This is the exact conclusion I have reached as well, after years of studying Genesis.
Over the last few years I have to say that I have become less than convinced that the Bible intends, anywhere, to portray the origin of sin. We don’t know why, for example, the snake is in the garden trying to corrupt Eve and thus Adam also. Rebellion began before Adam. That sin enters the human line with an original pair simply doesn’t seem to be the point in either the Old or New Testaments. On the other hand, the Bible clearly portrays the universal impact of sin and the places the blame firmly on mankind as a species, as communities, and as individuals. Rebellion is the point. We are formed to need God, to be in fellowship with God. But this relationship, like our other relationships, is broken. Broken by us, not by God. Broken time and time again.
Jesus was a real human being, which means he grew Spirit-ually by learning to be open to the Spirit. I know busloads of Christians who deny this was true of Jesus. Other Christians would like it not to be true, so they choose to avoid the truth. Most of us, however, would prefer to not explicitly deny a plain reading of the Gospels. So I’ll say it again: Jesus was human and because Jesus was a human, he needed to be empowered from day one with and by the Holy Spirit. If this is true— and I am about to show how this is found in the Bible— then it is true that you and I need the Holy Spirit. Even more so.
• p. 23
How did Jesus accomplish the things he did during his ministry?
I think a lot of people imagine that Jesus was like some sort of Marvel superhero, the “king” of the superheroes perhaps, who had every power at his disposal because of his divine nature. Perhaps Jesus was somehow “super-human” and the signs and wonders he performed and the powerful teaching he gave emanated naturally from him because, ontologically speaking, he walked a few inches above the ground and had within him a storehouse of divine wisdom and power. You know, he’s the One with the halo in all the pictures.
It is often harder for people to come to grips with the humanity of Jesus than it is for them to accept his divinity. They can’t conceive of him having limits, needing to learn, not knowing or comprehending everything, being surprised by things that happen, being caught unaware or not in control at any and every moment.
However, as Scot McKnight reminds us, Peter described Jesus in a particular way that helps us understand him better:
You know… how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and how he went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him.
• Acts 10:36-38
As Scot concludes, “Jesus’s kingdom powers were at work in him because he was wide open to the Holy Spirit” (p. 24).
A close look at the Gospel of Luke will reveal that this is a distinctive emphasis of Lukan theology.
In the Gospel, Jesus announced his mission by quoting these words from Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18).
In the Book of Acts, it is the coming of the Spirit that ignites the church to participate in the same mission, on a worldwide scale: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
Throughout the Gospel of Luke, we see a distinct emphasis on the Spirit filling Jesus’ life and ministry.
Even before Jesus’ birth, Luke portrays” the days leading up to Jesus’s appearance on earth as a special unleashing of the Holy Spirit on the principal people in the story: Elizabeth and Zechariah, Mary and Joseph, Simeon and Anna, and most especially John the Baptist and Jesus” (p. 33).
At Jesus’ baptism, the Spirit descended upon him.
The Spirit drove him into the wilderness to be tempted and enabled him to withstand the devil.
He announced himself as the one that the Spirit-anointed for God’s mission (see above).
Scot summarizes the import of this for our lives well.
Jesus was the Spirit-filled human among humans. Was he different from us? Not in his need for and dependence on the Spirit, except that he was always wide open and we are not. I agree with Gerald Hawthorne when he wrote that Jesus “needed the Spirit’s power to lift him out of his human restrictions, to carry him beyond his human limitations, and to enable him to do the seeming impossible.” With Jesus, a new age has begun: the Age of the Spirit. If Jesus could do his ministry only by the power of the Spirit, and if special but ordinary humans such as Elizabeth and Mary and Simeon could do their ministries only by the power of the Spirit, then you and I especially need to be more and more open to the Spirit.
Scarcely has a winter departed since childhood that I haven’t journeyed in my soul to Shiloh, that military park along the Tennessee River where, on April sixth and seventh of 1862, roughly one hundred thousand soldiers engaged in a bloody conflict that claimed nearly a quarter of them as casualties. Each April I am again an eleven-year-old boy transfixed by the vernal landscape, transmuted by the history of great horror.
…How hard it is to know the harrowing hell of war. To really feel with those who fight and kill, who carry lasting scars and live from day to month, from year to decade, in the midst of fear, death, and rubble. Our American battlefields are from more than a century ago. They look so serene and bear no brutal witness. Since all successive conflicts have been fought on foreign soil, we cannot imagine the devastation that is wrought, let alone begin to empathize with those who struggle to live under the steady barrage of bursting bombs and in the dismal aftermath. September Eleventh was but a taste.
…When I return in my mind’s eye to Shiloh, I think what a bitter contradiction it is that a place whose name derives from the Hebrew word for peace should become synonymous with slaughter. In Israel’s ancient history, Shiloh was a place pointing back – and forward – to the Promised One who would bring “the gathering of the people” (Genesis 49:10). After the sanctuary which for three centuries housed the ark of God’s presence was destroyed, Shiloh became a barren waste longing for the reversal of spring. Surveying this Shiloh and our own, like Ezekiel I can see, however faintly, the stirring of bones rising up, flesh being graciously restored, and God’s own breath animating life once more.
