Writing Style 2

In the second lesson of Joseph Williams and Gregory Colomb's book, Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace (10th Edition), the question of grammatical rules is the topic. They argue that a scrupulous focus on following rules and being grammatically "correct" is misguided.

They put grammatical rules for English into three categories:

1. Real Rules – these are rules that do matter and must be followed. They are the rules that make English English (e.g. articles precede nouns).

2. Social Rules – these are rules that separate standard usage from nonstandard usage. Schooled writers follow these naturally. Only those for whom English is not their first language have to think about these.

3. Invented Rules – these are rules that grammarians have created which they think we should follow. Most of these date from the last half of the eighteenth century. A good example of these kinds of rules is the “split infinitive”.

Williams and Colomb’s advocate a careful, but balanced approach to the invented rules. They write with some irony,

But if you try to obey all the rules all the time, you risk becoming so obsessed with rules that you tie yourself in knots. And sooner or later, you will impose those rules—real or not—on others. After all, what good is learning a rule if all you can do is obey it? The alternative to blind obedience is selective observance. But you then have to decide which rules to observe and which to ignore (14).

So which rules should you follow and which can you ignore? It goes without saying that Real Rules must be followed and that Social Rules will usually be obeyed out of habit. But when it comes to Invented Rules, selective use is recommended.

What then should be the overarching concern when it comes to grammatical rules if it is not to be a scrupulous rule keeper? The primary concern should to be your audience. Some audiences expect a more elegant sophisticated style of writing, while others a more straightforward style. For the former, paying attention to Invented Rules that have come to represent a more elegant style will win over your audience. This list of rules includes:

1. Don’t split infinitives.
2. Use whom as the object of a verb or preposition.
3. Don’t end a sentence with a preposition.
4. Use the singular with none and any.

I think what this lesson is driving at is that what we should be aiming for in our writing is not correctness but clarity. And if we can throw in a little grace and elegance all the better.

See first post: Writing Style 1

Love Wins 4

I’m continuing to work my way through Rob Bell’s book Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Livedand in this post I want to think about chapter two which is titled “Here is the New There”. The topic of the chapter is heaven.

It seems to me that the central issue in this chapter is the misconception that heaven is “somewhere else”. This misguided and unbiblical perspective, according to Rob, is captured graphically in the picture that used to hang in his grandmother’s home. He says the painting tells a story:

It’s a story of movement, from one place to the next, from one realm to another, from death to life, with the cross as the bridge, the way, the hope . . . But the story also tells us something else, something really, really important, something significant about the location. According to the painting, all of this is happening somewhere else . . . I show you this painting because, as surreal as it is, the fundamental story it tells about heaven—that it is somewhere else—is the story that many people know to be the Christian story (23).

Rob believes this story is an unbiblical story. And this unbiblical story has led to two errant consequences. First, because of the story of “heaven somewhere else”, questions related to heaven are generally otherworldly. For example, a question like “what will we do in heaven?” is characteristic of this kind of thinking. Second, the story creates an imbalanced emphasis on the question of who’s in heaven and who isn’t.

So, the dominant question of this chapter is: what is the correct biblical story of heaven? This question then provides a corrective for the two additionally related questions: Where is heaven and what kind of person will get there?

There are a number of points of detail that could be dealt with in this post. As you might expect this is one of the more length chapters in the book. I will make some brief comments about a few things at the end, but am going to focus more attention in this post on Rob’s reading of the story of the “Rich Young Ruler”, which for all intents and purposes, is the center piece of the chapter.

To correct this “mistaken notion” about heaven [I put this phrase in quotes because it’s a quote from Tom Wright’s Simply Christian—Tom’s been asserting for years and it is no doubt where Rob has gotten it--most comprehensively in Surprised by Hope], Rob turns to the gospel’s story of the “Rich Young Ruler” as told in Matthew 19:16-22 (see parallels in Mark 10:17-22 and Luke 18:18-23).

In the story, Rob finds the truth about heaven. When the young man asked Jesus the question, “What good thing must he do to have eternal life?”, he wasn’t asking about how he gets into heaven when he dies. According to Rob, neither this man nor Jesus ever thought about the future in terms of “going to heaven” when you die. Jesus did not come to make it possible for people to a heaven somewhere else.

To validate this contention, Rob springboards off the story of the Rich Young Ruler to teach a lesson on eschatological views (ideas of the end times) in first-century Judaism. He paints a unified picture of how Jews of Jesus’ day thought about the “end of the world”. Drawing on the Old Testament, Jesus’ Scriptures, Rob shows that ancient Jews thought of history in terms of two ages: the present (this) age and the age to come. He points out that the Greek word translated as “eternal” in the phrase “eternal life” (Matt 19:16) can mean more than one thing, but more significantly, he denies that the term can mean what we most often think it means: “forever” (see discussion below). Instead, Rob suggests that the first of these meanings is best captured with a term like “age”, which he defines as “a period of time with a beginning and ending” (32).

