The Rebel God

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2010-03-09T19:31:00.001-08:00

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My Article in Evangelical Quarterly: Penal Substitution and the Church Fathers

2010-03-09T11:38:00.001-08:00

I just heard that my article on the Church Father's view of the atonement will be published in the upcoming (May) issue of Evangelical Quarterly! EQ is an international peer reviewed academic journal of Bible and Theology edited by I. Howard Marshall and published in the UK by Paternoster. So I've doing a happy little dance right now :^)

The article is a response to the book Pierced for our Transgressions claim that penal substitution was taught by the early church. The authors back this up with a host of citations from Justin Martyr, Athanasius, Augustine, and other big guns from the early church, all who seem to be espousing penal substitution. After this book came out there was quite a bit of buzz across the internet of folks exclaiming that the PfoT authors had pretty much conclusively "disproved" the misconception (taught by folks like me) that penal substitution was not taught for the first 1000 years of church history. So I was understandably a little bit irked by this claim which went against the larger tide of patristic scholarship. The problem was that it had been considered so self-evident for so long that the early church did not teach penal substitution that most historians and scholars would simply state it as fact without feeling the need to back it up. So against that the detailed array of quotations marshaled by the PfoT authors was pretty impressive. In fact, it was the one positive thing that NT Wright had to say about the book(!)

The problem is that the quotes they cite are all taken out of context and thus misrepresent what the the early church was saying. So in my EQ article I take a look at the citations they give, paying attention to the larger context, and showing that the early church not only did not teach penal substitution, but in fact explicitly denies it. Here's the tricky part though: What they do teach is substitutionary atonement, and so to folks who think that the only way to understand substitutionary atonement is in the way Calvinists do, this of course looks like the Calvinist doctrine. Only if you really listen to what the church fathers are saying, actually reading them in context, they are understanding substitutionary atonement in a very different context - one which has to do with healing our sin and liberating us from bondage.

In correcting the record, I thought it would be important to say this via an academic peer reviewed journal in order to take the conversation beyond the blogosphere and get it in front of theologians and scholars as well. My hope that it will open up the possibility of some dialog here, because while I think that the authors of Pierced for Our Transgressions are definitely wrong in their representation of the fathers, at the same time I also know that they are good guys who love Jesus and are all pretty sharp to boot. What I really appreciate about the atmosphere of debate in England (both EQ and the PfoT authors are in the UK) as opposed to here in the States is that while we tend to have polarized sides on issues that shut down communication, they are more accustomed to lively debates. That's true specifically of Evangelicalism here, and across the pond as well. So I hope that this will spur a healthy discussion, even though we obviously disagree significantly.

Luther's Works Complete Tables of Contents and Cross Listing

2010-02-27T12:51:00.000-08:00

It's quite difficult to sort out the massive collection of Luther's Works. Of the 55 volumes of the American edition (LW), vol 49 alone contains 119 titles! So I created a complete table of contents for all 55 volumes with cross references to their sources in the Weimar critical edition (WA). To my knowledge this is not available any where in print, certainly not in digital (i.e. searchable) form.

The table of contents of the 105 volume Weimar Ausgabe (WA) is provided as well. I am in the process of cataloging the full contents of each volume. So far I have completed vols 1-20 of "Schriften".

Finally, I have also provided Concordia's listing of works by Luther not yet translated into English (LW2). Because the list is digital and thus searchable, I hope this will provide a useful resource for Luther research.

Check it out here:

Luther's Works Complete Tables of Contents and Cross Listing

Justification means "made righteous"

2010-02-22T01:18:00.000-08:00

A Little Bible Study on δικαιόω

I've been translating the book of Romans from the Greek and wanted to do a word study on δικαιόω to determine whether it should be translated as “declared righteous” or “made righteous,” that is: when God justifies (δικαιόω) the ungodly does this mean that he actually changes us ontologically, making us holy? Or does it simply refer to what traditional Lutheran scholarship has called a legal “imputed righteousness,” meaning we are declared to be righteous even though we are not. This sense of δικαιόω as “declaring righteous” is still prevalent today. It is for example how the recent NET Bible translates δικαιόω in Romans. I would like to demonstrate here that the NET Bible – for all of the many other merits of this excellent translation – is mistaken here, and that the primary meaning of δικαιόω for Paul should instead be translated as “make righteous.”

Δικαιόω in the Old Testament

It is a safe assumption that Paul understanding of the Greek word δικαιόω is rooted in the Hebrew understanding of that concept found in his Bible (the OT). So by exploring how δικαιόω is used in the Greek Old Testament (the LXX), and comparing that to the Hebrew, we can gain insight into how Paul the Jew understands δικαιόω. In the LXX, the δικαιόω almost always corresponds to the Hebrew tsadaq (צָדַק). Both mean essentially mean “to recognize as good/right”.

The simplest way δικαιόω/tsadaq is used in the OT is to speak of making correct deliberations. Deuteronomy for example says that when there is a dispute, the judge should “decide between them, declaring one to be in the right/innocent (δικαιόω/tsadaq) and the other to be in the wrong” (Deut 25:1)^¹. Conversely, Isaiah prophesies against those who “justify the ungodly for a bribe” (Isa 5:23), and God declares in Exodus “I will not justify the ungodly” (Ex 23:7). Here the meaning of δικαιόω/tsadaq essentially means to “declare righteous” in the sense of a legal acquittal, and it is expressly forbidden. Only the righteous may be declared right in God’s eyes. Proverbs goes so far as to declare that “the one who justifies the guilty” is “an abomination to the Lord” (Pr 17:15).^² The idea here of affirming the good and condemning the guilty seems straightforward enough. It’s morality 101. But how are we to understand Paul’s statement in Romans that God “justifies the ungodly”? In fact, we find in these three passages the same exact phrase:

Isa 5:23: οἱ δικαιοῦντες τὸν ἀσεβῆ ἕνεκεν δώρων καὶ τὸ δίκαιον τοῦ δικαίου αἴροντες.
They justify the ungodly for the sake of bribes and take away the rights of the righteous.

Exod 23:7: ἀπὸ παντὸς ῥήματος ἀδίκου ἀποστήσῃ, ἀθῷον καὶ δίκαιον οὐκ ἀποκτενεῖς καὶ οὐ δικαιώσεις τὸν ἀσεβῆ ἕνεκεν δώρων.

Keep away from unjust sentences, you shall not execute the innocent and righteous, and you shall not justify the ungodly^³ for the sake of bribes.

Ro 4:5: τῷ δὲ μὴ ἐργαζομένῳ πιστεύοντι δὲ ἐπὶ τὸν δικαιοῦντα τὸν ἀσεβῆ λογίζεται ἡ πίστις αὐτοῦ εἰς δικαιοσύνην.

But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness. (NRSV)

So how can Paul claim that God justifies the ungodly when his Bible seems to say the exact opposite? I would propose that the problem comes from translating δικαιόω/tsadaq as “declare righteous” in Romans. This is clearly the sense in Isaiah and Exodus above (which is condemned), but unless we want to suppose that Paul is contradicting Scripture, this cannot be what he means. The answer I would propose is that Paul is using the term δικαιόω/tsadaq in a different sense. He is not speaking in a legal forensic sense of acquittal, but is proclaiming, as he says, a righteousness “apart from law.” This is in contrast a righteousness of/from God which is “testified to in the law and the prophets” (Ro 3:21). Indeed when we continue to look at how δικαιόω/tsadaq is used in the Old Testament, this is precisely what we find.

Because of the connection in Hebrew of the idea of righteousness to the character of God, there is a sense of tsadaq meaning shown to be innocent or good that can get lost when translated with the English “right”. For example when the Psalmist says “The judgments of Yahweh are true and altogether δικαιόω” the sense is not so much that God’s judgments are accurate, as that they are good. Similarly, the book of Job draws a parallel between being declared righteous (tsadaq) and being called pure: “Can mortals be righteous (tsadaq) before God? Can human beings be pure before their Maker?” (Job 4:17 NRSV).^⁴ This same parallel form equating tsadaq with purity is found in Job 15:14 & 25:4 as well. Similarly, David complains “in vain I have kept my heart pure” (Ps 73:13, =LXX 72:13), the Hebrew here for “pure” is zakah (זָכָה) but in the LXX it is translated with δικαιόω: “I have kept my heart right.”