• • •
DEAL OF THE DAY
Get your summit coin! We’ve slashed prices just in time for Memorial Day! Get your summit coin here today! Presidents Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un face to face, perhaps for the only time ever! This is a keepsake you don’t wanna miss, folks! Get your 2018 summit coin today for the special price of $19.95!
From NBC News:
A commemorative medallion marking the now-canceled summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is drawing ridicule, but one famous coin buyer says the diplomatic setback could help collectors cash in.
Rick Harrison, producer and star of the History Channel’s “Pawn Stars,” says the no-denomination U.S. coin has two things going for it: the president himself, whose profile is featured on the item, and the specter of a once chummy Trump and Kim parting faster than a fool and his money.
The medallions — which are not technically coins because they have no denomination, numismatists say — are issued by the White House Communications Agency, a military unit assigned to the president. Shortly after Trump canceled the summit on Thursday, the White House gift shop cut the price of the medallions from $24.95 to $19.95. The website had so much traffic Thursday morning that it crashed.
“I almost guarantee they will sell out of them,” Harrison, co-owner of the Gold and Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas, said Thursday. “Anything Trump sells.”
• • •
BYE BYE WARREN
Evangelical watchdog Warren Throckmorten woke up one morning this week and found that his blog had been removed from Patheos. The host told him his site no longer fit their strategic objectives.
I hope to have more to say about it soon but for now, I can report that I am blogging here now at wthrockmorton.com. Patheos leadership informed me yesterday that my blog no longer fit their “strategic objectives.” Since I don’t know what those are, I can’t say how I didn’t fit them.
In any case, thanks to friend J.D. Smith, the blog was quickly migrated with the content to this ad free site. The downside is that I have been unable as yet to find out from Patheos how to get my comments moved along with the posts.
What a strange turn of events. Patheos was at the center of the Mars Hill Church and Gospel for Asia stories and now they host Mark Driscoll and K.P. Yohannan. All of the those Patheos links about Mars Hill and GFA are now erased. The content is here and archived elsewhere but admittedly, it will be harder to find.
• • •
IN HAPPIER INTERNET NEWS…
Print of tobacco package label showing Cincinnati Red Stockings players. 1869
The Library of Congress has a wonderful exhibition coming called Baseball Americana.
For those of us who love the game, it promises to yield a treasure trove of pictures and articles about our favorite pastime.
The LOC is publishing a post each Thursday leading up to the opening on June 29, then they will feature posts about different topics related to the yearlong exhibition.
One post featured the soon to be exhibited 1857 “Rules of Base Ball,” which set forth the rudimentary rules of the game. These were ironed out in January and February 1857 at a convention called by the Knickerbockers Base Ball Club in New York City.
Here are a few interesting remarks about the part music played in the very early days of baseball.
Walter Johnson, Washington Nationals. Baseball card, 1911. Chromolithograph with hand-color. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
No sport has inspired as much music: Pop songs and polkas, quicksteps and two-steps, mambos and marches, waltzes, foxtrots, rags, quadrilles, schottisches, cantatas and even operas have been written in celebration of America’s game.
The Library of Congress, through its copyright function, holds one of the world’s largest collections of baseball sheet music – a chronicle of more than 150 years of passion for the national pastime.
…Most of the music celebrated the pleasures of a day at the ballpark, great players, a hometown team or, as in the case of the earliest known baseball-related composition, a rival club. J.R. Blodgett, a player for the Niagara Base Ball Club of Buffalo, N.Y., wrote “The Base Ball Polka” and dedicated it to an opposing team, the Flour City Base Ball Club of Rochester.
Blodgett’s tune was submitted for copyright registration at the Library on Oct. 21, 1858, and, like many early baseball compositions, was an instrumental.
Those polkas, marches and waltzes fit the social nature of the game in the years just before the Civil War and in the decades that followed, says Tim Wiles, director of research at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Players wore festive uniforms, celebrated at banquets after the game and sometimes staged parades to and from the grounds. The run-over-the-catcher, win-at-all-costs mentality didn’t yet exist.
“To understand it, we need to lose the notion that it was just about beating the other club, which is part of baseball today,” Wiles says. “It was a bit of a celebration – of baseball, of civic pride and also of this newfound leisure activity these middle-class gentlemen in the clubs were able to have that maybe their fathers and grandfathers didn’t.”
The post goes on to describe the further development of baseball-inspired music through the 20th century. It also includes a link to a bibliography of baseball music and songs on the LOC website.
Here’s the 1949 version of “Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit that Ball?” by Woodrow Buddy Johnson & Count Basie.
• • •
GET A MOVE ON!
Michael Rotondo lived in a room at his parents’ house for 8 years. Then they finally had enough. After two earlier warnings, they gave him $1100 and this note:
1) Organize the things you need for work and to manage an apartment…
2) Sell the other things you have that have any significant value, (e.g. stereo, some tools etc.). This is especially true for any weapons you may have. You need the money and will have no place for the stuff.
