns to reveal Himself. He reveals Himself through the Scripture within the context of the Church.]
We cannot insist that there is a separate, ahistorical, all-divine message in any part of the Bible that somehow triumphs over all contemporary thought and custom. This, Enns writes, is a modern version of the ancient Docetic heresy, which held that Christ only seemed human.
[No Susan this is relativism, and Enns just did a half twist somersault in the pike position. Is Enns really stating that unless we embrace that the Scriptures really don’t mean anything, we are in fact claiming the human element is only incidental? Last time I checked I don’t know of any person that believes that Bible fell from the sky, leather bound and gold embossed.]
"What some ancient Christians were saying about Christ," he writes, "is similar to the mistake that other Christians have made (and continue to make) about Scripture: it comes from God, and the marks of its humanity are only apparent, to be explained away."
[Yep that’s what he’s saying.]
Which leads Enns to the next disturbing question.
[Wait a minute. That was already two questions.]
If Paul and Matthew use Second Temple techniques to interpret the Old Testament, should we follow their example
[We individually have no authority to do so.]
- beginning with what we know to be true, and taking our interpretation from there?
[What exactly do we KNOW to be true? Hmmm . . . could it be . . . . EVOLUTION?]
This question gets a conditional yes: as long as we begin with the same central mystery as Paul and Matthew, the "reality of the crucified and risen Christ, [which is] both the beginning and the end of Christian biblical interpretation."
[But . . . but . . . I KNOW to be true that virgins do not give birth and dead men don’t raise to life and God doesn’t become man. Why do these things get a pass? One of the other central mysteries that Paul and Matthew began with was that Scripture (the Old Testament) was God breathed and useful for a whole lot of things, and they were completely wrong about that. Why should I trust them on this?]
This reality, not the method which we use to affirm it, should be at the center of our doctrine of inerrancy.
[I agree that Christ is the center of the doctrine, and that no method of interpretation is inerrant - contra to Ham.]
This means, unfortunately, that we cannot cling to the comforting notion that grammatical-historical exegesis is a kind of high road to truth.
[Sorry Ken, I agree with them on this; however, it is interpreting the Scripture in, by and through the Church is the high road to truth.]
Like the Second Temple exegesis of Paul and Matthew, it is a method - the method produced by our own time and place. Like the Second Temple exegesis, it can produce both truth and error. "Our own understanding of the Old Testament - and the gospel - has a contextual dimension,"
[Sorry Ken I agree here as well. Of course the context is not our own culture, but the Church universal. I didn’t realize that PHD’s could be so boneheaded.]
Enns writes. "As subjective as this sounds, it is nevertheless inescapable.
[Wait a minute I just escaped it . . . ]
If any of this is troublesome, it may be because we have not adequately grappled with the implications of God himself giving us Scripture in context."
[The only troublesome aspect is your erroneous conclusions that context means relativism.]
Well, of course it is going to be troublesome, and Enns, who knows the evangelical community well, is perfectly aware of it.
[Obviously he didn’t know it well enough to realize that this book was going to get him canned.]
But Inspiration and Incarnation makes clear that Scripture, like the Incarnation itself, is a scandal: like Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the wise. It takes ancient and unreal images, like the lion and the lamb together, and demands that we look back on them with faith in the resurrection of Christ. It claims, against all common sense, that this faith will transform the dead pictures into a living hope. It is loaded with problems and imperfections.
[Did she just say that the Scriptures were loaded with imperfections? My orthodox alarm is going off. . . . Unorthodox alert. . . . Unorthodox alert. Danger! Danger! I could forgive her for all the other crap, but that is in fact heretical. Maybe I misunderstood.]
And it is the Word of God, which means that we must engage in as much prayer as study of Hebrew vocabulary, as much faith as reading up on the history of the ancient world, as much charity (something remarkably lacking in most of the debates over how to read Scripture) as Greek grammar.
[Agreed but no one would disagree with this . . . that is except a strawman.]
It means that when an evangelical scholar like Enns - teaching in an evangelical seminary,
[Not anymore.]
a faithful member of his local church - writes, "There do not seem to be any clear rules or guidelines to prevent us from taking [the process of interpreting Scripture] too far,"
[Only if you completely disregard the Church and her creeds, which unfortunately is all too common for evangelicals. Without Her you are indeed set adrift.]
we must recognize this as an honest and truthful statement of the difficulties
[No difficulties just very bad epistemology.]
rather than an open door to chaos.
[Why wouldn’t this lead to theological chaos. Oh yeah, because of . . . .]
It means, in the end, that we must take incarnation seriously.
[pbbbbbt Whatever that means. For the Ken Hams of the world I’m not really questioning the incarnation. I’m saying that they can not account of nor define the incarnation by their own epistemology, nor explain why this exception has been carved out of their relativistic world.]
Do we know what we are saying when we stand in an American church on a Sunday morning in 2006 and recite, "He was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried"?
[Yep. That a real event happened in real time.]