Paul’s use of δικαιόω

We also find that δικαιόω/tsadaq takes on the sense not only of declaring someone to be pure or righteous, but of making them pure and righteous. We read in Isaiah 53 for example that the servant “will make righteous (δικαιόω/tsadaq) many, for he bore their sin” (Isa 53:11). Here we have the picture of the priest who bears the sins the people, that is, we have a picture of purification. Daniel similarly speaks of the temple itself being “made tsadaq” (Dan 8:14), which various English translations have interpreted to mean “cleansed” (KJV, ASV), “restored” (NRSV, NLT), or “reconsecrated” (NIV). In both of the above cases what is at play is some sort of transformation. God will not simply declare that a person is righteous when they are not. As Paul says in Romans 3:20 (quoting from Psalm 143:2 =LXX 142:2), “Do not enter into judgment with your servant, for no one living is will be justified (δικαιόω/tsadaq) before you.” But then Paul adds, “by observing the law.” On our own we cannot turn our ungodliness into righteousness and purity. But God can. The prophet Micah writes:

“I bear the wrath of the Lord because I sinned against him. Until he δικαιόω my case, and will decide for me, and leads me into the light. I will see his righteousness.” (Micah 7:9)^⁵

Here δικαιόω cannot simply mean “declare righteousness” because it immediately follows a confession of sin. Even if we translate δικαιόω as “defend my cause” we know that God has declared in no uncertain terms that he will not defend the ungodly. God will not participate in a legal fiction. The speaker here confesses their own sin, and that they stand under wrath, but nevertheless puts their hope in God’s righteousness not their own. I will see his righteousness. This is the same faith which Paul speaks of, “such faith is reckoned as righteousness” (Ro 4:5). It is a faith which – in spite of our sin – entrusts its cause to God’s righteousness. But how exactly will are we “brought into the light” as Micah says?

In a similar passage Isaiah writes, “All the descendants of Israel will be δικαιόω from the Lord and glorified in God” (Isa 45:25). Again the context is that of being sinners. God has just said to wayward Israel a few verses earlier “turn to me so you can be delivered” (v 22), and in verse 21 God declares “there is no one righteous, and no savior besides me”^⁶ There is no one righteous. For those familiar with Romans this surely evokes Paul’s florilegia where he declares that all of humanity is under sin. God is not promising to declare sinful Israel righteousness, but to make them righteousness. Because of the righteousness of God our savior, Micah tells us, we are “made righteous/pure from God” – ἀπὸ κυρίου δικαιωθήσονται.

“I am God and there is no other besides me. There is no one righteous, no savior besides me. Turn to me and you shall be saved...” They will be made righteous by the Lord. All the offspring of the sons of Israel will be glorified in God^⁷. (Isa 45:21-22,25 LXX)

As we have seen, there is a range of meaning in the OT for δικαιόω, and likewise there is a range of meaning in Paul. There are times where Paul does clearly appear to use the term δικαιόω in the sense of declaring or recognizing someone as righteous. For example quoting Psalm 51:4 (=LXX 50:6), Paul writes, “That you may be vindicated (δικαιόω) in your words, and will prevail when you are judged” (Ro 3:4)^⁸. Since this passage refers to God, it is evident that God is not being made right, but simply that God’s words are being recognized as right. So δικαιόω can mean declared right or good, just as it can in the OT. However, just as in the OT δικαιόω has a range of meaning, it has that same range of meaning for Paul as well.

In his first letter to Corinth, Paul writes, “you were washed, you were sanctified, you were made righteous in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor 6:11). Here (as we have also seen in several OT passages) Paul directly juxtaposes and connotes δικαιόω with purification and holiness. In other words, the δικαιόω which comes “in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” means being washed and sanctified.^⁹ When passages such as Roman 5:9 are translated as “since we have now been made righteous by his blood, we will be saved through him from God’s wrath” they not only make more sense, (if we have been made righteous, then the cause of God’s wrath has clearly been removed), but they are also in line with Scripture. Alternatively, to translate verses like Rom 5:9 and others
as “declared righteous” is not only logically convoluted, but as we have seen blatantly contradicts Scripture.

In Romans 6:6-7 Paul writes, “We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed (δικαιόω) from sin” (NRSV). Because we are co-crucified with Christ in baptism, sin in us has been abolished, removed (καταργέομαι) and as a result we are δικαιόω from sin Paul says. The BDAG gives for this use of δικαιόω the definition, “make free/pure.”^¹⁰ A change has taken place that is not simply legal. As a result of that real change, because our sin has been removed, the cause of God’s righteous anger is also removed. God has made Jesus “to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God ” (2 Co 5:21 NRSV). Let me underline every word here: we have in Christ become the righteousness of God – γενώμεθα δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ. Paul writes, “if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! (2 Co 5:17 NRSV). That is what the δικαιόω from God means in Romans. As Paul writes, “Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to δικαίωσις^¹¹ and life for all.For just as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous” (Ro 5:18-19 NRSV). Paul’s understanding of δικαιόω is unmistakable here. As he explicitly spells out for us, it means “made righteous” δίκαιοι κατασταθήσονται. As Paul says, no human being will be recognized as righteous before God by observance of the law (Ro 3:20), but we can be made righteous by God’s righteousness. When δικαιόω is read in this way, what Paul writes in Romans 4:5 is no longer a contradiction to what we read in the law (Ex 23:7) and the prophets (Isa 5:23), but its solution.

“But to one who without works trusts him who makes the ungodly righteous/pure, such faith is reckoned as righteousness” (Ro 4:5).

God’s saving goodness makes the ungodly good. To paraphrase what Paul writes in Romans 3:20, we find in Paul the proclamation of a righteousness that comes from God – apart from a forensic legal understanding – which is testified to in the law and the prophets. It is about justification in the sense of being set right. It is about a real ontological change effected in us by the indwelling life of God. It is about becoming a new creation in Christ.

NOTES

1 The LXX here is δικαιώσωσιν τὸν δίκαιον καὶ καταγνῶσιν τοῦ ἀσεβοῦς “declare right/good the righteous and condemn the wicked”.

See also 1 Kings 8:32, Isa 43:9, Job 33:32, Gen 44:16, Isa 43:26, Ps 51:4 (=LXX 50:6)

2 The Hebrew here in Proverbs for “justify the ungodly” is exactly the same as in Isaiah :
מַצְדִּיק רָשָׁע The LXX however is different: ὃς δίκαιον κρίνει τὸν ἄδικον.

3 LXX. In the Hebrew MT God declares “I will not justify the ungodly” לֹא־אַצְדִּיק רָשָׁע

4 This is a form typical of Hebrew verse known as doubling. See W. Gesenius, et al, Hebrew Grammar, (2nd English ed.) 475 §150.h

5 My translation from the LXX: ὀργὴν κυρίου ὑποίσω, ὅτι ἥμαρτον τῷ, ἕως τοῦ δικαιῶσαι αὐτὸν τὴν δίκην μου, καὶ ποιήσει τὸ κρίμα μου καὶ ἐξάξει με εἰς τὸ φῶς, ὄψομαι τὴν δικαιοσύνην αὐτοῦ.

6 δίκαιος καὶ σωτὴρ οὐκ ἔστιν πάρεξ ἐμοῦ

7 Compare this to Rom 8:30 where Paul makes a progressive connection between election, justification (being made right), and glorification, “And those he predestined, he also called; and those he called, he also set right; and those he set right, he also glorified.”

8 Note that in the same Psalm David prays to God, “create in me a clean heart” (v 10) expressing the same basic idea of δικαιόω meaning making righteous or pure.

9 The BDAG
states that δικαιόω in this verse specifically means “you have become pure” (s.v. at 3 on 1 Co 6:11)

10 BDAG s.v. at 3

11 δικαίωσις is the noun form of the verb δικαιόω

Luther on temptation and beer

2010-02-04T00:42:00.000-08:00

"Be strong and of good courage, and by all means throw aside these monstrous thoughts. Whenever the devil vexes you with these thoughts, seek the company of others, or drink more, joke, make nonsense, or engage in some other form of merriment. Sometimes one must drink more, joke, make nonsense, and even commit some sin in defiance and contempt of the devil in order not to give him an opportunity to make us scrupulous about trifles."

-Martin Luther, Letter to Jerome Weller: On the Devil, July 1530

Exegesis #7 - Reading through the eyes of Jesus

2010-01-18T14:41:00.000-08:00

In the past I have dealt with violence in the Old Testament and the problem it poses for reading the Bible as God's word. How can we love and trust a God that would command genocide? How can be believe a book that claims he does? Does not the Old Testament present a sub-Christian and appalling vision of morality characterized by an ethic of violent domination and hatred of enemies?

Anyone who does not ask these questions has never really read the Old Testament. One Christian bishop who asked these kinds of questions early in the history of the church was Marcion. Marcion found that the God of the OT seemed immoral and brutal and had nothing to do with the the God revealed in Jesus Christ. Marcion has since gotten a bad rap, being often dismissed as a heretic, but he has a point. Unlike many people today who simply dismiss him, the church father Origen, who disagrees with Marcion' proposal of ditching the OT, nevertheless recognizes the validity of his point. Origen complins that both "heretics" like Marion as well as more "simple minded" Christians hold a view of God based on the OT which
"would not be entertained regarding the most unjust and cruel of men" (De Principiis 4.5). If we look today, find the same is true: both fundamentalists as well as atheists read the OT and see in it a monstrous picture of God.

So what is the alternative? How did Origen read the OT? More importantly, how did Jesus read the OT in which he saw his loving Abba Father who he says "loves his enemies" (Mt 5:34-48)? I'd like to propose a way for us to read the OT. It's very simple actually - we simply need to read the OT in the light of Jesus. Let me give an example of what that might look like:

Jesus applies the story of Passover to his own death, and from this we can gain a lot of insight into how he understood the cross. But the same time the cross is very different from the Exodus. The Exodus is about God's people being liberated out of bondage, but it comes about through violence and force, and is waged not against evil itself, but other human beings. So the way Jesus understands the Exodus means its reversal at the same time as it means its fulfillment. The same can be said for pretty much every story in the OT. Take David and Goliath where we have your basic "little guy overcomes the big bad bully" story. In the end it still promotes overcoming enemies through violent force though. Reading this in the light of the NT we might ask how the little guy David might have applied love of enemies and Paul's principle of "overcoming evil with good."