Rob’s point in all this discussion is to show more correctly what the young man was asking Jesus. He wasn’t asking to “go to heaven”; rather he was asking, “How do I participate in the New Age?” As Rob summarizes:

They did not talk about a future life somewhere else, because they anticipated a coming day when the world would be restored, renewed, and redeemed and there would be peace on earth (40).

For Rob the point is more a question of how the man participates in this new world God will bring about when he turns the eschatological calendar. Jesus’ answers the man in the way one would expect a Jewish rabbi would: “live the commandments”. “God has shown you how to live. Live that way” (40). The man responds that he does keep the Mosaic commands. As an aside, the man was not saying he was perfect, but that he was living a Torah-observant life within the Covenant God had established with Israel on Sinai. But as Jesus had already been teaching that this kind of obedience was not enough. Here I am alluding to the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) where Jesus intensifies the Mosaic commandments as the Messianic Teacher of the Torah. The so-called “antithesis” in Matthew 5, where Jesus discussed the commands of the Mosaic Torah with “you’ve heard it said, but I say to you”, could be given the title “Yes and More”. The man then was likely right to ask the “what else must I do” question and it was probably stimulated by Jesus’ own teaching.

Most importantly, however Rob seems to miss the main point of Jesus response which quite rightly is the last word: “follow me” (19:20). It was not a summons simply to sell all he had and give to the poor. Jesus wasn’t primarily going after his “greed” as Rob thinks. Jesus called him ultimately to “follow”. Obedience is ultimate yes, but it’s also Jesus oriented. The man had to follow Jesus and was unwilling to do so, bottom line.

Nevertheless, I think Rob's comment is insightful and profound: “Jesus takes the man’s question about his life then and makes it about the kind of life he’s living now” (41). This is a significant insight. If you don’t follow Jesus now (this presupposes a lifestyle of ultimate obedience), you won’t be with him then. Heaven isn't simply about someday; its a present reality. Jesus does "blur the lines"; he does merge "heaven and earth".

Now very briefly a few more things:

1) The discussion of “eternal”, aionios, has serious problems. Rob wants to deny that the word aionios ever means what we think of “forever”. This is both right and wrong. It is true that ancient Jews would not have had the same notion of forever as we do, but to say that they could not have thought in terms of forever and that they did not use this word to denote that conception is flat out wrong. Also, there is no evidence to support Rob’s idea that aionios means “intense” (see pg 57). No lexicon of the Greek language supports such an understanding.

2) Rob seems to assume in his retelling of the story of the Rich Young Ruler that the man will participate in the eternal life no matter what. The only question is: Of what will his participation consist? As Rob poses the question “How do you make sure you’ll be part of the new thing God is doing? How do you best become the kind of person whom God could entrust with significant responsibility in the age to come?” (40). This is perhaps the assumption behind his erroneous idea that in heaven fire will purify you and make you fit to “handle heaven” (50). Rob wants to argue that Jesus didn't teach about “getting into" heaven or the age to come. Instead Jesus taught about being “transformed, so that we can actually handle heaven”.

I have to say it, this is just nonsense. Jesus, in point of fact, primarily taught on what Rob says he didn’t. Reflecting on the young man’s refusal Jesus even states, “only with difficult will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven . . . it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (19:23-24). They’ll be no flames in heaven making you fit for it. Jesus does not assume that the young man will be there. Jesus makes the distinction between following Jesus in the here and its reward and “inheriting eternal life”, which is simply another way of saying enter, in the here after (19:29). There is a difference between the two. And being in one does not mean you’ll be in the other. But how you live in the one will determine your presence in the other. You'll enter the other by how you live in the present.

3) The discussion of “treasure” and whether treasure is static or dynamic (43-47) is baffling to me. What is ironic is while arguing for a view of heaven rooted in a first-century Jewish mindset, the topic of “treasures in heaven” is untethered from any such rootedness. It seems that Jesus himself promised “static” rewards (19:28).

4) Definition of “heaven”:

Sometimes when Jesus used the word “heaven” he was simply referring to God, using the word as a substitute for the name of God. Second, sometimes when Jesus spoke of heaven, he was referring to the future coming together of heaven and earth in what he and his contemporaries called in the age to come. And then third—and this is where things get really interesting—when Jesus talked about heaven he was talking about our present eternal, intense, real experiences of joy, peace, and love in this life, this side of death and the age to come (58-59).