This polished, grammatical, creedal acknowledgment, transmitted to us via centuries of church tradition, of liturgy and Advent custom and carols, of Bible-school illustration and triumphant hymnody, has scrubbed up and made deceptively commonplace the essential weirdness of God becoming man.
[I couldn’t agree more. Christ is all too familiar to us.]
I believe in the Incarnation, but then on the other hand I have never had to stand face-to-face with a grimy, troublemaking, blue-collar worker who claims to be God.
I do have to stand face-to-face with the Old Testament and its excessive, contradictory, harsh, alien texts.
[Did she just say contradictory? Beep . . . .beep . . . There it goes again.]
Enns encourages us to recognize the Old Testament for what it is: the anteroom of the Incarnation, the practice ground where we are brought nose-to-nose with the true difficulty of believing that God ever came to earth.
In Summary: There is no proper way to interpret Scripture, therefore the gloves are off and we can read it however we want to, except curiously that we must believe that Christ came, died, was buried and rose again, beyond that everything is relative. This cleaver attempt at epistemology does two important things. It gives us a sufficiently fuzzy view of Scripture so that we can hold our evolutionary views or whatever other contemporary views we want to hold, at the same time it allows us to avoid falling off the cliff into out right relativism regarding the person and work of Christ (al la liberal theology). It is also rot.
What’s funny at what lengths one will go to justify their beliefs.
What’s even funnier is that Ham seems to completely miss the point. He says this.
“Really—I believe the correct “review” of Enns’ book (which when understood does mean he has a different view of inspiration from that held by orthodox Christians down through the centuries including us at Answers in Genesis) can be summed up by Bible scholar Moises Silva:
If we refuse to pattern our exegesis after that of the apostles, we are in practice denying the authoritative character of their scriptural interpretation—and to do so is to strike at the very heart of the Christian faith.
– Silva, Moises. 1983. “The New Testament Use of The Old Testament: Text Form and Authority,” in D.A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge, eds. Scripture and Truth. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, p. 164.”
Um . . . Ken . . . The whole point of the exercise was that they wanted us to be able to interpret the Scriptures just like the apostles, except whole fact that they are not guided by the Holy Spirit thing.
A few weeks ago Ham began a war of words against Enns and Bauer over what he believes is a movement to undermine the Scripture. He “outed” Enns’s views on evolution to the homeschool community on the eve of the homeschool convention in Cincinnati, allegedly criticizing not only Enns, but also Bauer and the group that ran the convention for allowing Enns to participate. Ham was told he was no longer welcome at the convention where he was scheduled to speak. I’m not sure whether Enns or Bauer have made any statements on the controversy, but Ham is still on the offensive, this time clearly going after Bauer. I was able to track down a link to Bauer’s review in full. My comments are interspersed in hers via parenthesis.
Messy Revelation
Why Paul would have flunked hermeneutics.
[Note to the Ken Hams of the world, Bauer is not really saying that Paul was bad at hermeneutics, but that our modern hermeneutics are incorrect.]
by Susan Wise Bauer
Sometime this past year, I was reading Sumerian poetry (for work, not for pleasure) when I came across a 4,000-year-old epic describing the Sumerian paradise, a garden city free of evil and sickness where
the raven utters no cry
the lion kills not,
the wolf snatches not the lamb,
unknown is the kid-devouring wild dog.1
If this doesn't bring you up short, turn to Isaiah 11, where the prophet tells us that when the Messiah returns, the wolf will live with the lamb, the lion will eat straw like the ox, and that the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. The words in which Isaiah describes the great hope of the believer, the words that inform John's own vision of the new heavens and earth: those words don't seem to have originated with, well, with God.
This is the opening dilemma of Peter Enns' Inspiration and Incarnation: Evangelicals and the Problem of the Old Testament. The uniqueness of the Old Testament as a piece of literature has been seriously dented by the discovery of more and more ancient texts that predate (and anticipate) biblical forms. Creation story, flood story, prophecy, proverb: all of these were in use in Mesopotamia long before the first biblical book was penned.
[The things written in the Old Testament are true. They are truths that everyone on earth at one time knew. They were stories told to each succeeding generation. They are yearnings that whisper in the heart of every person ever born. Why shouldn’t we expect those truths, those yearnings to echo, if only faintly and corrupted, in other cultures even prior to the time they were written down in the Old Testament? These facts far from causing me to doubt the veracity of the Old Testament, only serve to bolster it. If the Old Testament were completely unique, then I would begin to get worried . . . As if the Jews or the Christians had the corner on the Truth market . . . sheeesh.]
So how can we claim that the Old Testament - and it alone from all the texts of that pre-Christian age - is divine communication from God to man?
[Because the Incarnate Christ and his apostles said it was.]
It's an interesting question, but it turns out to be small potatoes compared with the next problem that Enns, professor of Old Testament at Westminster Theological Seminary, sets before us: It seems as though the Old Testament was also puzzling for Matthew and Luke and Paul. In fact, from where we sit, it looks as though the apostles were lousy at exegesis.