3) There are jobs available even for those with a poor work history like you. Get one – you have to work!
4) If you want help finding a place your Mother has offered to help you.”
Michael still didn’t get the message, so mom and dad took him to court. And won their case. A judge ordered the 30-year old man to hit the road.
After court, Rotondo told reporters he plans to appeal the case and finds the ruling “ridiculous.” Of course he does.
• • •
YIKES! THE WORM HAS TURNED!
Well of course, given the state of the world today, it’s only natural to learn that —
GIANT PREDATORY WORMS HAVE BEEN INVADING FRANCE!!!
The worms are part of a group of predatory species known as hammerhead flatworms, which grow to over a foot long. They prey on earthworms in the soil and produce a potent cocktail of chemicals to immobilize their prey.
Justine and Gros identified three species — which mostly turned up in France’s warmer south — that they now believe have been in the country since at least 1999.
Scientists like Justine are worried about the effects these invasive species can have on local critters. Earthworms are crucial for aerating soil and ensuring agriculturally productive land. When new predators are introduced, like the giant flatworms, it can throw the whole, delicate ecosystem out of whack.
The Hammerhead Flatworms would be an awesome name for a rock band, by the way. And just think of the graphics they could use.
• • •
A FEW NOTES OF NOTE (AND NOT)…
I believe that this is the kind of language that ought to be required in all international diplomacy:
“The U.S. has tried various political, economic, military and propaganda undertakings to hit the Islamic Republic” throughout its four decades, the nation’s top religious leader told a gathering of officials on Wednesday. But “all these plots failed. Like the famous cat in Tom and Jerry they will lose again.”
Philip Roth, the prolific, protean, and often blackly comic novelist who was a pre-eminent figure in 20th-century literature, died on Tuesday night at a hospital in Manhattan. He was 85.
In the course of a very long career, Mr. Roth took on many guises — mainly versions of himself — in the exploration of what it means to be an American, a Jew, a writer, a man. He was a champion of Eastern European novelists like Ivan Klima and Bruno Schulz, and also a passionate student of American history and the American vernacular. And more than just about any other writer of his time, he was tireless in his exploration of male sexuality.
Shane Claiborne and Christians like him are a danger to our children. That’s why Claiborne received a letter from the chief of police at Liberty University warning that if he set foot on the property, he would be arrested for trespassing and face up to 12 months in jail and a $2,500 fine.
When Claiborne and other “Red Letter” Christians held a revival in the Trump/evangelical stronghold of Lynchburg, VA, the university and its president Jerry Falwell Jr. banned him from campus, refused to allow any “Red Letter” groups to meet on campus, forbade the student newspaper from covering the event, and did not answer Claiborne’s correspondence. “An organization has a duty to the parents to protect their kids,” said the Rev. Jonathan Falwell.
Only about 350 people ended up attending the revival, including a dozen Liberty students.
Mr. Claiborne still wanted to lead a group onto the Liberty campus and hold a prayer vigil — or at least leave a gift for Mr. Falwell, who had just opened a new $3.2 million gun range on campus. Mr. Claiborne had ready a hand plow that he made from a melted-down handgun, a literal following of the Bible’s instruction to “beat swords into plowshares.”
They decided instead that the Liberty police would not dare arrest an 83-year-old. So that afternoon, the Rev. Tony Campolo, co-founder of the Red Letter Christians, entered the front door of Thomas Road Baptist Church, and left a red box with the bewildered receptionist.
Inside the box, tied with a ribbon, was a stack of prayers, written on index cards, from the participants of the revival.
“Dear Liberty, I am praying for your campus,” said one. “The Jesus in the Bible speaks of love and acceptance. I hope you learn to speak of this too.”
Humankind is revealed as simultaneously insignificant and utterly dominant in the grand scheme of life on Earth by a groundbreaking new assessment of all life on the planet.
The world’s 7.6 billion people represent just 0.01% of all living things, according to the study. Yet since the dawn of civilisation, humanity has caused the loss of 83% of all wild mammals and half of plants, while livestock kept by humans abounds.
Paige Patterson, who has been under fire for weeks over his past advice to women concerning marital abuse and rape, has been quietly replaced as president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Patterson has been on the defensive since allegations surfaced that he once counseled women who suffered marital abuse to pray for their husbands. The Washington Post on Tuesday also reported an incident in which Patterson allegedly told a woman who said she had been raped to forgive her assailant rather than report the incident to police.
“After much prayer and a more than 13-hour discussion regarding challenges facing the Institution, including those of enrollment, financial, leadership and institutional identity, the Board determined to move in the direction of new leadership for the benefit of the future mission of the Seminary,” the Board of Trustees said in a statement early Wednesday.
The board said it voted to appoint Patterson as “President Emeritus with compensation, effective immediately, which he accepted.” In his place, it appointed D. Jeffrey Bingham, dean of the school of theology at the Fort Worth-based seminary, as interim president.
We’ll conclude with a rarity today — an update on our ongoing need for finances here at Internet Monk.