In other words, we cannot simply read the OT as Christians and assume that it gives us a true picture of God. In the OT we see at best a "dim Christ," but God's true nature is only fully revealed in Christ. To read the OT right, we need to read it through the interpretive lens of the NT, we need to lay every story at the foot of the cross and ask how it is transformed, redeemed, and reversed by the cross. This is precisely how we see Jesus reading the OT himself. He says he has come "fulfill the law" but in doing so he reverses it, turning the ethic of genocide and war of "hate your enemies" into "love your enemies". While in the OT we see the prophet Elijah call down fire from heaven to consume his enemies (2 Ki 1:10), Jesus rejects this outright. When his disciples ask him "Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them, as Elijah did?" (Lk 9:54) Jesus rebukes them "You do not know what kind of spirit you are of; for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." (Lk 9:55-56 NASB). Let me underline what Jesus says here: what kind of spirit you are of. There are really only two options here. Either we read the OT with the spirit of Christ, or we read it with another spirit, and as a result see in the OT a God of violence and hate.

This is admittedly a radical way to read the OT, but I submit to you that this is exactly how Jesus read his Bible. It is also how Paul and the other Apostles read it, and how Origen and the early church read it. So it is a deeply orthodox New Testament way to read our Bibles faithfully. It is also a life-giving way of reading Scripture that does not turn a blind eye to the abuse of power and violence propegated in the name of religion, but exposes it and redeems it in Jesus name. I think it is time that we recovered this way of reading.

on theodicy, suffering, and remembering

2010-01-08T08:35:00.000-08:00

I can't read these two quotes without crying. I offer them both as a prayer.

These are the words of Elie Weisel, a survivor of the Holocaust, from his book Night,

Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.

Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith for ever.

Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live.

Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes.

Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live
as long as God Himself.

Never.

And from Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov,

Oh, Alyosha, I am not blaspheming! I understand, of course, what an upheaval of the universe it will be when everything in heaven and earth blends in one hymn of praise and everything that lives and has lived cries aloud: 'Thou art just, O Lord, for Thy ways are revealed.' When the mother embraces the fiend who threw her child to the dogs, and all three cry aloud with tears, 'Thou art just, O Lord!' then, of course, the crown of knowledge will be reached and all will be made clear. But what pulls me up here is that I can't accept that harmony. And while I am on earth, I make haste to take my own measures.

You see, Alyosha, perhaps it really may happen that if I live to that moment, or rise again to see it, I, too, perhaps, may cry aloud with the rest, looking at the mother embracing the child's torturer, 'Thou art just, O Lord!' but I don't want to cry aloud then. While there is still time, I hasten to protect myself, and so I renounce the higher harmony altogether.

It's not worth the tears of that one tortured child who beat itself on the breast with its little fist and prayed in its stinking outhouse, with its unexpiated tears to 'dear, kind God'! It's not worth it, because those tears are unatoned for. They must be atoned for, or there can be no harmony. But how? How are you going to atone for them? Is it possible? By their being avenged? But what do I care for avenging them? What do I care for a hell for oppressors? What good can hell do, since those children have already been tortured? And what becomes of harmony, if there is hell?

I want to forgive. I want to embrace. I don't want more suffering. And if the sufferings of children go to swell the sum of sufferings which was necessary to pay for truth, then I protest that the truth is not worth such a price. I don't want the mother to embrace the oppressor who threw her son to the dogs! She dare not forgive him! Let her forgive him for herself, if she will, let her forgive the torturer for the immeasurable suffering of her mother's heart. But the sufferings of her tortured child she has no right to forgive; she dare not forgive the torturer, even if the child were to forgive him! And if that is so, if they dare not forgive, what becomes of harmony? Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive?

I don't want harmony. From love for humanity I don't want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it's beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it.

And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket.

An Evangelical Approach to Homosexuality - A Proposal

2009-12-26T23:02:00.000-08:00

There is a lot of talk among Evangelicals about whether homosexuality is "right" or not. There are people on both sides of the debate, each quoting their Bible. I don't know if this will ever really be resolved, but there is one thing that I think we all can agree on:

We as the church ought to demonstrate love and grace towards people who are gay.

At this point in the argument, however it is common for someone to say, "Yes, but there is a difference between accepting someone and condoning their behavior."

It is at this point that my proposal comes in. Let me begin with some very sobering facts: Statistically, homosexuals have a higher rate of drug abuse, mental illness, and suicide than the larger population. Alarmingly higher in fact. This is well known in the LGBT community, and the reason is quite clear: the rejection they experience - being kicked out of their homes, hiding who they are, being threatened and hated, and so on can easily make a person sick, depressed, broken, and even drive them to suicide. So when gays talk about the importance of being accepted, this is not just political, its something very very close to home for them. It is quite literally, a matter of life and death.

Because of that fact, I think it is rather clear where our priorities should be, and where the priorities of Jesus would be. In his time he was known for "fellowshiping with sinners". Religious folks saw how he welcomed sinners, and concluded that he must not be a prophet. And what did Jesus do? Did he defend his reputation? Did he make sure not to give people the wrong impression? No, he went out of his way to reach out to these people on the margins, often causing open confrontations between himself and the religious leaders of his day. That is our model. Jesus who cares waaaaay more abut loving people than he does with if that looks proper or not.

So based on that model of asking "what would Jesus do" taken together with the severity people in the gay community have of hearing more than anything "you are loved," I propose an indefinite moratorium on pronouncements of the morality or immorality of homosexuality. Let's put that on hold for something much more important.

Regardless of where we stand on the rightness or the wrongness of being gay, I think we should all realize that none of that matters much when people are dying. We need to change our priorities and focus on the critical issue of communicating love and acceptance to these people. Communicating it to a fault, communicating it so completely that we are "misunderstood" and get a "bad reputation," because that is exactly what Jesus did. I want to hear sermons only on how we should love and welcome gay people into our churches, and I want those sermons to be completely unbalanced.

We have spent so much time being "balanced" in the other direction, so much time worrying about "giving the wrong impression" that it is time to shift our lopsided boat the other way. Because as long as our priority is in looking moral rather than in showing compassion and grace to those on the outside, we simply do not have the priorities of Jesus. And when we do not reflect Christ, we are giving the wrong impression. So let's change that.

God's Alien Justice (redux)

2009-12-25T12:48:00.000-08:00

This is a redux of an earlier post. I added a lot more detail, and refined some of the arguments. So I thought I would re-post this rather than just editing the old one.

Romans 3:21-26 is a key text for proponents of penal substitution. I want to look here at a key term that Paul uses in this passage: the Greek word δικαιοσύνη (dikaiosynē) which can be translated as either "justice" or "righteousness".

Dikaiosynē is the same word the LXX (the Greek translation of the Old Testament used by the authors of the New Testament) uses to translate the Hebrew צְדָקָה (tsedaqah) in the Old Testament, which likewise can be rendered in English either as righteousness or justice. It stands to reason that Paul, being a Hebrew, has the conceptual idea of the Hebrew tsedaqah in mind when he speaks of dikaiosynē in Greek. In other words, his concept of justice/righteousness is based on a conception of justice based on the Bible rather than on a pagan Greek or Roman understanding. In Hebrew, the central word for “justice” is משׁפט (mishpat). Our term tsedaqah in contrast is almost always translated as “righteousness” in the OT. That’s because the connotation of tsedaqah is not justice in the sense of deciding, or in the sense of consequence, but in the sense of goodness. In the OT, tsedaqah justice is an idea rooted in the Character of God, like when we say that a king is “just,” and mean that he is good and fair. In the Old Testament, the concept of tsedaqah has to do with balancing things out again, making things right, in particular with caring for the poor and oppressed. Today, the word tsedaqah justice/righteousness is associated in Judaism with acts of charity, and many Jewish charities are often named “tsedaqah” (modern Hebrew would transliterate this as tzedakah, whereas I’m using the SBL standard for biblical Hebrew here for my transliterations) So tsedaqah justice means restorative justice rather than retributive justice.

This understanding of restorative social justice was key to Martin Luther's breakthrough where he rediscovered the Gospel in Romans. Like everyone else at the time, he had been reading the Bible in Latin, which for several hundred years had been the only translation available. The word for justice in Latin here is iustitia which is the word our own “justice” derives from. In Latin, because of the focus on Roman law, the word iustitia had come to refer to a quid-pro-quo payback justice. So Luther, reading his Bible in Latin had assumed that the passage in Romans 3 was about retributive justice. Today when we read the word Justice often have a similar connotation because of how our society defines justice in this same Jack Bauer payback type of way. A big thing Luther did was to emphasize the importance of reading the Bible in its original languages, an idea he called ad fontes which is Latin for back to the sources. Getting back to the orginal Greek and Hebrew allowed Luther to figure out that the righteousness that Paul was speaking of was so different from the one from his own German-Roman legal based one that he called it an “alien righteousness” (iustitia aliena). It was an idea that turned his world on his head, and led him to re-discover grace. We also need to get back to source of the original terms: the Greek dikaiosynē standing for the Hebrew idea of tsedaqah justice.