[For the Ken Hams of the world, she is not saying that Paul was lousy at exegesis. She is claiming that what we call exegesis is not the proper method of interpreting Scripture, and she is using the examples of the apostles to bolster her case. The key words here are “from where we sit”. Where we sit is wrong according to Bauer.]
Enns gives us a number of startling New Testament passages that use the Old Testament by wrenching the original words violently out of context and even altering them. For example, Matthew 2 tells us with confidence that Jesus' trip down to Egypt as a boy (and his eventual return to Galilee) fulfilled Hosea 11:1, "Out of Egypt I called my son." But Hosea 11:1 is simply describing the Exodus; it is a passage, Enns points out, which "is not predictive of Christ's coming but retrospective of Israel's disobedience." In other words, Matthew is shamelessly proof-texting, in a way that would get any student enrolled in Practical Theology 221 (Expository Skills) sternly reproved.
Or consider Paul's use of Isaiah 59:20 in Romans 11, where he winds up an argument by announcing, "And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: 'The deliverer will come from Zion.' " But Isaiah says something quite different: "The Redeemer will come to Zion," he tells us.
[Matthew and Paul had every right to make these assertions. I speculate that they were merely passing on to the reader something the Christ and the Church had always taught, and/or they were interpreting the Scripture under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. In other words he had the authority to do so. You and I do not.]
Changing the words of Scripture to suit your own purposes? Paul wouldn't get past the first week of New Testament 123 (Hermeneutics) like that. He is breaking every rule of thoughtful evangelical scholarship, which holds that the proper way to approach inerrant Scripture is with careful grammatical-historical exegesis: painstaking analysis of each word of the Scripture and its relationship to other words, the setting of the sentence in the verse, the verse in the chapter, the chapter in the book, and the book in the historical times of its composition.
[It is this method of interpretation that Enns and Bauer have a problem with, and which Ham is seeking to defend in his own unique way. Of course Ham thinks that he is not defending his interpretation of Scripture but arrogantly, he believes that his interpretation is Scripture itself. Thus in his eyes he is merely defending Scripture. This is why he does not get the point.]
Of course Paul breaks those rules, Enns says; they are our rules, not Paul's.
[Absent authority to read Scriptures otherwise, they are cautious conservative rules which in general we should follow; however, we should never automatically assume that they are correct method to use in interpreting a passage.]
Inspiration and Incarnation offers us passages from such extrabiblical texts as the Wisdom of Solomon and the Book of Biblical Antiquities in order to show that, far from doing something extraordinary and super-apostolic, Paul and Matthew were doing exactly what most of their contemporaries did. Both apostles had been trained by the scholars of their day, the so-called "Second Temple" period, to come to a text looking for the "mystery" beneath the words: the deeper truth that an untrained reader might not see. Both of them came to the Old Testament already convinced that they knew what that mystery was: the incarnation, death, and resurrection of God in Jesus Christ.
[Both were under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, thus the difference in outsome between them and their contemporaries.]
Paul knows, by faith, that this truth underlies all of the Old Testament. He knows that it will be in Isaiah; he looks for it in the 59th chapter, and - as we might expect - he finds it. And if he has to change a preposition or two to make this "mystery" clear to the rest of us, he is not violating any sort of interpretive rule. His own principles of exegesis allow him to "read into the prophet's words," as Enns puts it, what he "already knew those words were really about."
[And how did he know what those words were about? Hmm . . . could it be . . . SATAN?]
This is the exactly the kind of exegesis that terrifies most evangelicals. The man who admits that meanings can be "read into" Scripture stands on the fabled slippery slope, right above a sheer drop-off, while below him churns a sea of relativism, upon which floats only a single overloaded lifeboat, captained by a radical feminist gay & lesbian & transgender activist who is very anxious to make the final decision about who gets pitched overboard.
[When an apostle does it I’m not particularly terrified. When someone else does this, I ask the question by whose authority do you interpret this passage? If they have no authority to do so, then I get worried . . . or I just dismiss them as kooks.]
Nevertheless, Enns is willing to plant his feet on the slope and stand there long enough to ask two disturbing questions.
[How very brave of him. He is willing to stand there long enough to ask his questions and then he dives right over the cliff.]
The first is this: Are we really saying that the apostles used an interpretive method that was not particularly inspired, and which in the hands of many Second Temple scholars led to enormous distortions of the original texts?
[The method used in the hands of the right person was absolutely inspired.]
And that this "mishandling" of the Old Testament produced, somehow, an inspired and trustworthy New Testament? Enns' answer to this is an unequivocal yes.
[For the Ken Ham’s of the world the scare quotes are there for a reason. She really doesn’t think that the apostles mishandled the Old Testament. She is saying that it is mishandled only if you assume that the above method is always correct one to use. Yippee! Enns believes that the New Testament is inspired and trustworthy, but Bauer doesn’t explain why.]