Taking these points in turn. First, only Matthew has Jesus do such a thing; in other words in none of the other Gospels does Jesus replace “God” with the term “Heaven”. This may just have been Mathew’s preference and not much can be assumed than from this about Jesus’ usage. It is true that Matthew uses “heaven” this way. Second, while this is somewhat true. Ancient Jews and early Christians still maintained the distinction between heaven and earth. When saints died they went to heaven from where they will return with Jesus at the end of the age. Collapsing the distinction between heaven and earth to the extend Rob does is unbiblical. If Paul is right “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord” then there is a heaven somewhere else at least until the time of Jesus second coming. Jesus did pray that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven, but that has yet to occur. Third, this category of heaven is an illusion. Neither Jesus nor any biblical writer defines heaven this way.

*

So what is the final word on Love Wins and heaven? I think it is right to critique the story that the portrait tells with which the chapter opened. I don’t think the picture truthfully represents the biblical story of salvation because the story the picture tells is truncated. I'll say only here that God’s ultimate place for humans is a renewed earth. God is going to make all things new (Rev 21) and the New Jerusalem comes down out of heaven to earth. As I make this point, I am surprised that Rob didn’t discuss Revelation 21-22 in the chapter. It’s absence startling.

Heaven is a complex biblical idea however. There is a heaven that is distinct from the earth. They are not the same place. Right now God is in heaven and at the time of his choosing he’ll turn the eschatological calendar sending Jesus to finish the work. Yet, in the meantime because of Jesus’ resurrection life and the gift of the Spirit in the church, heaven can be enacted in this time and in this place through the work of the church. Where the church steps, heaven’s footprint is left.

This finally brings us to the question of who is in heaven. First, it needs to be said that Jesus does call people to "enter heaven", although we need to define that term appropriately. The story of the Rich Young Ruler itself shows this. Second, the saints in both the Old and New Testament times are in heaven right now. When we die, if we have entrusted ourselves to Jesus [if we follow Jesus], we’ll be in heaven immediately. This however is not the last word and it might not have been what Jesus the the young man were discussing as Rob points out. Heaven will unite with a renewed earth and it’s this harmony that the Bible foresees as the final state, eternal life. Eternal life is both a quality of life (Rob’s point) and a quantity of life (forever).

For earlier posts for Love Wins see: Post When your wife . . ., 1, 2, 3.

If you like this post please share it with others.

Rob Bell on Tour

For our UK readers, Rob Bell is on a book tour and is coming to 4 venues in England this week. Tickets are required and can be reserved here.

April 18, London, Westminster Central Hall
April 19, Cheltenham, Cheltenham Racecourse
April 20, Liverpool, Liverpool Cathedral (Sold out)
April 21, Cambridge, Corn Exchange

Just this week Rob was in the northern Chicago suburb of Winnetka. I was not able to attend, but a few of my North Park students did. They reported that the meeting was unsatisfying because Rob's answers continued to be less than clear. One said, "I just wish he'd say what he thinks". The student also mentioned that the questions posed to Rob were more pastoral than theological.

So, I'm not sure how much would be gained by going to the event if you're looking for clarification. But I think the benefit of attending would be to see who attends and what is the nature of the conversations and questions.

D.A. Carson Festschrift

Understanding the Times: New Testament Studies in the 21st Century. Essays in Honor of D.A.Carson on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday

Edited by Andreas Köstenberger and Robert Yarbrough

Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011 - due out 30 April!

In appreciation of Carson’s life work, editors Andreas J. Köstenberger and Robert Yarbrough, themselves respected scholars, have assembled a team of contributors, including Stanley Porter, Grant Osborne, Mark Dever, John Woodbridge, Douglas Moo, Peter O’Brien, Eckhard Schnabel, Craig Blomberg, and David Pao, together to produce this volume of essays on New Testament studies in modern times. The book is divided into three parts: New Testament Studies and Ancillary Disciplines, Special Topics in New Testament Studies, and New Testament Studies Around the World. Pastors, professors, and students will benefit not only from the example of a man who understands the times, but also from the high quality of scholarship and wide variety of topics covered in this volume.

“Don Carson is one of the most productive and capable evangelical scholars in the English-speaking world, and this volume by former students and teaching colleagues reflects the breadth of his interests and especially his concern for the development of biblical studies in a global context. Alongside fresh personal contributions to New Testament study, there are informative surveys of developments in New Testament studies in Africa and Asia, as well as in North America and Europe. This solid volume thus offers not only a worthy tribute to its honoree but also valuable assessments of the state of New Testament scholarship worldwide.”

-I. Howard Marshall

“D. A. Carson is the Renaissance man of North American evangelicalism. He is a biblical scholar of the highest caliber, a preacher and evangelist of renown, and a theologian of unswerving commitment to the gospel. His teaching ministry has spanned the globe; in fact, I’ve heard his sermon on Matthew 27 on three different continents and found it equally stirring each time. This book is a snapshot of issues in the international New Testament scene as it stands today. This erudite collection of essays is rightly dedicated to one who has committed his life to serving the global church.”

