John's Gospel Demonless?

Just jotting a quick note to myself.

After the conversation with James on one of my posts where I mentioned not really believing in "spirits", I said that I should check out how each gospel portrays the activity of the demonic in the ministry of Jesus. I wondered if there was a difference between how the individual gospel writers portrayed demons and what they did and didn't do....and what Jesus claimed they were responsible for.

I haven't thoroughly checked all of the gospels or made any in-depth readings on the subject at this point, but in a quick word search for "demons" or "unclean spirit", and simply "spirit" I couldn't find one verse in the Gospel of John that refers to demons, or spirits....they're completely absent from the Jesus story.

The only time demons are brought up is when the Pharisees accuse Jesus of being possessed.

This strikes me as quite strange. I have read all of the gospels many, many times and never did I notice this before.

Anyone out there know of any resources that address this?

The Tower of Babel and Heaven's Staircase

Last week was the first week that I ever told my children that a story in the Bible wasn't true, in the sense of historical, literal fact.

We were actually on the way to church and DH was trying to see if they noticed that one of their Yu-Gi-Oh card references, which was a power called babel, was actually a biblical reference. The power of the particular game card caused confusion for your opponent.

Genesis 11:1-9

1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower the people werebuilding. 6 The LORD said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel--because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

Eventually, we had to make the connection to the Tower of Babel for them, at which point they said, "Oh....yeah!" Reminding them of the story led them to speculate about what the first, original language was

This was when I broached the idea that some stories are meant to explain ideas and may not be literally true....that there may never have been one original language, but that the story was a way to explain the world as the writer saw it.

What's funny is that, by complete coincidence, DoOrDoNot has a post up about the Tower of Babel right now poking fun at taking it literally. She quotes a parody of "All True Bible Stories for Children". It's funny but also irreverent...so beware that you may be offended by the parodist's parody, not of the text, but of the simpleton attitude portrayed by the literal interpreters of the text.

As a literal story, the Tower of Babel makes no sense to most of us. Why does God care if we cooperate? Why does he want humanity to be confused and separate? Why does he seem afraid of what they might be able to accomplish?

It doesn't make sense. Isn't God the one who wants to live in peace? Isn't God the one who wants us to cooperate within our communities?

Why would he do such a thing? Why would the author of the story cast God in such a light?

The book I am currently reading, Joseph's Bones, by Jerome M. Segal, proposes that God is fearful about man's accomplishments and development of technology; the ability to make bricks and mortar rather than having to rely on stone. They have learned to create things:

...Mankind has an awareness of danger, senses the importance of being unified, and successfully carries out a breakthrough project of technological and social accomplishment.

God experiences the power it represents. He projects it forward, saying that if this is what mankind can do at this early stage, then ultimately nothing, "will be out of their reach." Such a belief is not unlike the belief that if mankind does not blow itself up first, through science, we will will ultimately be able to conquer every constraint.

In the Babel story God expresses a fear of an ever-expanding human capability, a fear of human reach. He envisions that humans will develop powers that will make them godlike, able to achieve whatever they desire.(pg. 88)

I think Segal is right that the story portrays a God fearful of humanity, but I think he gets the motivation slightly wrong. The goal of humanity, in the story, is to build a tower that reaches up to the heavens.

The "heavens" as we think of them today, are simply what we would call stars, or the space filled with the sun, moon and stars. We know what stars are. We have some sense of distance, and matter and the meaning of their movements.

Now imagine a world in which you knew nothing about space, or stars, or celestial phenomena. You would see these incredible lights in the sky, moving predictably for the most part, except for the occasional eclipse, or comet, or meteorite. You wouldn't know what the movements represented, but your culture may have realized that certain heavenly bodies had cycles, like the phases of the moon, or that the sun shone less in winter than it did in summer. You would think that these celestial movements meant something. You might even ascribe personalities to them, or associate them with gods or powerful beings.

Whatever the case, the imagination could populate the heavens with power and beauty that was out of reach, yet somehow also a part of the Earth.

You would have no conception that there were other planets...or even what the word "planet" meant. You wouldn't imagine that there were other "earths" out there with other "suns". The universe was probably a single connected place in your mind.

And the heavens...well they must be where God, or the gods, lived. Because no one ever saw God, or gods, on earth. And....the night sky instilled such wonder in people. Just looking at it can give modern people chills, how much more wondrous did it seem to ancient peoples?

.

So, assuming that an ancient people believed that "heaven" was where God lived, and that it was a physical location directly above earth, what would it mean for people to build a tower to the heavens?

Could it be that they imagined that they would be able to enter the place where God dwelt? That if the tower was high enough they could knock on his front door?

This conception of God being "up there" wasn't far-fetched in ancient cosmology. When Jacob has a dream/vision at Bethel, he sees angels ascending and descending a "ladder" that reaches from the earth into heaven.

So, when the people decide to build a Tower to heaven, this is a direct threat to God. They will soon be on his doorstep. They will be powerful. They may war against him.

In that context, one in which Heaven is a physical place that could be reached if humanity had the resources to get there, the story of the Tower of Babel makes sense. It is comprehensible. It holds together.

God is keeping humanity from cooperating together in order to prevent a physical intrusion of his dwelling place. He is preventing that in the same way he prevented Adam and Eve from returning to the Garden of Eden, through a physical guard; cherubim and a flaming sword.

If taken in that context, God's move to confuse humanity with different languages and cultures is not arbitrary. He is guarding his home and pre-empting an unwelcome invasion of his space.

The problem that anyone trying to interpret the story literally will have, is that a story which made sense 3,000 years ago, makes no sense today. We know, now, that no matter how high the Tower of Babel became, they were never going to reach Heaven's doorstep....and because we know that, we also know that God would have no reason to fear a million such towers...and because we know that the motivation imputed to God in the story is based on a conception of the world which was based in ancient, incorrect cosmology....the story has lost any sense for us.

This particular story is so reliant upon ancient, cultural context, that to take it literally in our modern times, is to make God an arbitrary trickster. Wouldn't he have gotten a bigger laugh by letting humanity build their towers and discover that...no...they couldn't reach Him that way?

What's the old proverb?

Man plans, God laughs.

Paul and Adam Redux

While responding to a comment on my Adam post a few weeks ago, I was reminded that I wanted to say something more about Paul and his use of Adam theologically.

Most of what I have to say is pretty obvious....but I never let that keep me from talking! ;-)

In trying to understand why Adam seems to be absent from the Old Testament, outside of Genesis, I realized a very obvious thing....Israel didn't care about theological issues that encompassed the entire world. They weren't trying to find a way to make everything fit together, to understand what God was going to do with everyone else on earth.

That wasn't their concern.

Their primary goal was to uphold their particular chosen tribe in what they saw as the ways of God. Because their religious narrative involved God choosing Abraham and blessing his physical descendants, or at least those descended from Isaac, they had no reason to worry themselves about pagans, Gentiles, or outsiders.