With that background in mind, let’s take a look at the passage from Romans 3, keeping in mind the meaning of dikaiosynē as restorative making-things-right justice, and of the related verb dikaios as “making right” as in the idea of righting a wrong.

"But now a loving restoration (dikaiosynē) from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify . This loving restoration (dikaiosynē) from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are set right (dikaioō) freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as the one who would turn aside his wrath, taking away sin through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his loving restoration (dikaiosynē) because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his loving restoration (dikaiosynē) at the present time, so as to be righteously loving (dikaios) and the one who lovingly sets right (dikaioō) those who have faith in Jesus (Rom 3:21-26).

Or how about this rendering:

"But now a goodness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify . This goodness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are made good freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as the one who would turn aside his wrath, taking away sin through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his goodness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his goodness at the present time, so as to be good and the one who makes good those who have faith in Jesus.

In that context, the idea of Christ here “turning away wrath” is not because he is punished, but because he makes us (dikaios) good/righteous. Because Jesus “takes away sin by faith in his blood” we are made good. We are made right again. As a result, God’s wrath is “turned away” because the cause of that wrath was sin, and since sin has been removed, so has the cause of wrath.

In contrast, if the above is read (as it had been by Anselm and so many others in the Latin church who did not have access to the original Greek) as iustitia retributive justice, that one can easily read into the above text the idea of penal substitution. Like this:

But now a righteousness (dikaiosynē) from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness (dikaiosynē) from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified (dikaioō) freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice (dikaiosynē), because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his justice (dikaiosynē) at the present time, so as to be just (dikaios) and the one who justifies (dikaioō) those who have faith in Jesus”

This is how the NIV translates the passage. Did you notice that they switch terms? Check out the highlighted words: They begin by translating dikaiosynē as “righteousness” and then switch to translating it as “justice”. Even through the Greek word group dikaiosynē, dikaioō, dikaios is the same throughout (all coming form the root word dikē ), they translate the verb dikaioō as justify, and the adjective dikaios as just. This changes how this passage sounds to us. Now it reads as if we are made righteous by God’s demonstration of (retributive) justice which turns aside his wrath. But if we are really paying attention, that is not what is being said.

Really, its not so much a problem with a translation (I usually like the NIV), but much more about ur own concept of what justice is about. In America, with our politicians and TV shows always talking about “bringing someone to justice” in the sense of hurting them, we really need to re-think the alien justice found in the New Testament.

Exegesis # 6 More Exegetical Fallacies

2009-12-12T15:33:00.000-08:00

In my last post I mentioned several exegetical fallacies. I wanted to add another big one to the list:

Too much of a good thing

This is a fallacy that is frequently made by professionals who have expertise in a certain field. Say for example a biologist who sees e v e r y t h i n g solely in biological terms. Or the psychologist who over psychologizes everything and everyone. If you have a big fancy hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Let me give some examples of how this applies to biblical criticism:

The search for the "historical Jesus" involves what is called "redaction criticism" meaning it tries to seperate the message a gospel writer is trying to convey, from what they imagine the original point of Jesus may have been, hidden somewhere in there between the lines. The problem is, as Albert Schweitzer famously said, historians in search of the historical Jesus have looked down that deep well and in the end only seen their own reflection staring back at them.

I ran across an example of this recently in a book by William Loader called Jesus and the Fundamentalism of his Day. I was intrigued because the book was supposed to be about how to read the Bible like Jesus did. Sounds awesome right? Except that Loader's method is redaction criticism, so he ends up taking his own perspective and finding it in the words of Jesus that he decides are historical, while declaring the parts that disagree with him to be the additions of the gospel writer which he can then ignore. That means that he practically admits that Mark and Paul give a real critique of the OT, but instead of wresting with that, because he does not like the Old Testament being criticized, he calls this a "betrayal of Scripture" and says to the Gospel of Mark (and I quote) "Shame!" (p 41). So Loader says shame on Scripture for criticizing older Scripture. Hmmm. He can critique the NT, even disregard it, but a writer of the NT cannot criticize the OT without that being a "betrayal." What's wrong with this picture?

Here's the thing: knowing about history and understanding the culture of Jesus and the NT is certainly a very valuable thing to do. I really like the work of several scholars who use the historical-critical method (some favorites are Albert Nolan and Joachim Jeremias). The problems is when you have too much of a good thing and end up chucking most of the NT (usually the parts you don't like).

Or take the example of Greek word studies. They can be really valuable and sometimes uncover things that get lost in translation. For example in Acts, Peter is on trial for healing a crippled man (Acts 4:9–12). Peter declares that the man has been healed in the name of Jesus, and then says, "there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved." The translation is right, but you'll miss that in Greek the word Peter uses for "healed" is the same one he uses for "saved". The Greek word sozo (σῴζω) can mean both healed and saved. Similarly, when Jesus say "your faith has healed you" to the woman with the issue of bleeding, and "your faith has saved you" to the woman who washed his feet with her tears the Greek here is word for word the same. Neat huh? That can lead to some important insights that might otherwise get lost in the shuffle.

The problem again with word studies is when you get too much a good thing. When folks for example base an entire doctrine on just one word, phrase, or sentence. That is just plain loony, and it happens all the time. People quote a single verse to back up a whole system of thought. And this is not just your average pew-warmer. Big time theologians do this all the time. When you consider that the NT is compiled from a bunch of manuscripts that are not all the same, this seems even crazier. If we are reading the whole point of someone then the variations are trivial, but if they hang on one word, what if that word is wrong? Even if it is not, think about if someone did that with something you wrote - taking some half sentence out of context and building a whole dogma around it in your name.

Want an example? Karl Barth goes on and on (as only Barth can) in his Church Dogmatics about the difference between agape and phileo love. Phileo love he says is bad because it expects something in return and is based on liking someone. Agape is totally unselfish. The thing is, in Greek there really is no clear distinction like that. Agape and phileo can be used as synonyms, and often are. John tells us that God phileos the Son. So either there is not that sharp of a distinction, or God likes Jesus (I sure like Jesus, so I can see why God would). Barth's argument is over the top and many have criticized it on those grounds, saying that it is healthy to like people and not to be only unselfish. Joy is a good thing, and heck even eros is a good thing. I don't just agape my wife, I eros her too, and one hopes Barth felt the same about his wife. It's an argument that makes no sense really and only stands because it claims to be based on a Scriptural word - a word that Barth in all likelihood understood incorrectly anyway. The thing is, you don't need to know Greek to recognize when someone is making a ridiculous argument, you just need to think a little. Knowing Greek is not a substitute for using your noggin.

Exegesis # 5 - Fallacies

2009-12-08T00:14:00.000-08:00

I'm reading through two books right now, Carson's Exegetical Fallacies, and Silva's Biblical Words and their Meaning. I'm not a big fan of Carson, but I have to say the list of fallacies he has mentioned so far is pretty good. I thought I'd share some of them here:

Etymology
This is where one assumes that etymological root of a word determines its meaning. It can sometimes, but it also can be irrelevant. For example the word breakfast clearly comes from breaking a fast, but no one really thinks about that when they think of breakfast. So there could be a connotation with a word based on its literal meaning... or not at all.

This is a really big point actually, because the way to determine the meaning of a word is not to look at its original meaning, but to look at how it is used. That's how dictionaries are written today, and that is how one determines what a biblical word means - by looking at how it was used at the time. In cases where there is not a lot of stuff to compare it to (the Old Testament for example) one does have to use etymology, but this is always just a hypothesis.

Language Limits Thought
An example of this is the book Hebrew thought Compared with Greek. The idea here is that a language shapes how people think. I suppose it does somewhat, just as it does to be a certain race, or sex, or economic status. But people have an amazing ability to go beyond these limits, and the idea that one's thoughts would be so limited by their language is highly doubtful. Take for example Biblical Hebrew which has no future tense. Does that mean they had no concept of the future? Tell that to the prophets.

Terminus Technicus
This is where one assumes that a word used by Paul is used the same way by John, like a technical term. Another term for this fallacy might be "concordancing" where we look up all occurrences of a word and try to come up with what "the Bible says" that word means. People use words in different ways. Context, context, context.

Word Study Obsession
This is one cited by James Barr, and has to do with the penchant of scholars and pastors to go on and on with a word study, drawing out all the nuances of a word and all its implications for 20 pages. When Paul wrote those letters from prison, do you think he thought that much about every little word? Does anyone? What matters is the big picture of what their point is, the letter as a whole, the paragraph, the thought, and not spiraling off on the choice of one word.

As much as I think it is important to know Greek, it is way way more important to read the text as a whole in a readable translation in order to get inside the head of an author. The more I read in the original Greek, the more I find that my NIV is just fine. I know this is a point that ticks a lot of folks off, maybe because Greek is so hard to learn that it is upsetting to find out that it doesn't matter that much, but it just doesn't. Not compared to getting the larger thought of an author.