-Michael F. Bird

The Father is Merciful

I remember seeing Rob Bell's clip where he asks the question whether Jesus saves us from the Father! An orthodox theology (i.e., one that is Trinitarian) would say emphatically "no!" because the cross is a triune event. Here are some words from Bruce McCormack on the subject:

“If the Father were not mercifully inclined toward the human race all along, why would he have sent his only Son into this world in the first place? Surely, a determination to be merciful and forgiving must precede and ground the sending of the Son into the world to die in our place. Surely forgiveness is not elicited from the Father (grudgingly?) by what Christ did on our behalf; it is rather effected by the Father in and through Christ’s passion and death. So the picture of an angry God the Father and a gentle and self-sacrificial Son who pays the ultimate price to effect an alteration in the Father’s ‘attitude’ fails to hit the mark.”[1]

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[1] Bruce L. McCormack, “The Ontological Presuppositions of Barth’s Doctrine of the Atonement,” in The Glory of the Atonement, ed. C.E. Hill and F.A. James (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2004) 366 (346-66).

Promo: Paul and the Gospels

Over at the T&T Clark blog is a promo of me and Joel's forthcoming volume Paul and the Gospels.

Jesus and the Eucharist 3

In his second chapter Brant Pitre, begins to set the stage for his discussion of the Jewish roots of the Eucharist in his recent book. We’ve been doing a series of posts through this interesting and provocative book. Brant begins by asking “What were the Jewish people waiting for?” This indeed is an important question not only for his study, but more generally because the answer to this question will put into context the words and deeds of Jesus more generally that the Eucharist is merely on case in point.

Brant corrects the false notion that the Jewish people were only expecting an earthly, political Messiah, one who would boot out the Romans and rule over a restored political kingdom. It is true that this was an element, perhaps a central one, of first century Jewish expectation, but it is not comprehensive enough an understanding. He comments,

While some Jews may have been waiting for a merely military Messiah, this was not necessarily the case for all. According to the Jewish Scriptures and certain ancient Jewish traditions, for others, the hope for the future consisted of much, much more (41).

Brant points out that in addition to a political deliverance, the Jewish people were expecting a “new exodus”. In the pattern of the first exodus led by Moses, at the end of the age, God would bring about an even great exodus—God would return the exiles back to the Promised Land from the lands to which they were scattered. In order to do so, God would (1) raise up a “new Moses”, (2) establish a “new covenant”, (3) and build a “new temple”.

It was a hope for the coming Messiah, who would not just be a king, but a prophet and a miracle worker like Moses. It was a hope for the making of a new and everlasting covenant, which would climax in a heavenly banquet where the righteous would see God, and feast on the divine presence. It was the hope for the building of a new Temple, where God would be worshiped forever and ever. Finally, it was a hope for the ingathering of God’s people into the promised land of a world made new (41-42).

The New Exodus tradition, and its concomitant elements, that Brant argues is the appropriate background against which to understand Jesus words and deeds generally and in particular the meaning of the Last Supper.

Brant's point is certainly correct and provides a more complete conceptual background for understanding Jesus. If I were to suggest one friendly critique, I would press him on his discussion of the "new promised land" as "not necessarily identical to the earthly land of Israel" (39). While on the surface I can agree with this statement--there is a New Creation element in the New Exodus--I think it is misleading.

The new promise Land will indeed be identical to the earthly Land of Israel, but it includes more. The expectations begin with and are centered on the restoration of the Land (the land promised to the patriarchs, apportioned by Joshua, but never fully acquired) and expand out from there to the entire earth. The expectations don't contain a conception of replacement of the old earthly Land with something else.

Christus Victor Hoopla

Over at CT Mark Galli has an article on The Problem with Christus Victor where he notes the increasing popularity of the Christus Victor (CV) model for the atonement, but thinks it can down play notions of personal sin and guilt if not cojoined to the theory of penal substitutionary atonement (PSA). He concludes: "Here, I'm simply suggesting that Christus Victor may not be a theory that Protestants, and evangelicals in particular, should tie their wagons to. While it brings to the fore some crucial and forgotten biblical truths, it's clearly a secondary atonement theme in the New Testament. And at least for today's Protestants, it has an uncanny tendency to downplay a sense of personal responsibility, which in the end, sabotages grace. In my view, more than ever in our day, we need Christus Vicarious."

Tom Schreiner argues similarly in his response to Greg Boyd in The Nature of the Atonement. Several posts have appeared around the biblioblogosphere about Galli's article including the Anglican Priest, Through a Glass Darkly, Brambonius, and Already Not Yet to name a few.