"This makes revelation somewhat messy," he writes, "but it would seem that God would not have it any other way.
[For the Ken Hams of the world, this statement is not stating the Scriptures are messy. They only appear to be messy from our perspective.”]
For the apostles to interpret the Old Testament in ways consistent with the hermeneutical expectations of the Second Temple world is analogous to Christ himself becoming a first-century Jew."
[Context is everything but Enns gets it wrong. The context for correct interpretation is the Church, not whatever culture you happen to live in. More on this later.]
In other words, the God who spoke to man through Christ also speaks to man through Scripture, and in much the same way: he enters into our world and uses our own cultural patterns to reveal himself.
[I don’t think I understand this, but then again I don’t have a PHD. God doesn’t use our own cultural patterns to reveal Himself. He reveals Himself through the Scripture within the context of the Church.]
We cannot insist that there is a separate, ahistorical, all-divine message in any part of the Bible that somehow triumphs over all contemporary thought and custom. This, Enns writes, is a modern version of the ancient Docetic heresy, which held that Christ only seemed human.
[No Susan this is relativism, and Enns just did a half twist somersault in the pike position. Is Enns really stating that unless we embrace that the Scriptures really don’t mean anything, we are in fact claiming the human element is only incidental? Last time I checked I don’t know of any person that believes that Bible fell from the sky, leather bound and gold embossed.]
"What some ancient Christians were saying about Christ," he writes, "is similar to the mistake that other Christians have made (and continue to make) about Scripture: it comes from God, and the marks of its humanity are only apparent, to be explained away."
[Yep that’s what he’s saying.]
Which leads Enns to the next disturbing question.
[Wait a minute. That was already two questions.]
If Paul and Matthew use Second Temple techniques to interpret the Old Testament, should we follow their example
[We individually have no authority to do so.]
- beginning with what we know to be true, and taking our interpretation from there?
[What exactly do we KNOW to be true? Hmmm . . . could it be . . . . EVOLUTION?]
This question gets a conditional yes: as long as we begin with the same central mystery as Paul and Matthew, the "reality of the crucified and risen Christ, [which is] both the beginning and the end of Christian biblical interpretation."
[But . . . but . . . I KNOW to be true that virgins do not give birth and dead men don’t raise to life and God doesn’t become man. Why do these things get a pass? One of the other central mysteries that Paul and Matthew began with was that Scripture (the Old Testament) was God breathed and useful for a whole lot of things, and they were completely wrong about that. Why should I trust them on this?]
This reality, not the method which we use to affirm it, should be at the center of our doctrine of inerrancy.
[I agree that Christ is the center of the doctrine, and that no method of interpretation is inerrant - contra to Ham.]
This means, unfortunately, that we cannot cling to the comforting notion that grammatical-historical exegesis is a kind of high road to truth.
[Sorry Ken, I agree with them on this; however, it is interpreting the Scripture in, by and through the Church is the high road to truth.]
Like the Second Temple exegesis of Paul and Matthew, it is a method - the method produced by our own time and place. Like the Second Temple exegesis, it can produce both truth and error. "Our own understanding of the Old Testament - and the gospel - has a contextual dimension,"
[Sorry Ken I agree here as well. Of course the context is not our own culture, but the Church universal. I didn’t realize that PHD’s could be so boneheaded.]
Enns writes. "As subjective as this sounds, it is nevertheless inescapable.
[Wait a minute I just escaped it . . . ]
If any of this is troublesome, it may be because we have not adequately grappled with the implications of God himself giving us Scripture in context."
[The only troublesome aspect is your erroneous conclusions that context means relativism.]
Well, of course it is going to be troublesome, and Enns, who knows the evangelical community well, is perfectly aware of it.
[Obviously he didn’t know it well enough to realize that this book was going to get him canned.]
But Inspiration and Incarnation makes clear that Scripture, like the Incarnation itself, is a scandal: like Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the wise. It takes ancient and unreal images, like the lion and the lamb together, and demands that we look back on them with faith in the resurrection of Christ. It claims, against all common sense, that this faith will transform the dead pictures into a living hope. It is loaded with problems and imperfections.
[Did she just say that the Scriptures were loaded with imperfections? My orthodox alarm is going off. . . . Unorthodox alert. . . . Unorthodox alert. Danger! Danger! I could forgive her for all the other crap, but that is in fact heretical. Maybe I misunderstood.]
And it is the Word of God, which means that we must engage in as much prayer as study of Hebrew vocabulary, as much faith as reading up on the history of the ancient world, as much charity (something remarkably lacking in most of the debates over how to read Scripture) as Greek grammar.
[Agreed but no one would disagree with this . . . that is except a strawman.]
It means that when an evangelical scholar like Enns - teaching in an evangelical seminary,
[Not anymore.]
a faithful member of his local church - writes, "There do not seem to be any clear rules or guidelines to prevent us from taking [the process of interpreting Scripture] too far,"
[Only if you completely disregard the Church and her creeds, which unfortunately is all too common for evangelicals. Without Her you are indeed set adrift.]
we must recognize this as an honest and truthful statement of the difficulties
[No difficulties just very bad epistemology.]
rather than an open door to chaos.