Don't get me wrong here. I'm all for Greek word studies. Sometimes they can turn up really important finds. But 9 times out of 10 they don't. It's all a matter of priorities, and a focus on words is not as important as a focus on thoughts.

Trade as One

2009-11-27T23:15:00.000-08:00

This is a video some of my students at the Academy put together to promote Trade as One. It's part of a program I've been working on there to bring together worthy causes with state of the art media and visual effects in order to help them have a visual impact for their message that a nonprofit could not normally afford. On top of that, it allows the students to get involved in some really important causes, opening their minds up to how they can make a difference in the world with their artistic abilities. Like the video says, "It's good to be upset, it's better to be inspired."

I was really pleased with how it turned out. Take a look, and then go visit the Trade as One website to see how you can get involved.

Exegesis # 4 - Critiquing Biblical Criticism

2009-11-23T23:37:00.000-08:00

You've no doubt heard the stories of how people lose their faith in seminary. I'm pretty sure I know why people make this complaint. Biblical scholarship is often times not only detached from faith, it is hostile to it. Let me begin with a personal story to illustrate:

The class was Intro to the Old Testament. One of the first things our professor told us was that the historical accounts of the OT - the story of the exodus, the promised land, the whole meta-narrative of the people of Israel which is the foundation of the Jewish self-understanding in the OT was a big lie. None of it happened, he said. Archeology has proven it. He didn't go into any details about how exactly archeology had done this, nor did he give us any other perspectives of scholars who might disagree with this assertion.

You'd think that since this a seminary training future pastors that at some point he would come back to this and tell us how we should approach the Bible in light of that. Why it was still meaningful. Nope. That was it. The OT is a big lie, so let's study it. At this point I asked if we were going to be looking at these stories from a theological point of view then, trying to understand their meaning? Nope. We would only be approaching them from the point of view of the neutral historian. In other words, the plan was to read a book from an exclusively historical perspective, that did not happen historically.

I dropped the class.

This is sadly not at all uncommon in biblical scholarship. The common stance is that one needs to remove themselves from a faith perspective in order to do biblical scholarship. As Michael V. Fox writes in an article on the Society for Biblical Literature, "faith-based study has no place in academic scholarship... Scholarship rests on evidence. Faith, by definition, is belief when evidence is absent. " The idea here is that faith would make one dogmatically biased, and thus the only right way to read the Bible is a-theistically, by detaching oneself from faith. Faith gets in the way of truth, so the argument goes.

Now of course Fox has completely misunderstood what faith is about, making it the enemy of reason, which would be forgivable for a secular scientist. But these secular scientists who think faith=stupid are the teachers teaching the church's teachers. The result is that a great deal of people who practice and teach the study of the Bible either have no faith at all, or are hostile to faith seeing it as a hindrance to their profession. Again, what is disturbing about this is these are the people training the world's future pastors.

What happens is that seminarians are given all sorts of sophisticated tools for determining things that no one really cares about (like whether Matthew was based on a hypothetical work called Q), but are not given any tools for interpreting the Bible's normative significance - what it means, why it matters, how we should respond. Any normative implications are avoided as unscientific. So when it comes to interpreting Scripture as a pastor in a faith community, the seminarian with this kind of training is given zero tools to do this. They are not being educated. As Joel Green writes, in the introduction to Eisenbraun's recently launched Journal for Theological Interpretation,

"Biblical scholarship in the modern period has not oriented itself toward approaches or development of means that would enable us to tune our ears to the voice of God. How do we read these texts as Christian Scripture so as to hear God’s address? The methods of choice have generally focused elsewhere: the voice of the reconstructed historical Jesus, the voice of the redactor of the Gospels, or the voice of the “community” behind the text, for example. Maybe, then, it is not surprising that Wesley Kort can offer this commentary, 'At one time people knew what it meant to read a text as scripture, but we no longer do, because this way of reading has, since the late medieval and reformation periods, been dislocated and obscured.' "

Okay, ready for some good news? There is a growing movement to read Scripture as Scripture. This may seem like a no-brainer, but actually the majority of exegetical methods do not take this approach. Narrative criticism reads the Bible like literary fiction. The historical-critical method reads it as a historical artifact. Reader-response reads it from our own individual subjective perspective. So the idea of reading the Bible theologically - asking what it means, what God may be saying to us is within biblical scholarship a crazy idea, and all I can say is "thank God!"

Some proponents of theological interpretation are Brevard Childs, R.W.L. Moberly, Christopher Seitz, Francis Watson, Luke Timothy Johnson, Ellen Davis, Douglas Harink, Karl Donfried, Markus Bockmuehl, Stephen Fowl, Kevin VanHoozer, and NT Wright. Some journals include the Journal of Theological Interpretation, Pro Ecclesia, Ex Auditu, and Horizons in Biblical Theology. All of these folks are big time scholars from places like Yale, Duke, Princeton, and Durham.

So what does this approach look like? Theological interpretation is reading Scripture as Scripture, and asking what God is wanting to say to us through it. As R. Moberly writes, interpreting the Bible as Scripture indicates "a frame of reference for biblical interpretation that, while not taking the Bible as less than a historical artifact, clearly takes it as more than a historical artifact; and that more is in some way given content by the notion of the self-communication of the living God - a notion to whose breathtaking implications we are too easily dulled." (JTI 3.2 (2009), p. 162. Emphasis in the original).

In other words, they don't ignore insights from history, literary analysis, or ideological critiques. But they recognize that the Bible is a book where somehow God is wanting to speak to us through it, and try to listen to what God is saying as well. They approach the text not just with their minds open, but with their hearts open too.

Junkboy

2009-11-21T20:14:00.000-08:00

I was recently asked if there was a gospel tract that expressed the Christus Victor model of the atonement. An alternative to those nasty Chick tracts that talk about threat and fear and ticked off God. I was reminded of a little book I read a long time ago in German called "Ein Ganz normaler Müllmensch" (trans: "Just Your Average Junkboy") that I really loved. Since there is no English translation, I decided to translate this sweet little tract myself for you (and you thought knowing German was only good for reading Karl Barth!).

So without further ado, I present to you the story of Junkboy. Just click the picture below to read the rest.

Jesus was a Democrat

2009-11-21T18:10:00.000-08:00

Below are some highlights from the lyrics to the song "Jesus was a Democrat" by Everclear.

Jesus Was a Democrat - Everclear

I bet you think of him
As a nice clean long haired Republican, nah
He would be all locked up in Guantanamo Bay
If he were alive today
He would have been a revolutionary
Wanted by the CIA

I picture him in all the wrong places
Finding diamonds in the dirt
A Star of David tattoo
And a Che t-shirt
Jesus Christ was a left wing radical Jew
Murdered by people like you

If Jesus was a Democrat like the bible says he was
I don’t think he’s going to want to take the blame
For all the awful things you say and do in his name
I am pretty god damned sure ……
He is going to be angry
He is going to be angry

You say Jesus loves the little children
And I say I know that’s true
I say he loves all the Muslims and the Jews
All the addicts and the porn stars too
You say Jesus died to save us all from a fiery hell
I say Jesus died to save us
Save us from ourselves
Will you save me from myself?

If Jesus was a liberal like the red letters say he was
I know he would have big love for all the killers and the racists
And the bullies in this world

If Jesus was alive today
And you had a chance to meet him face to face
I’m pretty God-damned sure that you and your friends
Would find some way to kill him all over again
You would kill him all over again
Again and again and again
Just like you always do
You do just what you always do

Hebrew is weird

2009-11-15T15:43:00.000-08:00

I was looking at Proverbs 3:8 in the original Hebrew and I thought it was hilarious. The NIV translation here says that the fear of the Lord will bring "health to your body". But the literal Hebrew here is "healing of your bellybutton".

Yes, that's right, your bellybutton (שֹׁר)

I bet you didn't even realize that your bellybutton needed to be morally healed, did you? It goes on to say that a further benefit is "a drink for your bones" which sounds pretty silly too, but it's pretty hard to top bellybuttons for silliness!

Victor Hugo on Slavery and Prostitution

2009-10-17T22:48:00.000-07:00

The following is a passage from Les Misérables. Hugo here is describing Fantine who has sunk to prostitution in her poverty,

"What is the story of Fantine about? It is about society buying a slave.

From whom? From misery.

From hunger, from cold, from loneliness, from desertion, from privation. Melancholy barter. A soul for a piece of bread. Misery makes the offer; society accepts.

The holy law of Jesus Christ governs our civilization, but it does not yet permeate it. They say that slavery has disappeared from European civilization. That is incorrect. It still exists, but now it weighs only on women, and it is called prostitution.

It weighs on women, that is to say, on grace, frailty, beauty, motherhood. This is not the least among man’s shames.

At this stage in the mournful drama, Fantine has nothing left of what she had formerly been. She has turned to marble in becoming corrupted. Whoever touches her feels a chill. She goes her way, she endures you, she ignores you; she is the incarnation of dishonor and severity. Life and the social order have spoken their last word to her. All that can happen to her has happened. She has endured all, borne all, experienced all, suffered all, lost all, wept for all."

I can't help here but think of the words of Isaiah:

Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed.

Hugo's chapter here is called Christus nos Liberavit - Christ our Liberator.