I agree that CV and PSA go together because Jesus is only Christus Victor because he is also Agnus Dei. PSA deprives the Satan of his key weapon: accusation against the saints! However, I think CV is the the most comprehensive model of the atonement for several reasons:

1. Canonical: The first and last intimations of the atonement in Scripture are about the victory of Jesus' death (Gen 3:15; Rev 12:11).

2. Historical: CV appears to have been more popular in Church History as a model for the atonement than any other. Though PSA can be found in the fathers as a minor key, CV can be found among the Reformers as a minor key too.

3. Biblical Theological: CV links together a lot more themes than PSA does. CV brings together kingdom, atonement, resurrection, and new creation.

4. Pauline: Note how Romans 8 and 1 Corinthians 15 both start off with the sacrificial nature of Jesus' death, but then climax in affirmations of divine victory! PSA is the basis for CV, but CV is then the goal of PSA.

I like the words of John Calvin on the subject: “Finally, since as God only he could not suffer, and as man only could not overcome death, he united the human nature with the divine, that he might subject the weakness of the one to death as an expiation of sin, and by the power of the other, maintaining a struggle with death, might gain us the victory … But special attention must be paid to what I lately explained, namely, that a common nature is the pledge of our union with the Son of God; that, clothed with our flesh, he warred to death with sin that he might be our triumphant conqueror.”[1]

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[1] Institutes II.12.2-3. Calvin also wrote: “And so, by fighting hand to hand with the power of the Devil, with the horror of death, he won the victory over them and triumphed, so that now in our death we should not fear those things which our Prince has swallowed up” (Institutes II.16.11).

Response to Maurice Casey on Jesus as Messiah

Over at BTB 41.2 (2001) Maurice Casey has a review of my volume Are You the One Who is to Come? The Historical Jesus and the Messianic Question. Unsurprisingly it is a fairly negative review with one or two polite hat tips. Truth be told, several criticisms he raises have some validity while some seem a little strange or ill-founded.

First, Casey thinks that I failed to engage with the linguistic evidence about the usage of the words Mashiah and Meshiha in ancient sources. He follows Jo Fitzmyer and Marinius de Jonge in opting for a narrow definition of messianism as tied strictly to the word "Messiah" occuring in the sources. But the problem is threefold. (1) As many scholars have recognized (I think esp. of John Collins, Martin Hengel, James Charlesworth, Matthew Black, Gerd Theissen, Andrew Chester, William Horbury, and Antii Laato), roles are more important than titles. The conceptual framework of messianism is not contingent upon the occurrence of the word "Messiah" in every instance. (2) Casey backs de Jonge's claim that there was no absolute use of the term "Messiah" in second temple Judaism (see Maurice Casey's Is John's Gospel True? 58-59). Just one wee small problem, namely, there is an absolute usage of "the Messiah" in 1QSa 2.11-12! Furthermore, the reason why most usages of the word are not absolute is because the majority of references to a Messiah/Anointed One comes from the DSS which differentiate the anointed figures as the "Messiah of Aaron and Israel" or the "Messiah of righteousness". The qualifications were needed to disambiguate which "Anointed" figure was referred to. (3) More common in the Old Testament and elsewhere is reference to the "Lord's Anointed" (e.g. Psalms of Solomon 17; Luke 2.11) and the absolute use of "the Messiah" arguably developed as an abbreviation of the fuller reference that emerged in colloquial usage. So "the Messiah" was definitely not a Christian invention as a title for Jesus.

Second, in regards to the Son of Man, I tried desperately to build a bridge between the linguistic approach to the "Son of Man" as a generic reference in Aramaic (Bar Enasha etc.) and the eschatological approach that sees it as dependent upon Daniel 7. I accepted many of Casey's claims about the linguistic approach, but argued that the particularizing connotation of the Son of Man (i.e., one man in particular) make it possible to bring Danielic allusions into some of the Son of Man material in the Gospels. I don't deny that the one like a Son of Man is a symbol for the Saints of the Most High in Daniel 7. But he is also the heavenly counter-part to the wicked "horn" (Antiochus Epiphanes) and he is also symbolic of God's kingdom. In fact, a large number of scholars regard the Son of Man in Daniel 7 as an angelic figure, not simply a corporate symbol for the nation, but an individual angel with a representative role. I should note also that our earliest sources (4Q246, Similitudes of Enoch, Gospels, Revelation, 4 Ezra) seem to have read Daniel 7 in a messianic sense with the Son of Man as an messianic deliverer. I also attended Maurice Casey's paper at the British New Testament Conference several years ago where he argued for an Aramaic source underlying the Son of Man sayings of 1 Enoch that meant that the Son of Man was in fact Enoch (see 1 Enoch 71.17). But most scholars regard 1 Enoch 71.17 as a later interpolation and if the Son of Man is Enoch then why doesn't Enoch recognize himself in his vision? (see further John Collins, "Enoch and the Son of Man" here). His approach has not convinced any Enochic scholars I know or Pseudepigrapha experts like Darrell Hannah, G.W. Nickelsburg, or Jim Davilla that the Son of Man is anything other than a messianic/eschatological figure in the Similitudes (see esp. Hannah's essay in Who is the Son of Man).