As you know, we don’t talk about this much, but we rely on the generosity of our IM community to keep this blog going. It doesn’t take a lot of money each month, but we do have to pay for our web hosting and some security features. Two very small parts of our budget go to obtaining resources that provide fodder for our discussions and, on occasion, gifts for saying “thank you” to some of the people who help us here.
Occasionally our funds get a bit low, and this is one of those times. No pressure, no wretched urgency, but if any of you could spare a few bucks to help us, that would be appreciated. The easiest way to do that is to use the “DONATE” button at the top right of the page. If you would prefer another method, email me.
Why now? Why did I pick this time to publicly declare that I am an ally to the LGBTQ community? There are a number of reasons:
In the last number of years I have seen an increasing rise of hate on social media aimed towards homosexuals and other marginalized people. This hate has come primarily from Christians. If there is a post against bathroom legislation for transgender people, I will have multiple Christian friends share it. If there is a post extolling reparative (conversion) therapy, no matter how dubious the source, it will be shared by several Christian friends. A negative article about refugees? It will be popping up in my Facebook feed. This series of posts is both a message to other Christians that there is a better way, as well as a message to my marginalized friends that there are some who are willing to listen and act. To say silent is at least in my mind to stand with the oppressors. To quote Martin Niemöller:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—
and there was no one left to speak for me.
Secondly, the gospel of Jesus Christ is meant to be good news. In fact, “gospel” means good news. Christians have made it anything but. If you are to read the facebook feed of many Christians you will see that they have defined themselves as being “anti-…” In doing so they put up stumbling blocks to others coming to know Jesus. Someone commented recently in my church’s small group: “Have people in North America really had an opportunity to meet Jesus, or have they just met a parody of him, and as a result said, ‘No thanks.’”
In addition to this, I also have a concern with how the Bible is being interpreted and misrepresented in this subject area. How does “good news” become condemnation? What does the Bible have to say, and how should we understand it?
Finally, my youngest daughter is clear and unequivocal in her support for her LGBTQ friends. I wish to stand with her. While a few friends have started ask questions about what I think on these matters, I have not been very open with my thoughts. I am taking this opportunity to change that.
This series will be in three parts. The rest of this post first will be a bit of an introduction to some of the people and experiences I have met along my life’s journey. Part two will look at both an overarching biblical hermeneutic (the science of interpretation) as well as looking at some individual passages. In the third part I will present an exchange that I had with a co-worker Geoff who I will introduce briefly below. I will wrap up part three with some concluding thoughts.
Part 1 – Interactions
One of my earliest memories is of a young boy named Craig coming up a small hill at the back of our house to say “Hi” for the first time. I was only three years old at the time, and Craig’s family had just moved into the house behind us. Ours was a small neighborhood of about 100 homes, isolated from the city by a mile of fields and forest. Everybody knew everybody, and Craig stood out like a sore thumb. Craig was “different”. As he grew older other kids started to notice that difference and started to bully him. Among other things they called him fairy and faggot. I had another “F” word for him: Friend. Craig and I liked to explore the fields and woods behind our little neighborhood together and build forts in places where no one would find them. We were allowed to go as far as the “third cowfield”, where my Dad’s bellow would remind us that it was time to come in for supper. Craig and I became best friends, and remained that way until my family moved away to Africa when I was eleven years old. By the time we came back from Africa four year later his family had moved away to a distant town.
When at university I met Steve. Steve had been an enthusiastic Christian who just a couple of years earlier been the President of his school’s Christian fellowship. During high school Steve came to the realization that he was gay. He also told me that found himself with two choices: Either live life as a Christian, or live life as a homosexual. He felt that it was an either/or proposition and that he could not in good conscience be both. He felt that in order to be true to himself he had to give up being a practicing Christian. I remember him coming back from a Christmas Eve service that he did attend, and wistfully saying how much he missed worshipping with other Christians. I also remember Steve and another friend telling me how they had been afraid for the their lives as they were accosted as they walked home one evening.
Four years later I had switched schools. At the new university’s Campus Crusade group I met Bill. He too was an enthusiastic and devoted Christian leader. I remember how genuinely he cared for others. He led worship for the group and was active in sharing his faith. But then something strange happened. It seemed like one moment he was in front leading the group and the next moment he was gone. When I enquired “What happened to Bill?” I was told that he had told one of the group staff that he was struggling with homosexual temptation. I wasn’t party to that conversation, but what I do know is that a person who I considered to be an exemplary Christian no longer felt that he could be part of the group. Bill passed away from AIDS several years later.
After graduating, I found myself in a working a a computer programmer in a number of different workplaces. Six years ago I received Birthday greetings from Geoff, a former work colleague. He wrote:
Michael, Happy Birthday. You’re the only dyed in the wool Christian, other than my mother, that has had my back. I will always be grateful to you for that.
In the nine years that I had known my colleague, and in many years before that, he had not met another Christian who he thought that he could depend on. The thought of that made me very sad.