Exegesis #3 Reading the Old Testament through the New

2009-09-30T17:09:00.000-07:00

One thing I observe stretching from the OT to the NT is a progressive and developing understanding of God. In early Jewish writings, God is framed as one tribal God among many, by the time we get to the NT there is only one God, and false idols and demons.

In the old way of thinking something was either your fault ("Why do you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh did?" 1 Sam 6:6) or God's curse ("I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and though I multiply my miraculous signs and wonders in Egypt" Exodus 7:3). So we have Isaiah telling the Israelites that their suffering - being pillaged, raped, taken as slaves - was basically because of something you did.

In the NT we have a more complex understanding which involves the demonic. In other words, with this perspective we now have three players: God, humanity, and evil. We are dealing not only with fallen people, but a fallen system where people can suffer, not because God willed it, and not because they deserved it, but because of evil itself. This adds the idea that something can be broken in the very system of the world that is (1) not God's will, and (2) not your fault. Along with it we also have the idea of sin, not just as transgression, but as bondage. An addict can't "just stop," as if it were simply a rational choice. They need help to break free. This is what we see Jesus helping people to do all through the Gospels - to break out of demonic bondage, to break out of cultural and religious exclusion, to break out of hurtful identities., to break out of the trap of sin. The idea of the demonic in the NT thus gives a way more complex understanding of how evil, hurt, and injustice function in our world.

I think that when Jesus read his Bible, he read it like that. He took the understanding he had - the understanding that had grown and developed into a more sophisticated picture of who God is, and read with that in mind as he read those OT stories that do not yet have these insights. The problem with our reading it strait as the story has it, while this may be "correct academic exegesis" is that if we believe that we are reading God's word (and I certainly do), this can lead folks to think that God is evil and unjust because we are seeing God through the dim vision of a primitive person. It really comes down to this: if we read the OT flat out, we will either la) lose our faith, (b) try to love a monster, or (c) decide that the Bible is not God's word UNLESS we can learn to read with the benefit of the progressive revelation of God which culminates in the person of Jesus (God's living perfect self-revelation), unless we learn to read the Bible like Jesus did.

So I really want to seriously question the whole concept of "correct exegesis" here, and suggest that we need to read the OT like Jesus (and the other Jews of his time) would have. Not only that, we need to read it with our own conscience intact, our own sense of what is right, which we have from God's Spirit in us. In fact, that's what Jesus says to do in Luke 12:57.

Exegesis #2 - ethics guides exegesis

2009-09-13T09:01:00.000-07:00

There are many disturbing things in the Bible. One that shakes me the most are the accounts of genocide in the Old Testament. Just as suffering, tragedy, and injustice in our lives can cause us to doubt God's goodness, so can such passages. One of the best pieces of advice I have heard for dealing with questions of theodicy like these is the idea of suspending judgment, as Doug Easterday puts it "everything I understand about God is loving and good, and the things I don't understand... I just don't understand yet." This approach allows one to admit pain, ask questions, but to still hold on. It is about living in the tension, about trusting in God's character, rather than in our limited understanding.

There is however a danger in this. That danger is to accept evil, to stop seeking, to stop crying out. Here we say, "Well, I don't understand what is going on, but if God did it, it must be good. " The difference here is quite subtle on the surface, but the consequences are severe because it basically means we shut down our conscience and call evil good.

Take for instance the aforementioned example of the genocide accounts in the Old Testament: If you heard about this happening anywhere in the world today - in Germany, in Afghanistan, or Darfur you would clearly see it as an atrocity, as horrific, as profoundly evil. If anyone claimed that God told them to do it, we would without exception declare them to be mad. And yet it is common for us Christians to find passages like this in the Bible, and to make arguments as to why this was justified and God's will. This is not just true of average joe Christians - you will find this same type of cognitive dissonance arguments in Bible commentaries, and made by major theologians too.

What's going on here? Isn't it a no-brainer that mass killing babies is bad? So why do Christians (Christians who are appalled at abortion I might add) argue that this would be fine to violently slaughter babies? What would make smart people say such absurd things? What would make loving people justify such horrific practices? I believe it's in part because we somehow think that it is our job to defend God's actions and the Bible. So no matter what it says, we feel compelled to rationalize why God was right to do this. Whatever it says, we reason, must be good, no matter how ghastly. But does God really needs us to defend him? More likely, the real reason behind this is that we feel that if we allow for any critique of the Bible, that the whole thing may collapse under our feet, leaving us nothing to stand on.

So we turn off our moral conscience as we read the Bible, calling evil good, and darkness light Some theologians even go so far as to teach that we should not trust our "worldly" understandings of right and wrong (apparently being opposed to mass slaughter of infants is worldly) and instead let the Bible define for us what is right (meaning that if the Bible tells us to kill babies we should accept this as good). I would like to assert that such an approach is profoundly damaging and irresponsible. God gave us a conscience, and to go against it is one of the most damaging things a person can do to their soul. It is flat out abusive - and I do not use this word lightly. In fact, this is precisely what abuse is about: a person is made to do something that they feel is wrong, and is told that their perceptions are in fact wrong. What is happening to them is not bad, they are bad. This can have devastating results on how a person perceives themselves, their world, and on their relationships - including their relationship with God. No matter what the authority is - your pastor, a parent, a theologian, or a holy book - you should never ever do something, or believe something, that goes against your conscience.

Biblically, the result of this kind of blind adherence to the Bible, regardless of how hurtful it is, is exemplified by the Pharisees (who are not exactly put forward as a model of correct exegesis!). In fact, the #1 rule of theology is that if our understanding of God makes him appear to be evil or unjust, then our theology is wrong somewhere down the line. If we understand something to imply that God is a monster then the answer is not to declare that "monsters are good", but to say "I just don't understand," and live in that tension and weakness until we do understand what is going on.

Going a step further, our understanding of Scripture must always, always, always be done through the eyes of Jesus, and with the heart of Jesus. We need to make sure that our interpretation of the Bible is in line with what we know firsthand from God in a living relationship to be good, loving, and just. Simply put: ethics must guide exegesis. These ethics are not formed from our flawed interpretation of rules in a book, but learned through our firsthand experience of knowing what love is in a personal transforming relationship with Jesus Christ. Then our conscience will "not be conformed to the world, but transformed by the renewing of my mind" so that we will "know the good and perfect will of God". When we then approach the Bible with the mind and heart of Jesus, we will be able, like him, to question false interpretations, having his heart move our own, learning through the Spirit to see people as he does, learning to think as he does.

If we take Jesus as our model for how to properly interpret Scripture, we see that he constantly challenges interpretations of Scripture that block people from grace. His direct knowledge of his father's will and character was his guide for interpreting, redefining, and critiquing, how the Bible was understood. He let his ethics guide his exegesis - his understanding of what love was and who God was was his guide to how he read and understood the Bible. Ethics proceeds exegesis. Or to put it differently: relationship with God is the lens through which we need to interpret Scripture. We love the Bible because in it we find Jesus, but we do not have a relationship with a book, but with the living Word, Jesus Christ. Scripture is not an end in itself, but points us to that relationship, and in turn, that living relationship helps us to understand and interpret Scripture.

This does not mean that our interpretation is infallible just because we know God's heart through relationship. We need to always be aware of our limited perceptions and blinders, and to approach the Bible (and life and faith too) with humility. But one thing we must never do is close our hearts and turn off our conscience when we read.

Exegesis #1 Why you can't take Jesus literally

2009-09-01T09:40:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd do a series on biblical exegesis. It's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. For the first installment we begin with the rather provocative statement: you can't take Jesus literally. To do so leads to horrific interpretations! In fact, if you take a look at anti-Christian propaganda like the Skeptics Annotated Bible, 9 times out of 10 this is exactly the mistake they make, and the results are some of the most horrible interpretations of Scripture you can imagine. So this is a really important exegetical principle, that is not often communicated.

Now let me say strait away that I do not mean we should not take Jesus seriously. But I am saying it is almost always wrong to interpret him literally. Let me begin with a rather obvious example: In Mt 5:30 Jesus says "If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off" I think we would all agree that Jesus did not mean for us to take that literally. Anyone who disagrees please raise your hand... oh that's right, you can't! Jesus is not advocating amputation as a method of character development, he is using hyperbole, exaggeration, to make a statement that says "hey, wake up man! Listen!"

Jesus does that all the time, over and over. I'm sure you can think of a lot of examples. For instance, how about Lk 14:26

"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple."

Does Jesus really want us to hate our parents or our own children as a part of loving him? Does following Jesus mean self-hatred, and being a bad parent? If this is taken literally, the results would be horrible advice.

Whether we have really thought about it or not, I'd say that most- if not all of us -do not take Jesus literally in any of these above examples. So what I would like to propose, here is that once you are aware that this is a major way that Jesus communicates - through dramatic over-exaggeration intended to jar you into seeing things from a different perspective - that suddenly you can see Jesus doing this all over the place. Think of the way Jesus talks: He uses hyperbole as we have discussed above, he also uses paradoxes like "the greatest are the least" and "lose your life to find it," which at face value sound crazy. He uses symbolism like "you must be born again," to which Nicodemus himself is confused when he tries to think about how one could literally re-enter their mother's womb,

Nicodemus asked. "Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!" (Jn 3:4)

Here's some news for you Nick: it's not literal, it's symbolic. Or how about taking the eucaristic symolism literally when Jesus says "drink my blood, and eat my flesh"? Is Jesus wanting us to be vampires or cannibals? Nope, it's symbolism. He's taking a spiritual reality and making it visceral, putting "flesh on it" so to speak.