Third, in person Casey is very charming and personable chap. So I must say that I find it rather disappointing then that in book reviews he is rather ad hominum in his review of "evangelical" scholars. His reviews of books by Stan Porter, Craig Evans, N.T. Wright, and now myself have exposed our principal error of espousing conclusions that are sadly all too congruent with evangelical beliefs. The fact that one can find liberal Protestants, Catholics, and Jewish scholars arguing for the same conclusion that I make in the book - that Jesus was a messianic claimant - does not perturb Casey from dispensing such criticism and hoping that the implied reader shares his acute dislike at this religious sub-group. I do not know what demons haunt Casey's religious biography, but I plead with him that book reviews are not the place for exorcising them.

In any case, I remain grateful that Casey took time to review the book, and it is another reminder that one should read his Jesus of Nazareth as it represents the conclusions of a career of work on the Gospels. Casey has his own take on how the messianism of the church emerged from a non-messianic figure.

Protestants and the Gospels

I lament the fact that Protestants love their epistles (esp. Paul) for all it's doctrine, but struggle with the Gospels. Yes, the Gospels give us Jesus which is great, but it is Jesus as the subject of Paul's atonement theology that really matters for many folks. Yet surely it should be the other way around: for doctrine and discipleship we should start with Jesus and them move to Paul. As I often tell my students, Paul rocks, but Jesus reigns. The good thing about the Book of Common Prayer is that every day you get a reading from the Gospels, every day, words from Jesus, or a story about Jesus. I think that is important. Yes, I know of the debate about "Red Letter Christians," but the fact is that we have more manuscripts of the Gospels than the rest of the New Testament from antiquity and the Fathers seemed to have quoted the Gospels more than Paul. The primordial genesis of Christian doctrine took the form of a concerted dialogue with Jesus and the Gospels. As such the Gospels should be foremost in our theology, preaching, and discipleship. If ye believe not me, consider the words of J.I. Packer:

“Finally, we could then correct the wooliness of view as to what Christian commitment involves, by stressing the need for constant meditation on the four gospels, over and above the rest of our Bible reading; for gospel study enables us both to keep our Lord in clear view and to hold before our minds the relational frame of discipleship to him. The doctrines on which our discipleship rests are clearest in the epistles, but the nature of discipleship itself is most vividly portrayed in the gospels. Some Christians seem to prefer the epistles to the gospels and talk of graduating from the gospels to the epistles as if this were a mark of growing up spiritually; but really this attitude is a very bad sign, suggesting that we are more interested in theological notions than in fellowship with the Lord Jesus in person. We should think, rather, of the theology of the epistles as preparing us to understand better the disciple relationship with Christ that is set forth in the gospels, and we should never let ourselves forget that the four gospels are, as has often and rightly been said, the most wonderful books on earth.”

J.I. Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit: Finding Fullness in Our Walk with God(Downer’s Grove: IVP, 1984, reprint: 2005), 61.

Love Wins 3

Chapter one of Love Wins is a stream of consciousness. It is a set of ideas in the form of questions that loosely hold together.

Reading the chapter I felt like I often do when talking to my 4-year-old daughter. Mary, my budding conversationalist, beads ideas together whose only relationship is that the one idea caused her to think of another. But perhaps that’s the point. Perhaps Rob didn’t intend for the chapter to be read like as a geometric proof. Perhaps the issue then is genre. This chapter is more like poetry than an argument to be dissected or carefully analyzed. Perhaps to treat it as such would be to miss the overall poetic affect. Giving the benefit of the doubt to the author, let's go with this more poetic approach.

What then is the poetic affect? What does it all add up to?

At least two stand out to me. One, the chapter leaves you with the impression that the author is a critical thinker. Someone whose thought hard about this stuff and is in a position to offer more convincing alternatives. Two, the chapter leaves you with the undeniable impression that there is something terribly wrong with conventional evangelical thinking.

What particular areas of evangelical thinking? Based on the lines of questioning I came up with twelve topics:

1. Presumptive epistemological confidence
2. Population sizes of heaven and hell
3. Infinite punishment for finite sin
4. The age of accountability and infant mortality
5. Postmortem second chances
6. “Accepting Jesus” / praying the “sinner’s prayer”
7. Heaven somewhere else
8. Perspectives of Jesus
9. Missionary responsibility
10. Monergism/synergism (Is salvation all God or a combination of God and us?)
11. Personal relationship with Jesus
12. Supposed diversity of NT teaching

So what do we make of these two poetic impressions?