I had a series of follow up questions for Geoff that he graciously answered, I had intended to share that that interaction with the Internet Monk audience years ago, but never felt the time was right was do so. In my final post of the series I will revisit that conversation.
There have been other conversations with other people along the way. I specifically wanted to introduce Craig, Steve, Bill, and Geoff to you because they were (or are) friends. I want to remind us that when we have theological discussions about homosexuality we are not dealing with some abstract concept, but with real people: Friends, parents, sons and daughters, siblings, co-workers, and neighbors. Please remember this while commenting.
Also please refrain from commenting on actual Bible verses until after my next post. What I would like to hear about is your own interactions with people. How have these interactions affected you? What have you learned? Looking back, are there things you had wished you had done differently.
We are blogging through the book: The Lost World of the Flood: Mythology, Theology, and the Deluge Debate by Tremper Longman III and John H. Walton. Today we will look at Part 3 Text: Understanding the Biblical Text Literarily and Theologically, Proposition 9- A Local Cataclysmic Flood is Intentionally Described as a Global Flood for Rhetorical Purposes and Theological Reasons.
Walton and Longman say the previous propositions have reached the following conclusions:
The genre of Genesis is theological history. All history is selective and interpreted according to the intention of the author. The focus of the author(s) of Genesis is theological in that he is interested in describing God and his relationship with his human creatures.
Genesis 1-11, and specifically Genesis 6-9, is theological history and is in continuity with Genesis 12-50. However, these early chapters concern the deep past with a focus on the whole world and a long period of time, rather than a single family. They are more metanarrative than straight forward historical narrative.
The biblical account describes the flood rhetorically as a worldwide deluge. Attempts to interpret the account as if it were describing only a local flood fail to persuade on close analysis.
We accept the overwhelming scientific evidence there was no actual planet-wide flood event. To acknowledge that reality is not to “cave into godless science”, but to exhibit proper exegesis.
The description of the flood is hyperbolic in order to make a point about the pervasive disorder that was the reason for the flood.
Similarities with other Mesopotamian flood stories are the result of Israel being in the same cultural “river” or milieu as the surrounding people groups.
They say they are now ready to unfold the theological purposes that led to the rhetorical shaping of the narrative. In the next propositions they will present the case for two different (though not mutually exclusive) literary-theological readings of Genesis 1-11. The first is the traditional interpretation that the flood is an act of judgment by God in response to the moral degradation that humanity at that point had reached. That view can be supported from the immediate text, but also stands as the earliest known interpretation from the 2nd Temple Period, and also the interpretation given by the New Testament.
The second is the suggestion that Genesis 1-11 is interested in tracking the issue of non-order, order, and disorder. This theological reading focuses more on how God is reestablishing order in the world as he uses non-order (the cosmic waters) to obliterate disorder (evil and violence). This view focuses attention on God’s continuing plan to establish order (present and future oriented) beyond the act of judging sin (past oriented), though both are legitimate perspectives. Walton and Longman say:
Neither view rules out the other, and we have no need to choose one or the other. The important point we are making is that the literary-theological interpretation of the passage (whichever way we go) takes precedence over the compulsion many feel to reconstruct the event itself. We contend, instead, the interpretation of the event by the biblical author takes pride of place and demands our intention as interpreters… When we interpret events like the flood, we should treat the event as we do a character. What the narrator does with the flood is more important than what the flood does, and what God does through the flood is most important of all.
Walton and Longman are saying, by treating the event of the flood like a character, there is no way to get behind the literary curtain to ascertain the character as they “really were”. There is no Myers-Briggs or Enneagram personality profiling possible. Likewise, we cannot get behind the literary curtain to reconstruct the scientific reality of the flood. Furthermore, the New Testament has that same literary curtain to work with. The New Testament writers had no independent access to the event. Their inspiration does not grant them insider information, only authoritative interpretation of the meaning of the flood and its application. And if New Testament authors repurpose an Old Testament account, we don’t have to pit such interpretation against the other—we can accept them both as legitimate interpretations of the same event. The New Testament adopts the flood story as an illustration of God’s judgement of sin, and anticipates the greatest judgment of all—the one coming at the end of history.
Of course, it is typical of those who advocate a literalistic reading of Genesis 6-9 and insist on a historical global flood, to say the New Testament authors and Jesus himself believed the flood was historical and global, and if they believed the global flood was historical, who are we to say different, despite the complete lack of scientific evidence. Walton and Longman say:
But this argument is faulty. The New Testament authors (and Jesus himself) are referring to the story in Genesis 6-9, which we have readily admitted, describes the flood in worldwide terms. We argue that the New Testament authors (and Jesus himself) were sophisticated enough to understand that (even if some modern readers are not).
I have two things to say about the arguments made in this proposition. The first is that I find their arguments persuasive and reasonable because I am already persuaded by the geological arguments. Their arguments prevent me from having to cast a dichotomy between “God’s infallible word” and “man’s fallible and fallen word”. I am able to maintain my faith that God has spoken to us through scripture without subsequently denying manifest reality.