Think too about how Jesus teaches in parables. These are stories that all have a twist at the end. They are not intended to be taken as verbatim accounts. If you do, the whole point is lost. Take for example the story of the landowner (Mt 21:33-45) who sends his servant to collect his money from the tenants. The tenants kill his servant, so he sends another. Same thing happens. Finally he sends his son whom they also kill. Now the point of this is that it is supposed to illustrate the injustice of how the prophets have been treated, how people miss God when he comes to them. But if we were to take this literally we would have to think that this landowner must be pretty irresponsible and foolish to send his son after he saw what happened to the servants. Taken in a literalistic way this becomes the parable of the stupid father who is more concerned about getting paid then he is about his child. Horrible lesson. And you can misread all of the parables like that, taking them in a wooden literalistic way and completely missing the real point.

So based on this, here's where our application comes in: Now that we know to look for this, suddenly we have a clue as to how to interpret difficult passages from Jesus. Take for example his statement in Mark 3:28-29

"I tell you the truth, all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin."

This passage has haunted lots of believers, myself included. Have I accidentally done this? The autobiography of John Bunyan accounts how he is tormented by this fear over and over. And it seems to go contrary to everything we know about grace. 'Mess up once, and it's all over' it seems to say. But what if this is hyperbole? What if Jesus is emphatically saying that the worst thing you can do is miss out on recognizing God's work in people's lives, that this is the thing that is really really bad. Then it's not about a legalistic statement of 'one strike and you're out,' but about the opposite. He's saying: Be open to the moving of the Spirit! Don't miss it! Don't be so religious that you miss what God is doing, because that's the worst sin you could possibly commit!

Or to take another rather subtle example, think about what Jesus says in the next chapter of Mark. After telling the parable of the sower to the crowd he says in private to his disciples,

"The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, " 'they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!'" (Mk 4:11-12)

Now if we take this literally, it sounds like the Gospel is meant for elite insiders, and hidden from outsiders, whom Jesus apparently does not want to repent. That can't be right! Now, what if Jesus is being provocative and sarcastic here? What if we read this with a New York Jewish accent like it's being said by Woody Allen: "Well it sure is a good thing no one is getting this, because otherwise they might repent and be healed! Now we sure wouldn't want that , would we?!" What if Jesus said that with a wry smile, and not in the somber stately tones actors always give him in those Jesus movies. What if Jesus was shocking, provocative...and funny?

Now let me stress that Jesus, even when he's funny, is still as serious as a heart attack. We shouldn't think that Jesus is "just kidding" when he says we must be born again, or that we should love our enemies. It is not meant to be ignored as "exaggerated hyperbole" as if Jesus is just ranting. But at the same time if we do want to take what he says seriously, and put his words into practice then we need to also not interpret him like we would the directions for a cookie recipe (take a cup of forgiveness, and 2 teaspoons prayer, mix vigorously until it forms fluffy peaks, and bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes). We need to get that most of the time Jesus is saying things in a non step-by-step instruction book way. He's being dramatic, colorful, provocative, and creative in order to help is read between the lines of life, and see God's way that is so easy to miss if we just look at things in a flat, wooden, recipe-following kind of way.

Is Obama the Anti-Christ?

2009-08-15T20:02:00.000-07:00

There is a video making the rounds on Youtube that claims to present biblical evidence that Barack Obama was declared the anti-Christ by none other than Jesus himself. Dan Wallace in a blog post at Reclaiming the Mind Ministries reports that the video is wildly popular and that many Christians find its arguments compelling. (I should mention that Dan thinks it's completely ridiculous, and that I really like Reclaiming the Mind Ministries which has no affiliation with the loony in the Youtube video).

The basic argument in the video goes like this :

Jesus says in Luke 10:18 "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven". The New Testament written in Greek, but many scholars believe that Jesus likely spoke Aramaic. The word for "lightning" in Hebrew is בָּרָקwhich is pronounced "bā∙rāk" (the Q at the end is pronounced like a K). Sounds like Barack right? (Hebrew and Aramaic are pretty close, so we'll just pretend they are identical here). Now as Aramaic scholar Steve Caruso points out, the Swahili word "Barack" does have a Hebrew etymology, but comes from the word בָּרַךְ or barak meaning "blessed", not בָּרָק or baraq meaning "lightning". The two words barak and baraq are pronounced similarly, but have no etymological connection. Just as the English words "write" and "right" sound the same but are unrelated.

Next the narrator decides that instead of looking at the word in Hebrew for "heaven" which is שָׁמַיִם pronounced sha∙may∙im, he would rather translate the word for "heights". Now the two most common words for "heights" in Hebrew are מָרֹום pronounced mar∙um and קֹומָה pronounced qu∙mah. That won't do of course so he takes the word בָּמָה which really means something more like an elevated hill, often referring to an alter or place of worship. Why does he pick this word? I bet you can guess what's coming can't you? Because it is pronounced ba∙mah. Now nevermind that this translation would mean that Jesus said "I saw Satan fall off a hill like lighting" which would be a really weird thing to say, and instead imagine him saying

"I saw Satan fall like Barack from Bama"

So we're almost there, now all we need to do is stick an "O" in front of "bamah". The Hebrew for "from" here would be מִן but that would give us Barack Min-bama, so he makes it an "O" instead which would mean "and". Giving us

"I saw Satan fall like Barack Obama"

Or as his disciples would have understood him

"I saw Satan fall like lighting and a hill" (huh?)

Or the equally strange

"I saw Satan fall like lighting and a height" (again, huh?)

Of course since Jesus said "heavens" and not "height" it would have sounded like

"I saw Satan fall like Barack Min Shamayim" or if we go with "heights" it would be
"I saw Satan fall like Barack Min Bamate" since "heights" is plural.

Unfortunately, I don't know anyone with either of those names...

So, now that you have suffered through all of that, let me present you with my own theory based on the same type of argument.

Jesus says in Jn 14:6 "I am the way and the truth and the life." The Hebrew word for "the way" is דֶּרֶךְ which is pronounced "Derek". My name is Derek. Therefore Jesus said

"I am Derek, the truth and the life. "

So there you have it. If Barack Obama is the anti-Christ, then by that same logic I am the second coming of Jesus (hint: I'm not). The real exegetical problem here is that just because a word in one language sounds like another word in a different language does not mean there is any relation to them. The word for "drive" is German is fahrt which sounds like "fart" in English. The above exegesis is like that. It sounds like fart, so it must be a secret message about farts.

If we want to just take the word "lightning" in the NT and switch it out with the Hebrew for lightning pronounced "Barack" I could also then cite the passage in Mt 28:2-3 which describes the angel at the tomb , was that angel really our President?

"An angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like Barack, and his clothes were white as snow."

And while I'm at it, the word in Hebrew for "shame" בֹּושׁ is pronounced "Bush" and the שׁ looks like a W. So "Bush" according to my Dictionary of Biblical Languages With Semantic Domains means:

"To have a painful feeling and emotional distress (sometimes to the point of despair), by having done something wrong, with an associative meaning of having the disapproval of those around them (Jdg 3:25; Jer 14:4), note: this wrong can refer to a social mistake, or a serious sin. Bring shame, cause disgrace, with an associative meaning of causing frustration, and loss of hope to the object one is shaming (2Sa 19:6)"

I report. You decide.

Picturing the cross

2009-07-10T09:19:00.000-07:00

A picture is worth a thousand words. But although I am an artist and theologian, I don't often share art on this blog. So I thought I would. The following is an illustration I did of the crucifixion. One thing I love about art is the way it has of bypassing our heads and going strait to our hearts, speaking to us on a level beyond words. Music can do the same thing, which is why we often can first really get something when we hear it in a hymn or song. Art also has a way of connecting to our own stories, experiences, and feelings, as we find ourselves and our feelings expressed in a book, film, or picture.

So with that in mind, I realize that different people will bring different associations to a piece of art. That's the way it is supposed to be, so I don't want to say too much about this piece, but rather let it speak for itself in its own visual language. At the same time, I do think it can help to have some context from an artist, especially when dealing with images, into their intent. This picture for me is about how Jesus bore all of our suffering, sin, sickness, and brokenness on the cross. It is a picture of how much God was willing to endure for our sake, in order to set us free and give us life. It's called "So much". (You can see the full size by clicking the image)

Here is a detail from the image

Edit: By popular demand, I've decided to make this and other original works of art available for purchase as high quality framed print. You can view the full gallery here.

Atonements Debate: A Response to Recent Criticisms

2009-07-08T17:53:00.000-07:00

I'm reading through the book The Atonement Debate which is a collection of essays by evangelical theologians who gathered together at a symposium hosted by the Evangelical Alliance and the London School of Theology to debate the pros and cons of penal substitution in the wake of the recent controversy in Europe sparked by a comment by Steve Chalke in his book The Lost Message of Jesus that was critical of the doctrine.