The thinking behind the questions at points is critical in the best sense of the word. As examples, I point to the important problems of an infinite punishment for finite sin and the population sizes of heaven and hell. I do think these are important subjects that are at least worthy of reconsideration. How should the Bible’s figurative language of end-time judgment be understood? Does the Bible teach that God will punish eternally sin committed in a finite body? Will more people go to hell than heaven? I think there are solid biblical reasons to believe that both of these questions are to be answered in the affirmative, but there are also biblical counter arguments that should be honestly weighed and not ignored.

Also, to the extent that our evangelical telling of the Gospel is reductionistic to the point of making God look like someone with a polarity disorder, that should be redressed.

But on the whole the chapter appears to me be more a pseudo-intellectualism rather than real. The problem of a supposed diversity of NT teaching on the way to salvation which takes several pages of the chapter is a pseudo-problem for example. While appearing quite insightful, it really amounts to nothing. What’s more, several of the lines of questioning Rob traces are caricatures based on the worst stereotypes of evangelical teaching around.

Penetrating and important questions can be found in this chapter. But they aren't the only kind.

Post 1 and Post 2

Writing Style 1

I've started reading the book by Joseph M. Williams and Gregory G. Colomb Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace (10th Edition). The first lesson provides some gems about writing clearly. They list four reasons for unclear writing:

1. Some writers complicate their prose to impress. They wrongly think that the more complex the writing the deeper the thinking. Fact is the less clear the writing often means we don't really know what we're talking about.

2. A writer is too self-conscious about their writing so that they over think as they compose. They are afraid to make even the slightest grammar mistake.

3. Some writers especially those new to a subject freeze up as they are trying to think and write. They are intimated by the material and consequently the prose worsens as we seek to master a new idea.

4. Writers cannot predict what bits of their writing will appear unclear to a reader or even what makes it unclear. They point out that our writing always appears clearer to us because we don't read out what we've written, we read in what we think.

Williams and Colomb argue that the most important skill to master in order to write clearly is how to objectively analyze your writing that is "on the page".

One other point of advice the first lesson raises is one I have found so true and can be captured in a saying I've been repeating since reading it during my doctoral days:

"Good writing is the result of many revisions".

As Williams and Colomb put it, "most experienced writers get something down on paper or up on a screen as fast as they can. Then they revise that first draft into something clearer" (8).

Dirk Jongkind on P52

Tyndale House textual guru (at least on Codex Sinaituc) Dirk Jongkind explains the papyrus fragment p52 on You.Tube. Gotta love that dutch accent!

Jesus and the Eucharist 2

Brant Pitre has written a very informative and accessible book on the Jewish roots of the Eucharist and this is the second post in a series engaging Brant’s thought-provoking volume.

In the first chapter, “The Mystery of the Last Supper”, Brant discusses his primary goal to situate Jesus’ teaching on the Eucharist in its historical setting in order to show that, in spite of its seeming incongruity with Jesus’ own Jewish tradition, his teaching on eating his flesh and drinking his blood (John 6) (Brant takes this passage eucharistically – more on that in ch. 4) was meant literally. Of his purpose he writes:

My goal is to explain how a first-century Jew like Jesus, Paul, or any other of the apostles, could go from believing that drinking any blood—much less human blood—was an abomination before God, to believing that drinking the blood of Jesus was actually necessary for Christians” (18).

Brant wants to take his reader on a journey back to the first-century world of Jesus and the first Jewish believers in Jesus to help us “see things” as they saw them. Brant believes when we use an informed imagination “we will discover that there is much more in common between ancient Judaism and early Christianity”. In the end, Brant will attempt to show that a Catholic view of the Eucharist (Transubstantiation) is consistent with Jesus’ teaching in their first-century Jewish setting.

There are two points of reflection that I wish to make. First, I am not Catholic. I have never believed in Transubstantiation and still don’t. My own view of the Eucharist is probably somewhere between Zwingli and Calvin. Nevertheless there is a great deal to be gained from reading Brant’s engagement with ancient Judaism and the Gospels both on the question of the Eucharist, but also a proper approach to reading the canonical Jesus in his context. Brant has given me a newfound appreciation for the Catholic doctrine. Reading his book I’ve come to see a biblical foundation for the view and while I am not convinced—this is a whole other issue related to conversion for to be convinced would mean a need to convert to Catholicism—on exegetical grounds, I now better understand and respect the view.