This shows up in their slavery laws and in their wars with surrounding nations.

God had made his choice. The other nations were only receiving whatever judgement they deserved. Israel was God's path to blessing or cursing the nations according to many of their Scriptures.

As a result, tracing all of humanity back to a literal Adam would have been relatively meaningless for their theological perspective.

What Paul does with Adam is actually quite ingenious. By bringing Adam into the picture and making his comparison to Jesus, Paul declares a new creation that resets humanity back at an equal starting place. Suddenly, being Jewish holds no special privileges. Anyone can be accepted by God and equally receive his favor.

In Romans, Paul equivocates, speculating that God's promises to Israel which have been extended to all, might be even greater if Israel, as a whole, accepted Jesus as their Messiah. Even Paul is not willing to completely close the door on Israelites. So, while developing a theology that is wide open to pagans and Gentiles, he still hopes that Israel will have a special place with God.

However, the point is that Paul uses the figure of Adam in a way that permits everyone to participate in the Kingdom of God.

This is always Paul's mission--to bring the Gentiles in, to declare that all are welcome.

Paul uses the same technique in Galatians when he turns the idea of Abraham's seed completely on its head and gives it a novel interpretation:

7 Understand, then, that those who have faith are children of Abraham. 8 Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham: “All nations will be blessed through you.” 9 So those who rely on faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith.

10 For all who rely on the works of the law are under a curse, as it is written: “Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.” 11 Clearly no one who relies on the law is justified before God, because “the righteous will live by faith.”12 The law is not based on faith; on the contrary, it says, “The person who does these things will live by them.” 13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.” 14 He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.
15 Brothers and sisters, let me take an example from everyday life. Just as no one can set aside or add to a human covenant that has been duly established, so it is in this case. 16 The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ.

He's doing the same thing he did with Adam, taking a figure from the Scriptures and using it to persuade others that God really did want everyone on board.

I'm left with the feeling that I usually have for Paul, annoyance that he so boldly moves forward in new directions, with what I would think are less than pure exegetical moves, and admiration that he could find a way to make it work and admiration for the general thrust of trying to open the doors as wide as possible for everyone.

The Tower of Babel

Random thought.

How insightful was the author of Genesis to make the observation that humans with the ability to communicate and be understood by one and all could be stopped by almost nothing?

In thinking about the story of the Tower of Babel, it occurred to me that the author is not only offering an explanation for how there came to be different languages and cultures, because God made it happen that way, but why there came to be different languages, because God was afraid that nothing would be able to stop humanity.

1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As men moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.
3 They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."

5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."

8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel —because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

It's interesting that God is depicted as a character who willfully causes confusion rather than one who brings clarity to humanity. It's almost a back-handed compliment to humans that God would care about what they could achieve.

I am rather enchanted by the idea that whoever wrote this bit of Genesis saw the potential humanity had and the power it could wield if it were able to work together with a common language and culture.

Not too shabby of an insight for an ancient!

***updated miscellaneous thought****

There always seems to be a trace of this "God against Humans" tone in many of the Genesis stories, with the implication that God has something to fear from us. Maybe that's a subtle way for the author/authors to soothe themselves with the image of humanity as God's rival? Maybe that makes living in an imperfect world in which humans have little control a little easier?

Because...if God is actively thwarting us because He's trying to keep us from becoming too powerful, then we are simultaneously validated in our sense of worth, while also being relieved of the ability to make things perfect.

Who can win against God?

Paul and the Book of Jubilees

This isn't as much of a post as a quick note to myself and solicitation to others who might know more about the subject.

In the midst of reading a blog post and its comments which are tangentially related to my Adam post, I went off searching for an online version of The Book of Jubilees so that I could understand one of the commenter's comments.

After reading just a little bit of it, I thought to myself,"Gosh...this seems awfully familiar to me." Besides the fact that it is simply rehashing parts of Genesis and Exodus into a single coherent narrative, I realized that some of the things that I had been taught about Genesis and Moses came from The Book of Jubilees. For instance, earlier in my Christian college days, I was taught that Moses wrote all 5 books of the Pentateuch, receiving Genesis as a divine revelation, just as it is depicted in Jubilees.

I had also heard frequently that Cain's wife was his sister, and that all of Adam and Eve's children married each other. That's also from Jubilees:

And Cain took Awan his sister to be his wife and she bare him Enoch at the close of the fourth jubilee. [190-196 A.M.] And in the first year of the first week of the fifth jubilee, [197 A.M.] houses were built on the earth, and Cain built a city, and called its name after the name of
10, 11 his son Enoch. And Adam knew Eve his wife and she bare yet nine sons. And in the fifth week of the fifth jubilee [225-31 A.M.] Seth took Azura his sister to be his wife, and in the fourth (year of the sixth
12,13 week) [235 A.M.] she bare him Enos. He began to call on the name of the Lord on the earth. And in the seventh jubilee in the third week [309-15 A.M.] Enos took Noam his sister to be his wife, and she bare him a son
14 in the third year of the fifth week, and he called his name Kenan. And at the close of the eighth jubilee [325, 386-3992 A.M.] Kenan took Mualeleth his sister to be his wife, and she bare him a son in the ninth jubilee,

But that's not all...while reading chapter 3 of Jubilees, I realized that much of what Paul says about Adam and Eve and the theological implications of their Fall comes from Jubilees:

It is not
5 good that the man should be alone: let us make a helpmeet for him.' And the Lord our God caused a deep sleep to fall upon him, and he slept, and He took for the woman one rib from amongst
6 his ribs, and this rib was the origin of the woman from amongst his ribs, and He built up the flesh in its stead, and built the woman. And He awaked Adam out of his sleep and on awaking he rose on the sixth day, and He brought her to him, and he knew her, and said unto her: 'This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called
7 [my] wife; because she was taken from her husband.' Therefore shall man and wife be one and therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and cleave unto his wife, and they shall be
8 one flesh. In the first week was Adam created, and the rib -his wife: in the second week He showed her unto him: and for this reason the commandment was given to keep in their defilement,
9 for a male seven days, and for a female twice seven days. And after Adam had completed forty days in the land where he had been created, we brought him into the garden of Eden to till and keep it, but his wife they brought in on the eightieth day, and after this she entered into the garden
10 of Eden. And for this reason the commandment is written on the heavenly tablets in regard to her that gives birth: 'if she bears a male, she shall remain in her uncleanness seven days according to the first week of days, and thirty and three days shall she remain in the blood of her purifying, and she shall not touch any hallowed thing, nor enter into the sanctuary, until she accomplishes these
11 days which (are enjoined) in the case of a male child. But in the case of a female child she shall remain in her uncleanness two weeks of days, according to the first two weeks, and sixty-six days
12 in the blood of her purification, and they will be in all eighty days.' And when she had completed these eighty days we brought her into the garden of Eden, for it is holier than all the earth besides and
13 every tree that is planted in it is holy.