[Why wouldn’t this lead to theological chaos. Oh yeah, because of . . . .]
It means, in the end, that we must take incarnation seriously.
[pbbbbbt Whatever that means. For the Ken Hams of the world I’m not really questioning the incarnation. I’m saying that they can not account of nor define the incarnation by their own epistemology, nor explain why this exception has been carved out of their relativistic world.]
Do we know what we are saying when we stand in an American church on a Sunday morning in 2006 and recite, "He was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried"?
[Yep. That a real event happened in real time.]
This polished, grammatical, creedal acknowledgment, transmitted to us via centuries of church tradition, of liturgy and Advent custom and carols, of Bible-school illustration and triumphant hymnody, has scrubbed up and made deceptively commonplace the essential weirdness of God becoming man.
[I couldn’t agree more. Christ is all too familiar to us.]
I believe in the Incarnation, but then on the other hand I have never had to stand face-to-face with a grimy, troublemaking, blue-collar worker who claims to be God.
I do have to stand face-to-face with the Old Testament and its excessive, contradictory, harsh, alien texts.
[Did she just say contradictory? Beep . . . .beep . . . There it goes again.]
Enns encourages us to recognize the Old Testament for what it is: the anteroom of the Incarnation, the practice ground where we are brought nose-to-nose with the true difficulty of believing that God ever came to earth.
In Summary: There is no proper way to interpret Scripture, therefore the gloves are off and we can read it however we want to, except curiously that we must believe that Christ came, died, was buried and rose again, beyond that everything is relative. This cleaver attempt at epistemology does two important things. It gives us a sufficiently fuzzy view of Scripture so that we can hold our evolutionary views or whatever other contemporary views we want to hold, at the same time it allows us to avoid falling off the cliff into out right relativism regarding the person and work of Christ (al la liberal theology). It is also rot.
What’s funny at what lengths one will go to justify their beliefs.
What’s even funnier is that Ham seems to completely miss the point. He says this.
“Really—I believe the correct “review” of Enns’ book (which when understood does mean he has a different view of inspiration from that held by orthodox Christians down through the centuries including us at Answers in Genesis) can be summed up by Bible scholar Moises Silva:
If we refuse to pattern our exegesis after that of the apostles, we are in practice denying the authoritative character of their scriptural interpretation—and to do so is to strike at the very heart of the Christian faith.
– Silva, Moises. 1983. “The New Testament Use of The Old Testament: Text Form and Authority,” in D.A. Carson and John D. Woodbridge, eds. Scripture and Truth. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, p. 164.”
Um . . . Ken . . . The whole point of the exercise was that they wanted us to be able to interpret the Scriptures just like the apostles, except whole fact that they are not guided by the Holy Spirit thing.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Origins – The debate and beyond the debate
What follows is my take on this subject.
1. The study of Origins is not a hard science like say physics or chemistry, where one can conduct an experiment and determine fairly accurately whether a hypothesis is true or false. It like all other soft sciences (e.g. physiology and sociology) gathers a set of data and then attempts to piece together the puzzle. It therefore entails a certain amount of presuppositions, guesswork, conjecture and circumstantial evidence and combines them into a theory that can not by its very nature be tested. This leads to ambiguity.
2. There are usually three types of people involved in this debate:
a. The people who are the strongest advocates of a particular view, most often have an agenda that has nothing to do with the science involved. They are attempting to either bolster their own epistemology or tear down their opponent’s epistemology. The Creationists are advocates of a literal view of Scripture. Most Evolutionists are advocates of materialism. Each views the other side’s position as an attack on their deeply held beliefs. In their quest to justify themselves, they are more than willing to manipulate the data to their own ends, by either overstating their case, creating strawmen of the other side or downplaying or denying their own weaknesses. Unfortunately this is just as true of Christians as it is of non-Christians. Equally unfortunate is the fact that each side as so demonized the other that we have created barriers for any real give and take. It is like a courtroom where one side is bared from presenting its case before the jury. And both sides do this!
b. The real people in the know, the actual scientist, rarely have intimate knowledge the entire picture. They are too busy working on their own little piece of the puzzle, and leave it to the advocates of their particular side to put it all together, which they believe without question.
c. Laymen like me and most likely you, who know almost nothing about the science behind the issues and are usually the first people to argue about this. When we do this we are arguing from complete ignorance. Laymen include people who have read a few books or websites from the advocates above and think they actually “know” something about the subject, when in fact they know next to nothing. Sorry but studying the subject as a living everyday and reading a few books here and there do not equate.
3. This is more of an epistemic battle than a real search for truth.
4. Due to the facts above I have concluded that the entire subject is a morass of goobly goop and it would be extremely difficult to figure out what is and is not true. Therefore I am a functioning agnostic when it comes to origins. I quite simple don’t know. Not that I don’t care. I find the subject extremely fascinating.