Glenn Morton
However, if I were in a situation where my geological knowledge was limited and all my friends, family, church, pastor, etc. were committed YECs, and I had been imbibing a steady diet of AIG and other YEC literature, then I can totally sympathize with the resistance to what essentially would be a world-shattering paradigm change. Such a change is undertaken not just at an intellectual level, but an emotional and even spiritual level as well. One would do well to read and ponder the Glenn Morton story .
Secondly, frequent commenter Stephen made his usual cogent notation last week:
Having thoroughly imbibed historical critical scholarship I just think it’s a mistake to try to link these common ANE myths back to some prehistoric event. This is sophisticated literature here. I think making this a historical issue diminishes what was a truly remarkable accomplishment. The sophisticated thinkers and composers of Genesis took common ANE mythological repertoire and shaped it, in many ways demythologizing it, and created a cosmic account revealing their view of humanity’s place in creation. The Flood is not some exaggerated account of some dimly remembered historical event but an act of the imagination, an account of the uncreating of the cosmos. Astonishing, meaningful literature. Literature, not history.
He makes a very good point, and I am not sure Walton and Longman would really put up a strong disagreement. Given both their employment situations, they may believe that a quasi-historical event is required to be stated by them. I know Walton caught hell for his book The Lost World of Adam and Eve and even the suggestion that Adam and Eve weren’t in some way historical. Let’s be clear I’m not accusing either Walton or Longman of intellectual dishonesty or kowtowing to gatekeepers. I’m deeply sympathetic to the romantic notion of a dimly remembered event passed down around the campfire from the dawn of civilization. Maybe like Alice C. Linsley says: an ancient ruler who was renowned for his shipbuilding capabilities gets a notion a big flood is coming and has his servants build the biggest ship they’ve ever built, load up his royal menagerie, and join him on the ship or sail with him in a fleet. They survive and pass the story down through the ages until it becomes legend. A Hebrew author repurposes the story for his own rhetorical and theological purposes. Why not? It’s such a good story, if it didn’t happen, it should have.
Note from CM: Here is an excerpt from one of Michael’s posts in 2008. I think it ends up being an excellent summary of some of the reasons this blog exists and what Michael and we in the next generation of Internet Monk try to accomplish.
• • •
Wednesday with Michael Spencer
From What You Can’t Say Around Other Christians
There are some places that Christians will allow you to stand up and say “the sermon is pop psych” or “I’m not a young earth creationist” or “why do we act like we just invented Christianity this year?” What a gift it is to be able to speak truth and be supported by a community of the one who IS the truth.
In the church I grew up in I always heard that we believed in freedom of conscience, the right of private interpretation, the priesthood of the believer, soul competency and the sacred right to differ from the majority.
I heard about all of that, and I heard that it was other denominations, with their bishops and their hierarchies, that were hung up on conformity all the way down the line.
Well….let’s just say that it’s a good thing they don’t give awards for “Ironic Reversals of Reality” anywhere. Someone would need to build a shelf. A long one.
I’ve discovered there’s a good reason you can’t speak your own convictions among many church and denominational Christians. And I’m not just talking about a crabby email or comment.
My own denomination has a population of leaders who have been openly condemning certain bloggers for several years now, as for the first time, the usual regime of assumed power-preachers and denominational power-brokers discovered there was actual, real, thoughtful, articulate dissent being published out there. And that dissent was treated as a threat to the denomination’s unity and mission of evangelism, to the point that bloggers were publicly ridiculed in many denominational speeches in the past 2-3 years.
Be clear on this: I have no problem disapproving of the blogger who uses his/her power of personal publishing to lie, insinuate, gossip and undermine. But I am stunned and saddened to see how legitimate dissent, honest questioning, personal struggle, authenticate analysis and necessary discussion or consequences have been called sinful and destructive. It’s a tragic error.
Some bloggers have been irresponsible. I may have been too honest, too vulnerable, too transparent in my blogging at times. But when we mistake the silence of pre-programmed, enforced conformity with Christian unity, we’re already the victims of our own delusions.
There are still doors in Christendom where the truth needs to be nailed, and some of them aren’t far away from where you are.
We need to talk about what is and is not happening among real Christians living real lives.
We need to hear the truth about the Christian experience, not just the scrubbed and glowing testimonials.
We need to have the assumed wisdom and answers of denominational leaders scrutinized, just like every pastor has to face his critics in every healthy church anywhere.
We need a vibrant discussion of the “whys” and the “what fors” in the things we require of one another in church, denomination and ministry.
We need courageous writers who will tell the stories that can’t be spoken among Christians who are determined to create a culture of secrecy and religious conformity.
There may be a price for honesty, asking questions and telling our stories. But there will never cease to be a need for someone who has the courage to ask tough questions and tell honest experiences in the midst of organized religion. We won’t ever get the truth of our human and Christian journeys from the official spokespersons or the press releases. We have to speak it to one another and support one another in the consequences.
We can’t speak falsehood to ourselves, one another and our children. Even if the truth is clumsy, painful, inconvenient or unwelcome, it is still the truth and we should love it for Jesus sake.