This passage reinforces the idea that Eve is somehow less than Adam in the way that it emphasizes that Eve is made from part of Adam and is "his" wife. It also, interestingly, ties in the idea of a "period of defilement" for both male and female, thought at this point in the story both Adam and Eve are supposed to be innocent and perfect.

Later, when Eve eats the forbidden fruit, it is cast in a more deliberate, accusatory tone. In this version Eve eats the fruit and has enough time and forethought to clothe herself with fig leaves and then go out and find Adam in order to entice him to eat the fruit also.

And the woman saw the tree that it was agreeable and pleasant to the eye, and that its fruit
21 was good for food, and she took thereof and eat. And when she had first covered her shame with figleaves, she gave thereof to Adam and he eat, and his eyes were opened, and he saw that he was
22 naked. And he took figleaves and sewed (them) together, and made an apron for himself, and23, 24 covered his shame

The version in Genesis is more generous. In that version, Adam and Eve are together and both of their eyes are opened at the same time. They are co-conspirators, not predator and victim.

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

The Book of Jubilees is usually dated somewhere around the 2nd century BCE, quite some time before Paul and his use of Adam and Eve as theological sources. By the time it's been around for a couple of hundred years, it no doubt has authority for Paul and was something he would have been familiar with. It isn't much of a stretch to see how he would/could incorporate the underlying attitudes about Adam and Eve into his epistles and teachings.

Which makes for an interesting conundrum. What do we do with Paul's Creation Theology if it is based almost entirely on the slant of a particular ancient text which is not considered authoritative in either the Catholic, or Protestant tradition?

I do have to revise some of what I wrote yesterday. I wasn't thinking outside of the Old and New Testaments, when I said that Adam was absent. Because, although he is completely absent in what the constitutes the authoritative, Christian, Old Testament canon, that doesn't mean he was absent from the general thought-life of 1st century Judaism.

So...perhaps it isn't that Paul drags up a long-lost relative, creating a relatively novel theology. Maybe, instead, he is simply incorporating what he has been taught about Adam and Eve through texts and traditions outside of what we think of as authoritative Scripture.

Starting From Square One

continuing from yesterday's post....

It became very clear to me that most of what I thought I knew about the gospels was very different from what most scholars thought they knew about the gospels.

I had encountered scholarly ideas about the Historical Jesus before, but only in passing. My immediate reaction to these ideas was to reject them as corruptions of the faith. When I first heard of the Jesus Seminar and its quest to figure out what Jesus really said, I scoffed at what seemed like a foolish and heretical undertaking. How could one use the gospels as a source to discredit large parts of the gospels? How could a group of people imagine that they could scan through Jesus' words and pick out what they liked, or approved of, and reject the rest?

It didn't make sense to me. It couldn't make sense to me. I didn't know enough of the whys and hows that drove such an enterprise.

The tables have turned for me. I do understand, now, why scholars would even attempt such a thing. I don't necessarily endorse all of the conclusions, but I have learned enough to realize that the issue of pinning down the gospels is much more complex than I had previously thought.

When I, a simple, amateur, 21st century person with no ability to read Greek/Aramaic, can piece together that the gospel writers are tinkering with things in order to encourage the early Christian community, then we have a serious issue that needs to be addressed. At least, it needs to be addressed if you are coming from an evangelical, inerrancy-based faith, because all of a sudden the texts are not foolproof and the basis for your faith has disappeared from right under your feet.

Because we are taught to trust the texts implicitly, discovering that the texts contradict themselves, not in insignificant ways, but in ways that change the spiritual message of the text, is quite disorienting. The fundamental difference between earthly rewards in the present age versus future rewards in a completely new age is vast. The general theme is the same; sacrificial acts for God will bring future rewards. However, the mode of operation and expectation for a particular believer is extremely different.

It isn't hard to see the dilemma. A believer reads the passage in Mark and places their faith in seeing a tangible reward from God in this current life. We have prosperity teachers, or even faith healers, who have no difficulty finding passages to back them up. Conservative Christians are quick to label them heretics and point out how wrong a theology of wealth and prosperity, or procuring healing by simply believing for it is, but all prosperity teachers are doing is taking real passages from the actual texts that we have and trying to work up a path that gets them through life.

That grates against an evangelical sense of certainty and the concept that we can figure out God, Life and the Meaning of the Universe if we just study the texts a little harder. The feeling is that it's all in there if we just look hard enough.

Back to the Gospel of John and my love for it.

I realize, now, why I have always liked it so much. It addresses all the things that the other gospels don't deal with, or leave hanging. It brings together all of the theological developments and thrusts of the early Christians and formulates them into a grand story line with theological explanations of key issues for the early church. It fleshes out the nature of Christ's human and divine natures, the Eucharist, and salvation by faith. It is a polished narrative instead of a collection of miscellaneous teachings and parables.

However, I've been left with a thorn in my side. How to take the Gospel of John? Because most of it is original material unto itself, it presents a problem. Because it is attempting to address theological questions that have arisen after Jesus is no longer around, how much of it is historical?

Coincidentally, NT Scholar Larry Hurtado has just posted an essay that explains the Gospel of John in terms of "remembrance and revelation" . He writes:

I propose that the author consciously used what he regarded as the greater insight into Jesus’ significance that he ascribed to the Holy Spirit (or in GJohn’s terms “Paraclete”) after Jesus’ death/departure. I also propose that the author tells readers that he’s doing this, that he expected his readers to see it and appreciate it.

For simple historical-Jesus inquiry (a sort of, “just the facts, Jack” assumption), this will be judged anachronism, of course. If we were to explain to the author of GJohn modern historical-Jesus interests, he’d probably be puzzled or maybe amused, and might quickly agree that this isn’t his agenda. Instead, he wants to say that the historical figure was all along the embodiment of divine glory, but it wasn’t really till after Jesus’ death and resurrection that this became fully apparent.

John knows he's not writing "history" in the sense that we think of it. He, instead, is writing what he feels the Holy Spirit has revealed to Christians after the resurrection, mainly through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

In other words, Jesus didn't say X, Y, Z in a literal sense, but once he was resurrected and believers practiced their faith through the Holy Spirit, things fell into place. Teachings took on new meanings, meanings that John believes were always there but were not cognitively accessible and understandable to the disciples at the immediate moment they were taught.

I'll continue more of what I think this means for me, personally, later on.

Rewards and Faith, Part 2

I have always loved the Gospel of John. For some reason, whenever I read it and compared it to the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it simply outshone them. I understood the Jesus in John's gospel in a way that I often didn't understand the the Jesus of the synoptics.

Form the very first chapter, I was hooked. Who couldn't be? I mean, read it:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.