Before I move on I want to clearly state that I believe there is a God, who is the tri-personal God described in Holy Scriptures and preached by the Church, and He has created the heavens and the earth. See my earlier posts for why I believe this.
I think everyone, both Christian and atheist, both creationist and evolutionist can agree that given an omnipotent God, by definition, He can create the heavens and the earth through any method He deems fit. So if it is as simple as that, why do we Christians get so hung up on the subject? And how can I as a Christian just simply walk away from the fight, when most other Christians claim that to do so is to undermine the Faith?
As always it has something to do with a difference in our respective epistemologies, our theories of knowledge.
To be continued . . .
1. The study of Origins is not a hard science like say physics or chemistry, where one can conduct an experiment and determine fairly accurately whether a hypothesis is true or false. It like all other soft sciences (e.g. physiology and sociology) gathers a set of data and then attempts to piece together the puzzle. It therefore entails a certain amount of presuppositions, guesswork, conjecture and circumstantial evidence and combines them into a theory that can not by its very nature be tested. This leads to ambiguity.
2. There are usually three types of people involved in this debate:
a. The people who are the strongest advocates of a particular view, most often have an agenda that has nothing to do with the science involved. They are attempting to either bolster their own epistemology or tear down their opponent’s epistemology. The Creationists are advocates of a literal view of Scripture. Most Evolutionists are advocates of materialism. Each views the other side’s position as an attack on their deeply held beliefs. In their quest to justify themselves, they are more than willing to manipulate the data to their own ends, by either overstating their case, creating strawmen of the other side or downplaying or denying their own weaknesses. Unfortunately this is just as true of Christians as it is of non-Christians. Equally unfortunate is the fact that each side as so demonized the other that we have created barriers for any real give and take. It is like a courtroom where one side is bared from presenting its case before the jury. And both sides do this!
b. The real people in the know, the actual scientist, rarely have intimate knowledge the entire picture. They are too busy working on their own little piece of the puzzle, and leave it to the advocates of their particular side to put it all together, which they believe without question.
c. Laymen like me and most likely you, who know almost nothing about the science behind the issues and are usually the first people to argue about this. When we do this we are arguing from complete ignorance. Laymen include people who have read a few books or websites from the advocates above and think they actually “know” something about the subject, when in fact they know next to nothing. Sorry but studying the subject as a living everyday and reading a few books here and there do not equate.
3. This is more of an epistemic battle than a real search for truth.
4. Due to the facts above I have concluded that the entire subject is a morass of goobly goop and it would be extremely difficult to figure out what is and is not true. Therefore I am a functioning agnostic when it comes to origins. I quite simple don’t know. Not that I don’t care. I find the subject extremely fascinating.
Before I move on I want to clearly state that I believe there is a God, who is the tri-personal God described in Holy Scriptures and preached by the Church, and He has created the heavens and the earth. See my earlier posts for why I believe this.
I think everyone, both Christian and atheist, both creationist and evolutionist can agree that given an omnipotent God, by definition, He can create the heavens and the earth through any method He deems fit. So if it is as simple as that, why do we Christians get so hung up on the subject? And how can I as a Christian just simply walk away from the fight, when most other Christians claim that to do so is to undermine the Faith?
As always it has something to do with a difference in our respective epistemologies, our theories of knowledge.
To be continued . . .
Saturday, March 19, 2011
On the use of Systematic Theology
First of all what is systematic theology? Theology is the study of God and His interactions with man. (Along with philosophy (to which it is a close cousin) it used to be called the queen of the sciences not more than a hundred years ago. Theology a science you say? It was the queen of the sciences because without it one could not come to the conclusion of a rational universe in which to study. It was the foundation upon which all the other sciences rest, and why science as we know it could have only arisen from Christendom. But I digress - All of this is a post for another time perhaps.) So systematic theology is a way to systematize or order our knowledge of God in a way that makes rational and logical sense. If you look very closely at my writings you will find that I love order and step by step progression, (One of the reasons why I loved geometry in school.) it’s in my blood, and as a lawyer I was further trained to think this way. So what I am about to say as painful as it is for me to say it, is never the less true.
Our systematic theology no matter how closely we believe it is aligned with Scripture and the Faith is not reality. It may in some small way represent reality, it may dimly approximate reality, but it itself is not reality. It is a tool to vaguely describe the white shores and beyond, that far green country under a swift sunrise. ( I knew that if I tried hard enough that I could get a LOTR reference in here somewhere.) We here in this life see as through a glass but darkly. We can not comprehend the things of God for His ways are far above our ways and His thoughts are far above our thoughts. We should never lose sight of this, as it is a check against our pride. Even the Holy Scriptures are but lisping baby talk from God to His children that are too ignorant, small and weak to even begin to understand all that He is. It is like trying to put together a 100 piece puzzle when you only have ten puzzle pieces. It is fine if you keep your system in perspective, and it does help to more fully understand the things of God, but unfortunately many times the system takes on a life of its own and one begins to assume that those ten piece is the entire puzzle. However, as with all systematic theologies it will break down somewhere, as it is a poor tool at best.