Here’s an intriguing passage from an article I’ve posted on the bulletin board about theologian Stanley Hauerwas.
“No task is more important than for the Church to take the Bible out of the hands of individual Christians in North America.”
Perhaps the only surer way to enrage an American Christian than threatening to take the Bible out of his hands is threatening to take away his gun (no doubt, Hauerwas would bid both farewell gladly). Hauerwas wants to remove bibles from the pews because he is worried that individualism—the conceit of self-sufficiency—has thoroughly corrupted American Christians’ ability to interpret Scripture.
Lost in the smoke, American Christians “feel no need to stand under the authority of a truthful community to be told how to read.” This despite centuries, if not millennia, of church teaching that a rule of faith is necessary to preserve orthodox theology. In the end, it was not so much a commitment to Scripture that separated out the world-hating gnostics from those who worshipped God enfleshed, nor raw assent to scriptural authority that separated out the Arians from the Trinitarians. All sides used the Bible to make their arguments. In the end, it was the rule of faith, the pattern handed down across time by the apostles, that enabled Christians to interpret Scripture rightly.
By taking the Bible out of the hands of Christians, Hauerwas hopes to remind them that the Bible can only be read well when it is handed down. Interpretation, where it is faithful, always occurs within a tradition. As G. K. Chesterton would remind us, “Tradition means giving a vote to most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead” (Orthodoxy). Hauerwas has no patience for individualism, for it denies the necessity of thinking with those who merely happen to be dead. But even more crucially than Chesterton’s point, individualism forgets that we are indebted to the dead, those whom the tradition gives voice, for collecting, preserving and passing the Bible, as well as its proper interpretation, along to us. We inherit a set canon from those who came before. Without the tradition, we would not have a Bible.
“I do not want students to think for themselves[.] I want them to think like me.”
At the beginning of a course, Hauerwas never fails to tell the classroom, with grinning candor, that his goal is not to make them independent thinkers but instead little Hauerwasians. His point, beyond quite literally desiring to make a peaceable army of minions, is this: we never think for ourselves; we learn to think by submitting ourselves to instruction by others. As John Maynard Keynes warned any would-be freethinkers, “practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” Individualism pretends as if humans were actually capable of independence, forgetting that we owe our life and our ability to think to others. Insofar as individualism is a refusal to submit to the authority and critiques of others, individualism is a refusal to think.
Together, individualism and liberalism eat away at the conditions and virtues necessary for community, leaving Americans incredibly lonely and without any story by which to make sense of their sad condition. As Jesus warns, when an unclean spirit is driven out of a man, “it goes and brings seven other spirits more evil than itself … And the last state of that person is worse than the first” (Luke 11:24-26). So it is when liberalism drives out religious narratives from our self-understanding. Just as Legion is the name of the myriad demons Jesus drives out in Mark 5, Nationalism is the name of the many demons that have taken residence in American churches.
I get Hauerwas’s point, I really do.
However, I think he is not necessarily describing a problem within most churches, a problem of the parishioners themselves. Oh, it’s there of course, but even in congregations that are filled with people holding their own Bibles, those folks have bought into the narrative of their tradition and are not thinking for themselves as autonomous individuals. They generally toe the party line instead. Having a Bible of one’s own doesn’t change a thing.
Regardless of our rhetoric, I don’t think we can avoid this. Most people will only think for themselves up to a point. They will bind themselves to a story and submit to it. The people who really are thinking for themselves are the ones leaving the church and attaching themselves to other narratives.
Perhaps it is more a problem that our institutions are being led by people making up their own stories rather than submitting to the received tradition?
Or, perhaps the real problem is that our narrative has been found wanting?
Or, perhaps the church has done such a poor job of tending to the health of our narrative that we have been found wanting?
Note from CM: As a hospice chaplain, my work revolves around supporting the dying and their families. I officiate many funerals. I deal with questions about death and what happens after people die. I am asked regularly about mysteries beyond our human experience in this life.
Here again the Christian message draws life from the incontrovertible basis of the Old Testament: everything is about this world and this creation. Redemption does not mean flight from the world and de-secularization; it is not a removal to a worldless beyond. It is healing and transformation of this present world, the leading of all creation to its goal.
• Is This All There Is? (p. 127f)
When last we looked at Gerhard Lohfink’s study on resurrection and eternal life, we considered his thoughts about what the Hebrew Bible (the Old Testament) has to say on the subject.
He concluded that Israel’s “understanding of resurrection is that it is ‘firmly anchored in this world.’” This earthly focus kept them from adopting the other-worldly cultic death perspectives and practices of their neighbors in the Ancient Near East. However, in the development of Israel’s thought, as seen in the pages of the OT, there is evidence of a growing confidence that Creator of the world would care for his people even in death — the love and care of God “encompasses even the realm of death and the underworld.”
Lohfink tips his hand a bit when he calls the next section, “What Entered the World in Jesus.” Jesus’ ministry and miracles and especially his resurrection brought something new intothe world. This, he will show, is the whole point of the resurrection. In continuity with Israel’s story and perspective, Jesus’ resurrection from the dead did not point to some otherworldly goal but to a transformation of present earthly reality.