There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband's will, but born of God.

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

The story doesn't start with a relationship intrigue, or a census, or a long, boring genealogy . It starts at the beginning of the cosmos. The poetry of In him was life, and that life was the light of men....it simply speaks to me in a way that the synoptics don't.

While reading and learning about the formation of the New Testament, I learned something that began to bother me, The Gospel of John was written much later than the synoptics. In and of itself, being written decades later doesn't mean that a work is untrustworthy, but when the unique nature of the Gospel of John is compared to the synoptics, it becomes apparent that most of the material in John is nowhere to be found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.

Added to this new-to-me realization, was another idea, one that explained the synoptics in terms of their relation to each other, with Mark being written first and Matthew and Luke primarily consisting of appropriations of Mark, sometimes word for word. Matthew and Luke both used Mark and also added more to it, sometimes sharing material, and at other times containing material unique to themselves. That is the hypothesis shared by most biblical scholars at this point.

A handy chart:

None of this is groundbreaking information. I simply had never examined it before, or thought about what it meant. Although I had read all of the gospels more times than I could count, I had always done it through the lens of biblical inerrancy and the supposition that the gospels were all independently developed, eyewitness accounts of Jesus. When there were conflicts or contradictions, I assumed it was because they were written by different people, from different perspectives, which would naturally lead to slightly different perspectives.

One thing that never occurred to me is that early Christians would purposely tailor, or alter, the gospels to slant them in a particular way, or give support to developing theology. These were supposed to be historic, accurate documents inspired by God, so if something seemed unclear, or didn't quite fit, it was because the things Jesus said weren't applicable to that time but were somehow broader and meant for a future age.

I'd like to clarify at this point that I don't think that the gospels are pure fiction, or that the gospel writers intentionally attempted to mislead as much as they were trying to encourage the community of which they were a part, and shore up the faith of believers.

For numerous reasons I abandoned the idea of biblical inerrancy and that started a domino effect for me and for my faith, because I could no longer come to a position on anything by declaring a certain idea "biblical". Neither could I settle any questions I had with "because The Bible says so."

Once I started thinking of the process used to write the gospels and how each came to be , and what sort of audience they might have been written to, I began to see these differences everywhere, and every time I did....I would feel a deep pang in my heart.

I came across another one of those examples when I was looking for that passage about rewards in the here and now that I mentioned in my last post.

All three synoptic gospels contain the story of the rich young man who asks Jesus what he must do to obtain eternal life. After some conversation between the two of them, with the young man declaring how perfectly he has followed Mosaic Law, Jesus tells him to sell everything he has and give it to the poor. The rich young man goes away saddened at the prospect. After listening to the exchange between the rich young man and Jesus, Peter points out that the disciples have left everything behind to follow Jesus. Here's the passage in Mark:

Mark 10:28-31

28Peter said to him, "We have left everything to follow you!"

29"I tell you the truth," Jesus replied, "no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel 30will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life. 31But many who are first will be last, and the last first."

This passage has always troubled me because it doesn't seem hard to falsify. Did all of the disciples receive a hundred times as much in this present age? The rewards listed are tangible things, not merely abstract blessings such as peace, or joy. Jesus is promising that they are going to be repaid for their faithfulness to him now and in the age to come.

We don't really know what happened to all of the apostles, but most of the legends about their deaths end badly. They all wind up murdered/martyred by one group or another. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of physical reward in the here and now for them.

Tradition holds that Mark was written by Peter's interpreter, so maybe when this particular teaching was recorded, Peter's life--one which was filled with persecution--served as a caution that persecution was part of the deal.

When we get to this exchange in Luke we find the rewards are not specifically listed, though there is still the assurance that there will be rewards in the current age for those who have sacrificed relationships for the sake of the Kingdom. Material things seemed to have dropped out of the story.

Perhaps as time passed there was a need to revisit the passage and de-emphasize the idea of financial or material rewards:

Luke 18:28-30
28Peter said to him, "We have left all we had to follow you!"

29"I tell you the truth," Jesus said to them, "no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God 30will fail to receive many times as much in this age and, in the age to come, eternal life."

When we get to Matthew, the passage takes a sharp turn. Earthly rewards have completely disappeared. Instead, rewards have become subject to a condition, that of the renewal of all things, when Jesus sits on his glorious throne:

Matthew 19:27-30

27Peter answered him, "We have left everything to follow you! What then will there be for us?"

28Jesus said to them, "I tell you the truth, at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. 29And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life. 30But many who are first will be last, and many who are last will be first.

The "current age" aspect has been supplanted and replaced with a future age in which all will be rewarded. This makes even more sense in Matthew when we consider that most scholars consider that Matthew was written between 70-100 AD. By then the temple had been destroyed and the Jewish Revolt had been put down. It isn't unlikely to think that the author of Matthew was having to re-examine what Jesus might have meant by this saying, because everything going on in the material world certainly didn't seem very promising.

I'll stop here, and continue later.....

Death

This might get morbid...but I do actually have a point to make.

The worst thing about my father's death was not that he died. Everybody dies. It's like the old movie line: Nobody's getting out of here alive!

No. The worst part of his death was that it went unnoticed for a week and a half. He was supposed to be out of town, so no one missed him until he didn't show up for work a week and a half later. He didn't have a cell phone, so when I tried to call him at home and he didn't answer, I figured I was just going to have wait until his vacation was over to speak to him.

A human body left unattended after death begins to deteriorate quite rapidly. Not only does it begin to deteriorate, but it begins to become food for other living things; insects, or animals if it is out in the open.

It is a morbid, unpleasant thing to dwell upon, and we hardly ever think about it because death and its effects are removed from our Western consciousness. When someone dies they are immediately taken to a morgue or a funeral parlor. They are embalmed with preservatives to keep them from rotting. They have their bodies emptied of fecal matter, and bodily fluids. They are dressed in attractive clothing and have their hair and makeup done. They are placed in satin-lined, oak or steel boxes with a polished sheen.

This is all done by other people. We don't see the deceased until all the dirty work is done and what we are left with is something resembling a wax figure. We gaze upon this figure and hold conversations at its side with other mourners, discussing how good he/she looks. We deceive ourselves with the luxurious funeral trappings, concealing from our consciousness the realities of what death means for a physical body. We provide ourselves with a sense of pseudo-immortality for the deceased person who is all dressed up with nowhere to go.

It isn't real.

Not only is it not real, but the entire process creates an impediment to our understanding of life and death.

I have become convinced that the Scriptural descriptions of Life and Death that we find in the Bible are based on simple observation and meditation. When Genesis describes man as being formed form the dust of the earth, it is a true description, because when people die, that is exactly what happens to them. An ancient observer had only to come across the remains of the dead to see that very quickly man transforms from a living being to inert, dusty matter.