Or to put it in yet another way, we live in a two dimensional world and our systematic theology is a two dimensional tool set to describe a three dimensional object. It is a tool that will describe a ball as a circle, but of course you and I know that a ball isn’t a circle. It is like a circle . . . but not really.
The problem arises when people insist that the circle is the ball, or when we emphasis our understanding of one aspect of God or His dealing with people at the expense of minimizing another aspect. What I am saying is not anti-intellectualism (I believe that we should use what God has given us to the fullest). No, it is the height of intellectualism to realize the limits of the intellect.
Look if God thought that the best way in which to learn about Him and His ways was through systematic theology then He would have given us a systematic theology textbook, and I hate to break the news to everyone, but the Scriptures are not a systematic theology textbook. So stop forcing that square peg into that round hole.
I love Reformed guys, because most of them are logical deep thinkers and they are passionate about the things of God. They have thought about all this theology stuff and generally have some pretty good answers. They have little diagrams for anything and everything that has anything to do with the Faith, but I get turned off when they insist (and they do) that their diagrams are The True Answer. I get turned off because at best their diagrams are a fuzzy approximation of The True Answer, and unfortunately a lot of times their diagrams are down right goobly-goop, because they haven’t come to grips with that reality and their pride has thrown everything off.
Our systematic theology no matter how closely we believe it is aligned with Scripture and the Faith is not reality. It may in some small way represent reality, it may dimly approximate reality, but it itself is not reality. It is a tool to vaguely describe the white shores and beyond, that far green country under a swift sunrise. ( I knew that if I tried hard enough that I could get a LOTR reference in here somewhere.) We here in this life see as through a glass but darkly. We can not comprehend the things of God for His ways are far above our ways and His thoughts are far above our thoughts. We should never lose sight of this, as it is a check against our pride. Even the Holy Scriptures are but lisping baby talk from God to His children that are too ignorant, small and weak to even begin to understand all that He is. It is like trying to put together a 100 piece puzzle when you only have ten puzzle pieces. It is fine if you keep your system in perspective, and it does help to more fully understand the things of God, but unfortunately many times the system takes on a life of its own and one begins to assume that those ten piece is the entire puzzle. However, as with all systematic theologies it will break down somewhere, as it is a poor tool at best.
Or to put it in yet another way, we live in a two dimensional world and our systematic theology is a two dimensional tool set to describe a three dimensional object. It is a tool that will describe a ball as a circle, but of course you and I know that a ball isn’t a circle. It is like a circle . . . but not really.
The problem arises when people insist that the circle is the ball, or when we emphasis our understanding of one aspect of God or His dealing with people at the expense of minimizing another aspect. What I am saying is not anti-intellectualism (I believe that we should use what God has given us to the fullest). No, it is the height of intellectualism to realize the limits of the intellect.
Look if God thought that the best way in which to learn about Him and His ways was through systematic theology then He would have given us a systematic theology textbook, and I hate to break the news to everyone, but the Scriptures are not a systematic theology textbook. So stop forcing that square peg into that round hole.
I love Reformed guys, because most of them are logical deep thinkers and they are passionate about the things of God. They have thought about all this theology stuff and generally have some pretty good answers. They have little diagrams for anything and everything that has anything to do with the Faith, but I get turned off when they insist (and they do) that their diagrams are The True Answer. I get turned off because at best their diagrams are a fuzzy approximation of The True Answer, and unfortunately a lot of times their diagrams are down right goobly-goop, because they haven’t come to grips with that reality and their pride has thrown everything off.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
THE PROCREATIVE ROAD LESS TRAVELED – THE EXCEPTION THAT BECOMES THE RULE
It was interesting that I started writing this series and lo and behold Doug Wilson posts this. I want to take a moment to critique Wilson here on this subject. Now I want to say that I highly respect Wilson, and will be the first to admit that I am not worthy to hold Wilson’s intellectual jockstrap as it were. He is a clear thinker amidst a morass of muddled theology and philosophy, and he is not afraid to pursue the truth and change his opinion as a result of that pursuit no matter what the cost. And I agree with most of this article; however, I do have a few quibbles.
There is this argument in some circles that says children are indeed a blessing, and a couple should have as many children as God blesses them with, but only as long as they can raise those children well. Wilson falls into this line of thinking for reasons I will not go into here at this time. I think that this is a cop out, and an exception that can very quickly swallow the rule.
I apologize for the structure of this, but I am a contracts attorney (among other things) and that is how I have been trained. :(
1. Scripture says that children are a blessing and a gift from God - period. There is no caveat to the various statements made in Scripture that say anything about the ability to raise a child well as a litmus test for having more children.