In this post I want to address the chapter by Garry Williams entitled "Penal Substitution: A Response to Recent Criticisms". Williams begins by addressing a criticism raised by Steve Chalke: that it would be inconsistent for God to command us not to practice retribution, if God made retribution the center point of his redemptive work in Jesus. Chalke sums up his position saying that "I for one believe that God practices what he preaches". Williams in response argues that God does in fact have a right to act differently than humans do. He appeals to Paul's argument in Romans 12 where he urges us not to practice retribution, but to leave that to God.

Williams is, I think, right in saying that God is not subject to the same rules as humans are. God can judge in a way that no human can. God has a right to demand our worship in a way that no human does. So Williams makes a valid point here generally. However, while we cannot take everything God does is a model for human behavior (since we are not God), the cross is presented in the New Testement specifically as a model for ethical behavior. So we can and should take the message of the cross as a model of how we should act. Paul grounds his teaching on ethics in Philipians on our imitaion of the way of the cross. Jesus also calls us to "take up our cross" and follow him. If, as Williams insists, the central message of the cross is a demonstration and affirmation of retribution, this would mean that retribution is being set forth as a model of human interaction. If the "way of the cross" is the "way of retribution" then we are called to follow in that way. Since we clearly are not called to practice retribution in the New Testament, retribution is not the "way of the cross".

Secondly, Williams in championing retribution seems to be missing the larger point of the gospel. Even if we do accept that divine retribution is justified and right, and that we as sinful humans are headed towards that judement, this by itself is by no defintion the "gospel". The gospel is a way to avoid that retribution, a way for God to not send us to Hell. The whole point of the gospel is that the economy of quid pro quo justice, of get what you deserve, of sewing and reaping is superseded by the superior economy of grace where God acts, despite the fact that we have not earned it, to save us, heal us, and set us free. I am sure that Williams agrees with all of this, but his focus on retribution seems to loose sight of the larger perspective of salvation and grace.

This is not simply a matter of semantics. Williams, in focusing his soteriology seemingly exclusivly on the idea of retribution leaves no room for the idea of sanctification. As Williams puts it, the only problem is the need for punishment. Once that punishment is "exhasted" on Christ, Williams says, the "obstacle" to new life is removed. In other words, there is no objective onological problem of sin in people that needs to be healed, the problem is with God. Here I think Williams gets it backwards. If God is angry at sin, it is because sin is a real problem. Remove the problem by healing the sin, and you remove the cause of God's righteous anger. So God acts in Christ to heal, to cleanse, to renew, to sanctifiy, to liberate, to make us new, thus addressing the problem of sin which is our problem.

The papradigm here is a medical one. If a person is sick they need a doctor. That is precisly the reason Jesus gives of why he has come to seek sinners: they are sick and need a doctor. If salvation is framed however only in terms of retribution, then the entire idea that sin is a problem that needs to be healed is simply lost. Sin becomes only an act that needs punishment, and once that punishment is taken care of, the problem just vanishes. This strikes me as a very shallow understanding of the depths of human brokenness. There are real consequences to us hurting and being hurt. Deep and profound consequences. We might even describe them as a kind of "retribution" flowing out of that action, as Williams does. But the task of salvation is for God to break that vicious cycle, to set us free from that bondage, to heal our brokenness, to make us new and clean again. That's a perspective that allows for the reality of so called "divine retribution" (and we do need to be very cautious of such phrasings as they can easily evoke a picture of sinful and petty human anger), but views it in its proper perspective within the larger picture of God's redemptive work. Simply put, it is the dilema, not the solution. The solution is grace, which is a creative, restorative, transformative, action of God, not an inaction.

art, anguish, creativity, and God

2009-05-21T23:50:00.000-07:00

Artists are notorious for being troubled souls. Vincent Van Gogh, Kurt Cobain, Hemingway. The amount of mental anguish among artists is alarming. Suicide, substance abuse, depression. How is it that people who can fill the world with such beauty can be so tormented, so disturbed, so broken?

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the bestseller Eat, Pray, Love has a theory: In ancient times people thought of creativity not as something someone had, but as something someone received from God as inspiration. Think of the etymology of that word: in-spirit-ization. To be filled with the creative spirit. To have God move through you. The Romans called this a "genius" (the word genie comes from the same root). So instead of saying a person "is a genius" they would say a person "has a genius". With the Renaissance this switched, and we started saying instead that a person was a genius, that creativity was something someone possessed. Gilbert thinks this was a huge wrong turn. She says,

"Allowing somebody - one mere person - to believe that he or she is the vessel, the font, the essence, and the source of all divine creative eternal unknowable mystery is just a smidge too much responsibility to put on one fragile human psyche. It's like asking somebody to swallow the sun.
It completely warps and distorts egos. It creates all these unmanageable expectations about performance. And I think the pressure of that has been killing off our artists for the last 500 years."

You can watch her whole talk here:

Faith and Work. (Is that it?)

2009-05-20T20:31:00.000-07:00

I was recently asked to speak to a group of graduating high school students at a Christian school about faith and work. One of the questions our panel was asked was how we bring our faith into the workplace. I have to say I was a bit shocked when I heard the answers of the other two panelists. Both of them said that the way they brought their faith into their work was in having honest business practice, and in being patient and kind when dealing with difficult clients. Now these are of course good things to do, but I found myself thinking, "is that it?" Doesn't every professional adult pretty much do that? Who doesn't have to deal in a mature way with difficult clients? Isn't that just called being a professional?

It really got me to thinking about what our vision is of how we can apply our talents and training and expertise in our given fields to bear into seeing the kingdom of God working in our world?. How many times have you heard it preached from the pulpit that really all we need to do is do our work with integrity, and that's it? Is that really all there is? I have to say seminary is not any better. The only occupations on their horizon are professors and pastors. Seminaries are not structured to accommodate any other possible jobs, which explains why they have so little vision for how to bring faith into work. Is that it? Work hard and be nice?

The context that the above statement comes from is Colossians 3:23-24 "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving." Now I have no problem with this. Of course you should do your work well. But let's remember who Paul was addressing with these words. He was talking to slaves. Yes, that's right, slaves. So what I want to really challenge here is whether advice given to slaves on work should really be the sole teaching we have in church on faith and work? We've come a long way since then, and many of us have high ranking professional careers. We are doctors, lawyers, psychologists, educators, and engineers. We are people who potentially have quite a bit of impact and pull in our world. So what foundation can we give to a business owner or lawmaker for how they can bring the kingdom of God into what they do? Does the church really have nothing to say here? Is that it?

Way back in the 80's in "The Grave Digger Files" Ox Guinness bemoaned how privatization had made the church "socially irrelevant even if privately engaging". Guinness writes, "Look for a place where the Christian's faith makes a difference at work beyond the realm of purely personal things (such as witnessing to colleagues and praying for them, or not swearing and not fiddling with income tax returns). Look for a place where the Christian is thinking 'Christianly' and critically about the substance of work (about say, the use of profits and not just personnel; about the ethics of a multinational corporation and not those of a small family business; about a just economic order and not just the doctrine of justification). You will look for a very long time." Since he wrote this in 83, faith did move out of the private sphere, but it did so in a way that it was completely co-opted by the ideals of nationalism and capitalism masquerading as so-called Christian "family values". That politicized private morality has dominated the western Christian political imagination for two decades. It other words, when we were engaged socially and politically, our thinking was on a private and individual level. Thankfully there are signs of a growing social awareness among Evangelicals, but this is really in its infancy, and the mindset of thinking only in privatized individual terms is still deeply entrenched.

There was recently an excellent interview on the Emergent Village podcast with Joe Carson a high ranking nuclear safety engineer at the Dept. of Energy on bringing one's faith into their work on a structural level. Joe begins by explaining that engineering "builds the infrastructure that society is run on, and the weapons to tear it down". So we're talking about a profession here that has some pretty major impact on the world; one with the potential to do great good, and one that can and has done great harm as well. Joe asks for example, should an engineer care that the work they are doing is helping to fuel a genocide in Darfur? It's the kind of big-picture question many of us in the professional world could ask of our own work's impact. What Joe stresses in the interview is that a single individual often can do very little. That's why it is so important he says for there to be a collective voice which can influence industry and power. So he for his part is working to found the Affiliation of Christian Engineers who seek to bring Christian ethics to play in the engineering profession.

That's just one example of a person thinking through how they can bring their faith to bear on their professional life. I found it really challenging because it pushes the boundaries of how we think about what it means to be a Christian in the work place. This is exactly the kind of application that I see as the next step for the emerging church. Beyond all the re-thinking about theological formulations which has been the focus of the emergent movement, the next phase is to ask how we can really live that out. What would it mean for each of us to not simply be a worker with a good attitude fueling the status quo, but for us to be part of a force for change and good? What would that look like in your life and mine? It's a talk that is long overdue.

One suggestion I have, that builds off of what Joe Carson says above, is that in order to affect change in our work world, we will need to learn not only to think about morality and meaning on a social global scale, but we will need to also learn how to act not simply as lone individuals, but collectively. Church needs to grow beyond an institution setup to meet our private spiritual needs, and become one that helps us to organize together to impact our world with our collective ability.