When Genesis describes God breathing into the formed figure of man, bringing it to life, it is describing what must have seemed obvious to anyone:

Genesis 2:7

the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

Only living people breathe. A baby's life starts with its first breath, an adult's life ends with its last. Once breath permanently leaves your body, you're dead. And yet, what is breath? What is the impetus that makes a body breathe and continue breathing? To an ancient observer it would be a mystery, with no sense of lungs, or involuntary brain impulses that signal the body to continue breathing, how could one explain why death always comes with that last exhalation?

Another common and naturalistic description of life tied up with death appears in the command not to consume an animal's blood because "the life of a creature is in the blood". So life is found in breath and in blood. And just as when breath disappears, or returns to God, one dies, so too when one's blood pours out, life ends.

This is obvious when we think about it.

We keep people alive now by supplementing their breathing or blood supply. Thousands of years later we are still dealing in the same realms of life and death, breath and blood, as the Israelites did. Their words are no less profound or true, though we may think of them in a different light.

We are simultaneously more familiar with the physical, observable, biological processes of life, while being hopelessly disconnected from the physical, observable, biological processes of death. Because of this, we have an impoverished view of a large portion of Scripture as it pertains to life and death.

We don't understand that Death was/is an uncontrollable, unpredictable enemy readying itself to swallow up everybody. The lack of a belief in an after-life in early Judaism lays bare the fact that life was tied to a physical body, and death destroyed life in every sense. To hope for new life was to hope for a new physical existence, to hope for an escape from the decay.

We think that we have outwitted the nastiness of death, the disgust of decay, and the hopelessness of deterioration; but we haven't. We have only turned our gaze away from it.

This is what death looks like:

This is the home of Anthony Sowell, the Cleveland, Ohio man whose home had at least 11 murdered, decaying bodies in it.

What we feel when we think about the 11 bodies left in Anthony Sowell's house is probably quite similar to what an ancient culture might have felt about the despair of death and the mistreatment of human bodies. It's a visceral, raw, gut-wrenching emotion.

Because we have sanitized and trivialized death in its physical sense we have affected how we also see life. We live in our heads. We live in the abstract. We live through our thoughts and not through our actions.

It isn't how we were meant to live. It isn't reflective of the world view that much of Scripture was written in.

Because we misunderstand death, we misunderstand life.

Evolution's Impact on Theology

AVI is doing a series of posts about Evolution and Young Earth Creationism that's really good. It grew out of a post about Creationism, Evolution and Politics.

While I enjoy his postulations about how the creation story in Genesis might reflect certain aspects of the development of humanity, I can't help but feel as if it's missing the point when it comes to the interplay between Evolution and Creationism and the theological implications of the two.

What we make of Genesis might be a good window into how we see the relationship between God and man, the Divine and the earthly.

Creationism is rooted in the idea that the story in Genesis is revelation from God. Some people take the story as literally as possible, believing in six, 24-hour days of creative work by God. Some see it as a general sketch of the creation of the universe by God and the explanation of humanity's spiritual state, drawn in broad strokes. These two camps of Creationism really only differ in their sense of time. Both generally believe in a literal, historic Adam and Eve.

Many Christians have made peace with the idea of evolution, seeing it as an explanation of how God created humanity without feeling that it intrudes on the why of God's creation. That's a reasonable approach and one to which I would be willing to grant approval and assent. However, if we truly go down the path of accepting evolution as the "true" explanation of life on this planet, even if we are simply accepting it as a God-driven mechanism, there are widespread implications for our Christian theology.

One simple and relatively minor example....God's directive to keep the Sabbath holy is directly tied the Genesis 1 view of creation:

Exodus 20:8-11

8 "Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. 11 For in six days the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

What would the Jewish religion look like without the concept of Sabbath, a concept which was not only a weekly cycle, but which also appeared in the agricultural system and the idea of having a Sabbath year in which no one planted crops, leaving the ground fallow, resting until the next cycle of 6 years of productive work. The Sabbath dominated many of the ceremonies and rituals of Judaism, with special offerings made on Sabbaths. Even the story of the Israelites receiving manna from heaven has a reference to the Sabbath, with twice as much manna appearing on the day before the Sabbath because none would appear on the day of the Sabbath.

Here lies the heart of the conflict between christian evolution and creationism: What does evolution mean for the ideas which have served as the foundations of our religion? If the idea of a literal, six day creation is cast aside, large sections of the Old Testament become almost meaningless. Perhaps, that's overstating it...but, to be sure, it uproots any sense that the idea of a "Sabbath" as a reflection of creation is based on reality.

There are ways around this, theologically speaking. One could propose that the Sabbath-oriented Scriptures are God's concessions to working with beliefs which were already established within the Jewish community. An explanation in that form is only partially satisfying because it leaves us with communications from God which aren't based in reality, but which are based in God's willingness to use whatever means available to communicate "truth" to humans.

So....he didn't exactly create the world in six days....but the Israelites thought He did...so what's the harm? That's not a very comforting picture of God, as far as believing in a God who always speaks the "truth".

Another explanation can only be reached from a modern, Christian perspective; that of the progressive revelation of Scripture. The newer, Christ-inspired Scriptures of the New Testament outweigh and supersede the Old Testament directives.

Conservative, evangelical Christians are wishy-washy with this approach, usually using it when it suits them and they don't want to address the violence in the Old Testament, but also wanting to desperately cling to the parts of the Old Testament they like. Inspirational stories of biblical characters beating the odds with God on their side...."YES, we'll take those!" Violent stories of genocide and commands to stone adulterers, homosexuals, non-parent-honoring children and Sabbath-breakers..."NO, not so much!"

Honestly, I don't have a problem with that approach, except for the fact that most evangelicals won't own up to what they're doing. Instead of saying,"We don't believe X is truly representative of God's nature and his will for humanity, so we reject it as an imperfect, wrong approach to God," they will inevitably find a way to co-opt the violent texts and make them mean something that they really don't, or simply avoid them.

Anyone been to a great Bible study on Leviticus, lately?

My first example I mistakenly labeled as a minor problem. As a Christian in the 21st century it does seem minor to me because my worship of God is not tied to the rituals established in the Old Testament. To a Jewish person worshipping at the Temple 3,000 years ago, it would have been a major problem.

Christianity does not get off scot-free from evolution's impact. While the Sabbath directives have generally been loosened up to the point of non-existence, most of what we call "Christian" theology has Genesistic (I know that's not a word) themes running through it.

The theory of original sin is tied to Genesis. The division of roles for men and women as described in the New Testament have their roots in Genesis. Even the Christology of Jesus and his resurrection is tied into Genesis, with comparisons to Adam being made to explain Jesus' significance.

Adam of Genesis is the first Adam, Jesus is the last Adam. Luke's genealogy lists Adam as a son of God, presumably uniquely created, right after establishing Jesus' virgin birth and unique creation and the story of the voice from heaven declaring Jesus as God's son, after Jesus' baptism.