He starts with Jesus’ teaching. Jesus announced the kingdom or rule of God, an event that is “coming” into the world through him. His preaching, prayers, and parables all teach about this. The Lord’s Prayer asks that God’s will be done on earth as in heaven. His teaching has a continual focus that is not on an afterlife, but on people preparing themselves here and now to welcome the transforming intervention of God in this world, an intervention that has already begun in Jesus.
For Jesus, it was all about the rule of the holy God here on this earth — a reign that, of course, is something completely different from human self-glorification. The reign of God has no other purpose than to lead creation freely into what God means it to be: a world of justice and peace — and all that not as an event that will only happen at the end of the world, but as an overturning of all circumstances, a revolution that began with Jesus, in the midst of Israel, and since then quietly and unstoppably changes everything. (p. 103)
Jesus also acted, with deeds that “mirrors the reign of God that is now coming.” His deeds of power transformed real people suffering real problems in this world, which led to many of them being marginalized in Israel’s society. As Lohfink notes, “in Israel’s understanding all illnesses, all suffering, and all individual crisis situations were already bound up with the sphere of death” (p. 106). As in the Psalms, when sick and oppressed people spoke of being captive to Sheol, the people Jesus touched were in death’s grip, and when Jesus healed them he was attacking the power of death and renewing life as the Creator God intended. When he raised people back to life from the dead, these signs were not of a different piece. Jesus’ entire ministry was about bringing life into this world of death.
This is what Jesus brought into the world: “…the reign of God, longed for and prayed for in Israel, is now present, and its intent is to change not only hearts and minds, but with them the real conditions in Israel — and through Israel, in the whole world” (p. 107)
Those real conditions = death. What the rule of God in Jesus brings = life. Real life.
Scot is the Julius R. Mantey Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary in Lombard, IL, author or editor of some sixty books, and he writes at the popular Jesus Creed blog.
I am happy to consider Scot a friend and mentor. He taught at Trinity when I was a student there in seminary and was instrumental in helping me when I first began writing for Internet Monk. And he’s a great Cubs fan. That in itself shows you that he is open to the Holy Spirit.
• • •
A key word in the title and text of Scot McKnight’s book about the Holy Spirit is “open.” And he begins by recounting his own story of not being open to the Spirit. He was raised in a non-charismatic Baptist church where the true Trinity was “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Scriptures.”
They had amassed a list of theological reasons why the charismatics and Pentecostal Christians were wrong in their teaching and emphasis upon the Spirit:
The (glitzy) gifts (such as tongues, prophecy, and miracles) were for the apostolic period only.
In the New Testament, not every conversion led to speaking in tongues, so tongues cannot be seen as the sign of conversion.
There are not two baptisms— one by water, one by the Spirit— but just one baptism.
The Holy Spirit does not want all this attention. The Spirit gives testimony to the Son, so this charismatic stuff must be wrong.
Christians who are obsessed by the Holy Spirit are the most prone to theological error and to chaos. Eventually their enthusiasm and mysticism will cool, and Pentecostals will be like the rest of us. Either that, or they will turn to some kind of heresy.
Those who are most enthralled with the Spirit are the most shaped by their inner experiences— emotion and personal feelings. They also are the least theologically trained.
Charismatics believe in a two-stage theory of salvation: first you become a Christian; next you get the second blessing or you get filled with the Spirit or you enter into the Higher Life or you get fully sanctified and perfected and become sinless.
We need to focus on salvation and justification and the cross. All this talk about the Spirit distracts from that focus.
This is quite similar to the list I was taught to think by in my Bible college days at a dispensationalist school. We virtually identified the Spirit with the scriptures and limited the Spirit’s work in our lives to illuminating the words of the Bible to us, using those words to “transform us by the renewing of our minds” (Romans 12:2).
However, over the years Scot (and I as well) have experienced a change of heart and mind about the Holy Spirit, becoming much more open to viewing the Spirit’s work from an “outside the Book” perspective. Here’s how he describes his “conversion” and why he hopes this book will help others experience the same change:
This book attempts to make clear what the Bible reveals about God’s Spirit. Readers can also see it as the story of my conversion from the anti-charismatic movement to an affirmation of the centrality of the Holy Spirit and the importance of the Spirit for the Christian life. I have come to believe, along with theologian Clark Pinnock, that the Spirit works in “a hundred thousand ways” and that it is not my responsibility to do anything but to be open to the radical and sometimes surprising flow of the Spirit in our world. I believe that is what the Bible teaches, and I hope the time we spend pursuing the truth about the Holy Spirit will lead you to a similar belief. (p. 20)
To that end, Scot encourages us to pray the following prayer, a most fitting petition on the Feast of Pentecost and all the days that follow:
Lord, I am open to the Holy Spirit. Come to me, dwell in me, speak to me so I may become more like Christ. Lord, give me the courage to be open. Lord, I am open to the Holy Spirit. Come, Holy Spirit. Amen.
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