2. God never gives us more than we can handle at the time. A trial is never placed upon us to destroy us, how much more so one of his blessings. He has created us and knows exactly what we can and cannot handle. He may well bring us to the breaking point and He may give us well more than we ever thought we could handle, but His grace is sufficient for us. If we fail in anything that He has given us be it trials or blessings it is never due to our ability, for our ability is directly tied to His ability, but only due to our stubborn refusal to obey Him and His principals. Therefore OBEY HIM and you will handle what He gives you.
3. He brings trials and blessings into our lives to stretch and grow us into the people He wants us to be, this is part of the blessing of children. One refuses this stretching, this sanctification, to one’s determent.
4. The Scriptures do say that children can be a curse to their parents if they are not raised well.
5. This is placed in Scripture not to warn us about having more children than we can handle, for we can handle as many children as God gives us, but to warn that it is our obligation to in fact raise our children well. In other words Proverbs 10:5 is not a warning to parents of the risk of having too many. It is an injunction to parents to do their job.
6. A well raised child should never be defined in terms of the financial costs.
(a) We live in a materialistic culture, and it is difficult for us to view things from God’s perspective. What we really need and what we think we need are two completely different things. God owns the cattle on a thousand hills and He has promised that the children of the righteous will never go hungry. The thought should never be, I know I can’t be righteous so I should only have X kids. No the biblical injunction is to BE RIGHTEOUS! Or be as righteous as it takes to raise the children that God gives you.
(b) To raise a child well is to teach them the faith and build character in their lives. These things cost nothing monetarily. Children do not need the latest gadgets and gizmos. They do not need to live in a McMansion. They don’t need the latest fashions. They do not even need to go to college (Which is a complete scam, but that’s another post.). They definitely don’t need to go to the latest and greatest classically educated private school. Contrary to what a lot of people think, none of these things are essential. Now God knows what you need and He will provide those things to you and for any child He gives you. Consider the lilies of the field . . .
7. The problem is that with all the pressures of our lives, if we allow ourselves this false exception, we will be tempted to take our eyes off of Christ and we will begin to see the storm and all the waves, and the exception will become our excuse and then quickly will become the rule, for it’s in our nature to desire to run when God wants to stretch us.
To be continued . . .
There is this argument in some circles that says children are indeed a blessing, and a couple should have as many children as God blesses them with, but only as long as they can raise those children well. Wilson falls into this line of thinking for reasons I will not go into here at this time. I think that this is a cop out, and an exception that can very quickly swallow the rule.
I apologize for the structure of this, but I am a contracts attorney (among other things) and that is how I have been trained. :(
1. Scripture says that children are a blessing and a gift from God - period. There is no caveat to the various statements made in Scripture that say anything about the ability to raise a child well as a litmus test for having more children.
2. God never gives us more than we can handle at the time. A trial is never placed upon us to destroy us, how much more so one of his blessings. He has created us and knows exactly what we can and cannot handle. He may well bring us to the breaking point and He may give us well more than we ever thought we could handle, but His grace is sufficient for us. If we fail in anything that He has given us be it trials or blessings it is never due to our ability, for our ability is directly tied to His ability, but only due to our stubborn refusal to obey Him and His principals. Therefore OBEY HIM and you will handle what He gives you.
3. He brings trials and blessings into our lives to stretch and grow us into the people He wants us to be, this is part of the blessing of children. One refuses this stretching, this sanctification, to one’s determent.
4. The Scriptures do say that children can be a curse to their parents if they are not raised well.
5. This is placed in Scripture not to warn us about having more children than we can handle, for we can handle as many children as God gives us, but to warn that it is our obligation to in fact raise our children well. In other words Proverbs 10:5 is not a warning to parents of the risk of having too many. It is an injunction to parents to do their job.
6. A well raised child should never be defined in terms of the financial costs.
(a) We live in a materialistic culture, and it is difficult for us to view things from God’s perspective. What we really need and what we think we need are two completely different things. God owns the cattle on a thousand hills and He has promised that the children of the righteous will never go hungry. The thought should never be, I know I can’t be righteous so I should only have X kids. No the biblical injunction is to BE RIGHTEOUS! Or be as righteous as it takes to raise the children that God gives you.
(b) To raise a child well is to teach them the faith and build character in their lives. These things cost nothing monetarily. Children do not need the latest gadgets and gizmos. They do not need to live in a McMansion. They don’t need the latest fashions. They do not even need to go to college (Which is a complete scam, but that’s another post.). They definitely don’t need to go to the latest and greatest classically educated private school. Contrary to what a lot of people think, none of these things are essential. Now God knows what you need and He will provide those things to you and for any child He gives you. Consider the lilies of the field . . .
7. The problem is that with all the pressures of our lives, if we allow ourselves this false exception, we will be tempted to take our eyes off of Christ and we will begin to see the storm and all the waves, and the exception will become our excuse and then quickly will become the rule, for it’s in our nature to desire to run when God wants to stretch us.
To be continued . . .
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