Paul, especially, goes into great lengths describing how sin and death came through the first Adam, and life is coming from the last Adam:

1 Corinthians 15:21-22

21For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. 22For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.

Essentially, our understanding of Jesus' coming and his resurrection are based on the Genesis stories.

I sound like a YEC advocate, which I'm not.

Yet...I understand the YEC movement and their fear and protestations to evolution. It isn't science which they are protesting; it's the loss of an entire paradigm of understanding God, Humanity, how those two relate, and what it means to be a Christian.

I'll offer more opinions on that later. This post is already quite long.

Update--Blogger Doug Chaplin gets to the point better than me.

Reconciliation with Paul

The Apostle Paul.

There has existed within me a love-hate relationship with Paul. As a fairly intelligent woman, reading his restrictions on women is vexing to me:

1 Corinthians 14:34-35

As in all the congregations of the saints, 34. women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the Law says. 35. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

and

1 Timothy 2:11-15
A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent. 13. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. 15. But women will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

It's a puzzling thing to read after Paul's freeing declarations in other Epistles--

27. for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.

Even considering that the contexts are different--the first two statements relating to an order of worship and practical roles, the third being a refutation of being bound by the Mosaic Law--it still seems a contradictory attitude. If there is no male or female in Christ, in Paul's mind, why does he still lay Eve's sin at the feet of women and restrict their roles and participation in Christian life?

The picture becomes more confusing when one considers the fact that Paul often worked with women and seemed to appreciate their contributions in contending for the faith. He takes the time to acknowledge them in various writings and owes much to the support of women like Lydia and Priscilla working with her husband Aquilla.

However, this is not Paul's only idiosyncrasy. Depending on Paul's mood, he can be abrasive and harsh, referencing castration as a wish towards Judaizers of Christianity, or weepy and emotional as he describes his desire for the Jewish people to come to salvation. He can urge the church in Corinth to cast out an unrepentant member without mercy, and then implore them to have mercy and let him back into the fold. An iron fist in a velvet glove.

Perhaps more than any other writer of Scripture, we get a clear picture of his personality which seems inseparable from his epistles and teachings. He is emotive and self-reflective in a way other New Testament authors are not. He speaks of his own experiences and feelings, using them to further his arguments and convince his audience of the trustworthiness of his beliefs.

We have a picture of a whole, complete person in what he has left behind.

It is only through thinking of Paul and his writings in this particular way that I can reconcile myself to him, making sense of his varied attitudes which seem contradictory or complicated. He reminds me of the uncle at Thanksgiving who everybody loves and respects, but who can also be slightly obnoxious and overbearing. People put up with the bad traits because they are heavily outweighed by the good traits.

I actually have a warm spot in my heart for Paul, now.

Reading through the many debates about the Historical Jesus, the possibly late dating of the gospels and the contention that most of what Christianity is today was somehow invented/accumulated much later than the events the gospels record, I am always struck by the stalwart arguments we have in Paul. The gospels can be debated and re-dated. Compelling arguments can be made about the development of Christology coming much later, placing the Gospel of John in a category of highly developed treatise instead of a simple retelling of Jesus' life. Points can be made about dubious insertions into the other, non-Pauline epistles.

In many ways Paul stands at the crux of Christianity and its self-understanding. He answers the questions with which we are left about Jesus. He makes the interpretive leaps that give Christianity forward momentum and direction. Without his work we would be left with little guidance about the meaning and purpose of Jesus' story.

It is precisely this point which some people use as a contrast to the Jesus of the gospels, making distinctions between how Paul engages Jesus and how the synoptic gospels engage him.

Yet....no matter how sketchy and perilous the academic study of an Historical Jesus becomes, teetering on the edge of obliterating any spiritual frame of reference for Christianity, there is always Paul standing in the way.

This powerful figure, this indefatigable creature, warts and all, has left a record not only of what he believed, but clues as to what those around him believed. It is a priceless snapshot of the conversation and movement surrounding Jesus and how it was playing out in the first century.

I can forgive Paul for his wavering on women. I can forgive Paul for his sometimes harsh way. I can look past that and see a man trying his utmost to spread a message that he truly believed, letting nothing stand in his way.

This is the way that I am beginning to rebuild with the lumber of the tree which I have hacked down. I reconcile myself to Scripture, not because it is inerrant, or scientific, or unchangeable, but because I am reconciling myself to a community, to people, and to the figures who have, through their own lives, attempted to birth God's kingdom into this world.

How I Changed My Mind

My change in perspective has come about in several ways.  The first step was in realizing that the doctrine of "inerrancy" that I had been taught and embraced for much of my Christian journey was basically wrong. The aftershocks of that still rumble through me every once in a while. I had become so used to looking at The Bible as a singular "Word of God" in which every word, every story, and every principle had been handed down through perfect, divine revelation that when I began to poke at the concept a little and noticed it crumbling under pressure I was distraught.

When I was younger, I attended a Christian University. I took several religion courses, some as requirements, and some for my own personal interest. I probably would have majored in Religion if I had belonged to a denomination in which women were valued in leadership roles. However, I belonged to the SBC which has been, and continues to be, disproportionately obsessed with enforcing traditional gender roles in the Church. As such, it seemed like getting a Religion degree would serve no purpose in that particular denomination for me. It would be useless as far as pursuing any official role in ministry. I wasn't really open to other denominations at that point, convinced that while the SBC wasn't perfect it was as close as possible to what I thought of at the time as "biblical" Christianity. 

I wasn't ignorant of New Testament studies, or even the knowledge that the compilation of the Canon was not as straightforward as it seemed. I had a divided mind on the issue without realizing it. That divided mind was reinforced and affirmed not only by my fellow students, but by most of my professors. I was blind to the fact that the ways in which we spoke about Scripture were contradictory. On the one hand, we would have great discussions about conflicts surrounding the formation of the Canon, or particular doctrines, noting the uncertainty of what it all meant. On the other hand, each Sunday would find most of us in very conservative churches affirming that Scripture was the "Word of God" in that mystical, magical way that imported great meaning into every verse we read.

Some of my professors were also ministers in local churches who, without a doubt, taught their congregations the doctrine of inerrancy. I didn't think it at all unusual.

The two prongs undergirding inerrancy, without which it can't stand, are the beliefs that everything that happens in history happens by God's purposeful, sovereign will, and secondly that the writers of Scripture were somehow more holy and peculiar in their relationship with God, passing along insights which were given only to a very elite group of people. Without belief in those two ideas, inerrancy cannot hold up.

I've recently connected the first idea to Calvinism, finally understanding the ways in which it interacts with that strain of Christianity. It is no coincidence that Calvinists and the doctrine of inerrancy are so interlocked. It's hard to tell which came first; the belief in inerrancy causing the formation of Calvinist theology, or the idea of God's far-reaching, sovereign, active control of every aspect of the Universe causing a belief in inerrancy. Because the Church assembled these texts, it must be God's will that The Bible we have is the one we were meant to have and has been carefully inspired and preserved by God. In other words, it happened in a particular way, so God must have willed it to happen that way because nothing happens, in this view, that God hasn't willed to happen.

Is that clear as mud?

If you're a Calvinist, then you have no problems that can't eventually be solved through this circular logic. I don't mean to sound uncharitable, because to be truthful I can't find any belief system which doesn't at some level have circular, self-validating logic. We can't know all things, so any comprehensive opinion on the matter will always have some basic presuppositions guiding it. Some presuppositions are simply more sweeping in scale than others.

Now I have long glanced down my nose at Calvinism ever since my freshman year in college when one of my new friends explained that her pastor taught that Christ didn't die for everyone's sins, but only for those whom he chose beforehand. Everyone else was just plain out of luck and better bring some marshmallows to roast during their long stay in Hell. I was outraged, aghast, revolted, and convinced that this was the worst heresy I had ever heard of. Slowly, I began to realize that not only did this particular friend believe this, but so did many other people, including some of the professors I knew. There were variations in how strongly individuals held to TULIP(only follow that link if you're up to tasting some strong Calvinist Kool-Aid), some expressed a weak assent, while others wholeheartedly viewed it as the "theory of everything" making sense of the Cosmos for us lowly humans.

I was young and earnest in my faith. While never completely reconciling myself to Calvinism, I did begin incorporating some of its theology into my view of God. I was proving the principle that humans, despite their best intentions to be objective, are notoriously easily influenced through time, repetition, and the appearance of authority. Because pastors and professors were communicating these concepts, they must be at least partly true...right? 

To concede that they were completely wrong would have shaken my faith to its core. I wasn't at a mature enough age to handle that kind of dissonance and keep any shred of belief intact. It was all or nothing. To believe that the people who were teaching me were gravely mistaken would have called into question any trust I might have had that I  knew anything about God, or that my experiences with Him had any merit to them.

So what changed?

Well, I could never get around the Calvinist version of God's Sovereignty and the horrific tragedies throughout history. There are really only two ways to reconcile them.  One way is to dispassionately declare that God willed even the most terrible things to happen because he had some higher purpose, or just because he wanted to. He has some master plan going on and even The Holocaust was a part of that plan.  Another way is to consider that much of what transpires on this blue planet is in no way connected to God's divine will. Evil is perpetuated by people who make evil choices. Not everything that happens occurs on the basis of God's active choosing.

I could never, in any way, make God the author of Evil in the way that Calvinism does. Calvinists will say that's not what Calvinism teaches, going to great lengths and producing voluminous works to try and redefine very basic ideas of good and evil and causes in order to portray God as both Sovereign and guiltless of evil.

It doesn't matter how many words are used to do this. Even my 9 and 7 year old children would be able to see through that kind of reasoning in a few minutes....see my last post for more evidence of that. (As an aside, I think it's funny that people always tell us to "be as little children" when we question things, implying that children readily believe whatever they are told.  My experience with children is that they are the most severe critics and detectors of BS....hardly unquestioning drones.  They naturally poke and prod at most everything they are told.)

If God doesn't cause everything to happen...if circumstances aren't the way they are because God caused them to be...if events happen in history which aren't God's will....then on what basis can we declare Divine intervention in the compilation of the Canon? It doesn't mean that God couldn't have intervened and caused the Church to assemble this particular set of Scriptures. It doesn't mean that God couldn't have inerrantly inspired the biblical writers. However, it does mean we can't appeal to the logic of " it happened in this way, so it must have been by God's will."

So, if you're not fully Calvinist in scope, you can't rely on that presupposition to support inerrancy.

I'll work on another post about the second prong of upholding inerrancy next.

How Relevant is The Old Testament?

Before you get out the pitchforks and torches, let me say that I am not saying we can't learn things from the Old Testament.  It is full of the history which serves as a foundation for Christianity. However, I've noticed that most of the time I come across a particularly wacky teaching, whether it's prosperity gospel, special diets, the "favor" of God, etc., it is based on the Old Testament. A few verses here, a passage out of context there, and a couple of mental gymnastics combine to make a "new" teaching.

Our Sunday School class has been using a bible study which has focused on the Old Testament for quite a while. I began noticing that the questions the study used were reaching for lessons that weren't in the text.  A particular section might deal with a bizarre miraculous event, and then try to force an application out of it.

Elijah challenges the prophets of Baal to sacrifice a burnt offering to their god  and he will do the same.  The catch is, whose god can burn up the offering without the intervention of his human followers? Elijah's God wins and Elijah orders the slaughter of the priests of Baal.

Bible study question:  Can you think of a time when you faced "prophets of Baal" in your life. What did you do?

Gee...I can't remember the last time I had to kill someone to preserve the one, true faith.  Give me a moment to think about it.

Then, there are huge swaths of Leviticus which are hard for me to read, much less comprehend. As a woman, reading the codes of behavior and seeing what little worth I would have had in that time is overwhelming.  I can think of a few churches that would still teach that because those parts are in the Old Testament, they are part of the universal standards God has.  These are the same types of churches which would also defend slavery, because there are slavery regulations, which means that God must approve of slavery.

Reading something like this is disconcerting:

Exodus 21:20-21

 ²⁰ "If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, ²¹ but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property.

It's OK to beat your slave senseless with a rod as long he gets up after a day or two.

There should be a recognition that we are reading through a vast chasm of time and cultural distance when we come across these passages. Slavery was common and accepted; yet, simply because it existed does not mean it was by God's divine wish. 

A frequent claim is made by Christians that God never changes.  Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever(Hebrews 13:8).  This is supposed to mean that if God wanted things done a certain way in the Old Testament, then nothing has changed.  He still operates in the same ways. We know that He doesn't because no one has recently beheld a burning bush, or received manna or quail from Heaven, so we usually try to force our current, Christian understandings into these ancient texts.

When we read David venting his spleen at "enemies" in the Psalms, we interpret it in terms of spiritual enemies, thinking of spiritual forces, or devils, replacing the literal enemies with whom David contended, with our Christianized version. We have to do that because as Christians we aren't supposed to have "enemies", or if we have them, we aren't supposed to wish evil things to happen to them.  We're supposed to pray for them. Our choice is to either make the Psalms mean something they didn't, or recognize them as the passionate, human songs of people trying to express what they thought was right.

Reading though the gospels, I noticed that when Jesus discussed things with the Pharisees, he almost always referred to the Old Testament regulations as the Law of Moses.  Or he would say,"Moses said....I say," creating a contrast between what Moses had written and what he, as the Messiah, has declared.

Matthew 8:4

Then Jesus said to him, "See that you don't tell anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the gift Moses commanded, as a testimony to them."

Why does Jesus refer to the Law in this way?  Why doesn't he say,"offer the gift God commanded."?

He also revises the Mosaic code on divorce:

Matthew 19:8

Jesus replied, "Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning."

I can't read that without thinking about the implications of what it means; that not everything in the Mosaic Law was based on God's divine decree. Moses had been chosen as a leader for the Israelite people and given the authority to create a code for them to live by.  The code was not, in and of itself, a word for word recording of God's communication with Moses.  Moses was free to guide the Israelites on the basis of what he did know of God's will.  As the appointed mediator, he was given discretion to lead them to the best of his ability.

That last paragraph would probably earn me the title of "heretic" in some circles, but I can't make any sense of Leviticus and Deuteronomy in any other way.  How else can we explain why it would be sinful to wear clothing made of two different kinds of material, or why a woman was considered to be unclean twice as long after bearing a girl than she was after bearing a boy(Leviticus 12)? One alternative is to believe that the God of the Universe really cared about the particular material of his people's clothing, or thought that females were twice as unacceptable to Him as males.  Another alternative is to see God as working in a particular culture, without necessarily endorsing it.

The Mosaic code gave the Israelites order and standards to live by.  While we might think many of those standards are violent or unreasonable, they were no doubt an improvement in a tribe of undisciplined people living in the desert with no stability or system to guide them. From that perspective, the Mosaic code put them on the path of attempting to live in a way that was unselfish and had pleasing God as its ultimate goal.

Yet....what does that mean for Christians now?  What are we to make of all those strange regulations in light of Matthew 5:17-20?

17"Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.18I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. 19Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 20For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

This quote is always trotted out when discussions about hot button topics whose main arguments are derived from the Old Testament are taking place. It leaves me scratching my head, because it goes against not only the way Jesus interacts with the Law, but also how Paul describes our relation to the Law.

However, right after this quote, Jesus lists a particular regulation from the Law and then reinterprets it, eschewing "an eye for an eye"--straight from the Mosaic code--in preference for "turn the other cheek".  He couldn't mean that the Law recorded by Moses wouldn't pass away, because he is in the very same breath redacting it for his audience. 

If we think of the Law as the beginning step towards faith in God, conforming our lives to a higher, purer order determined by God, then the Mosaic Law is not lost, but is only a stepping stone toward the spiritual life Christ came to bring us.  

As Christians we are past that particular stepping stone; instead, we are walking on the water itself, empowered by God's Spirit.

While Christianity is born out of Judaism and the Old Testament, it has violently broken from the way Judaism understood man's relationship to God. 

The Pharisees understood this and showed through their actions that they understood the ramifications of the principles Jesus was teaching. It wasn't only their sinfulness that blinded them to Jesus, but their understanding that believing Him would change everything they understood about God.

In questioning the man who was born blind whom Jesus healed, they reveal where their allegiance lies:

John 9:28-29

28Then they hurled insults at him and said, "You are this fellow's disciple! We are disciples of Moses! 29We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow[Jesus], we don't even know where he comes from."

Their high regard for Moses prevented them from considering the possibility that God might behave in ways other than what Moses described. 

Lazarus and the Rich Man

Assistant Village Idiot has a post about Lazarus and The Rich Man which reminded me that I never addressed the case against annihilation.(You'll have to scroll down to find it.  He went on a posting spree a few days ago...and his post titles are not set up for direct links)

Out of all the obstacles standing in the way of annihilation/conditional immortality, the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man is probably the most difficult passage to surmount.  I've dealt with the passages using the term "hell". I've dealt with the affirmative side of what Scripture says about what happens after death. I've made a pretty strong case for my views.

However...there are 2 major passages which complicate things--Lazarus and the Rich Man, and some verses in Revelation which specifically mention everlasting torment. Revelation, I'm not too worried about. It's full of dramatic, apocalyptic language, and images which people don't fully agree on how to interpret or understand. Just as I don't really expect a literal seven-headed dragon to rise out of the sea to start the ball rolling on Armageddon, I don't think we can base an entire doctrine of the after-life on a couple of verses from a book filled with purposely provocative language.

The parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man is not necessarily evidence against the idea of annihilation. Annihilation only has as its main idea that, at some point, those who don't have eternal life are destroyed; they don't continue on for all eternity. It's feasible to believe in an indeterminate location or duration of the "soul" before that happens. Conditional Immortality, on the other hand, precludes any consciousness outside of the consciousness of the body. It would be incompatible with an interim place of conscious existence before the Resurrection.

So what to do with that parable? Honestly, I'm not sure. I think that the point of the parable is its ending line, delivered by the patriarch Abraham to the Rich Man after the Rich Man has begged him to send someone back from the dead to warn his family:

Luke 16:31

³¹"He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.' "

Jesus is not giving a teaching on the after-life so much as he is teaching that people who refuse to believe what they already have will not believe even in the face of the miraculous.

I'm not sure we should read the parable as a literal story any more than we would read Jesus' parables about shrewd managers and vineyard owners as "true" stories. The point is not the story, but the truth which it is trying to communicate. In the same way that there doesn't have to be an actual Good Samaritan in order for the lesson to hit its mark, Lazarus and the Rich Man may simply be a vehicle leading Jesus' listeners to the place where he wants them to go.

Not coincidentally, Luke continues the theme of immediate Paradise or Punishment and relays the conversation between Jesus and the good thief on the cross. Luke records the conversation between them and quotes Jesus as saying:

Luke 23:43

⁴³Jesus answered him, "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise."

In a recent blog conversation elsewhere, one commenter noted that the gospels have no punctuation. The statement could just as easily read,"I tell you the truth today....you will be with me in paradise." I thought that was an interesting idea and would easily clean up the whole matter....but that doesn't necessarily mean it's true.

The main problem with relying on the conversation between Jesus and the "good thief" is that Mark and Matthew do not record this conversation. Not only do they not record it, but they declare that both of the robbers were insulting Jesus.

Mark 15:32b

Those crucified with him also heaped insults on him.

Matthew 27:44

⁴⁴In the same way the robbers who were crucified with him also heaped insults on him.

It's a contradiction. If you believe in an inerrant view of Scripture, you're going to have to explain this. If you don't, then you can rule out either Luke's version or Matthew and Mark's version as being either an embellishment (in the case of Luke), or mistaken information(in the case of Matthew and Mark). The gospel of John doesn't relate anything that the robbers said, so it remains silent on the issue. 

If the story of the good thief in Luke is an embellishment, it does shed some light on the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. It is self-consistent with what Luke is trying to communicate about the afterlife, though none of the other gospels give such explicit references to an after-life immediately after death. Luke stands alone in his portrayal.

Taken as a whole, that leads me to give less credence to the parable as anything more than a teaching illustration.