Second, in light of my previous post about Love Wins and the question Rob Bell raised about Jesus’ purpose and the meaning of the Jesus story, I think Brant’s discussion of Jesus humanity is instructive. He states,

For anyone interested in exploring the humanity of Jesus—especially the original meaning of his words and actions—a focus on his Jewish identity is absolutely necessary. Jesus was a historical figure, living in a particular time and place. Therefore, any attempt to understand his words and deeds must reckon with the fact that Jesus lived in an ancient Jewish context . . . this means that virtually all of his teachings were directed to a Jewish audience in a Jewish setting (12).

If this is the case, then it seems overly reductionistic to narrow the meaning of Jesus’ story to “love of God for every single one of us”. “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so” is no doubt true, but a childish (I don’t mean this negatively) abbreviation of the Gospel. Jesus did not present his mission or his message in these terms. Brant points to Jesus’ announcement of his mission and message in Luke 4 to show just how Jewish Jesus’ framework was. Here in his hometown as Jesus began to reveal his identity as Messiah he appealed to the Jewish Scriptures, Isaiah 61:1-4 particularly) and announced that the “anointed one” is here. “Jesus proclaimed to his fellow Jews that their long-held hope for the coming of the Messiah had been fulfilled—in him” (12-13).

Love Wins 2

In the preface, we find three main assertions. First, the Gospel, Jesus’ story, is “first and foremost about the love of God for every single one of us”. This story, according to the book has been “hijacked” by other stories that “Jesus isn’t interested in telling” because “they have nothing to do with what he came to do”. The book makes the claim that there is a “misguided and toxic” idea circulating widely among many, perhaps most, Christians in the world. This idea, this message, according to Rob Bell “subverts the contagious spread of Jesus’ message”. That message:

A select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better. Its clearly communicated to many that this belief is a central truth of the Christian faith and to reject it is in essence to reject Jesus.

The book is an attempt to “reclaim” the correct, true plot of the Jesus story.

Second, the kind of faith Jesus invites believers into “doesn’t skirt the big questions about topics like God and Jesus and salvation and judgment and heaven and hell”. However, there are some Christian contexts where questions are not welcomed. The book advocates that questions, inquiry and the discussion that it generates is itself divine. Rob states, “There is no question that Jesus cannot handle, no discussion too volatile, no issue too dangerous”.

Third, nothing in the book has not been taught or believed by many Christians before Rob Bell. The content of the book it is claimed has been taught an “untold number of times”. He contends that the historic, orthodox Christian faith is a “deep, wide, diverse stream that’s been flowing for thousands of years, carrying a staggering variety of voices, perspectives, and experiences”. The book claims to introduce the reader to “the ancient, ongoing discussion surrounding the resurrected Jesus”.

What do we make of these claims three claims?

The first claim represents an issue of colossal importance because if Rob Bell is in fact correct then we indeed need to repent immediately of our misguided and toxic understanding of the Gospel and push restart. We need to reboot our theological hard drives. If we have the Gospel wrong we won’t have much else right. But is Rob right here? Has the Gospel story been hijacked? Does the majority of evangelical Christians in the twenty-first century have the Gospel all wrong? Have most of us totally lost the plot? Have we left behind Jesus’ primary point? Have we somehow misunderstood or twisted the truth of what Jesus came to do? Well, this is a huge question that would require survey of Gospel accounts let alone a wide-ranging study of Gospel presentations today. Neither of which did Love Wins provide. So, it is certainly an overstatement. But it is worth asking don’t you think? It is possible that given our cultural conditioning we have gotten at least parts of the Gospel wrong? Or perhaps we have overly emphasized some aspects and neglected others?

While it is not yet altogether clear what Rob thinks is wrong with the typical evangelical Gospel story we can see glimpses of what he is protesting and what he will consequently develop in the book.

Traditional View		Love Wins
1. A select few will ultimately be saved.		1. Many if not most or all will ultimately be saved.
2. There’s no second chance after death.		2. There are an innumerable number of chances to be saved in this life and the next.
3. Heaven is a place somewhere else.		3. Heaven is here not somewhere else.
4. The central truth of Christianity is about getting out of hell and into heaven.		4. Whatever the central message of Christian faith is, it’s not about getting in and staying out.

The second claim about the importance of question asking is interesting. And there is indeed some truth in what he’s said in my opinion. I have noticed that some have taken issue with Rob’s questions asserting that they are not questions so much as statements, rhetorical questions. These are not questions Rob is really asking, they say, they are rather questions to stir up controversy, to cause confusion, to create disequilibrium. I can’t say speak to what the motivation is behind the questions. It seems reasonable to suppose I guess that the author is not simply asking questions for the sake of it. He clearly is making a point with the book and is using questions to create something of a need in his reader to receive his answers. Whatever the motivation, I am convinced that many of the questions the book raises are in fact good questions. And many Christians sitting in our churches are secretly asking them, but afraid to raise them publicly. I have a person at my church come to me late last year and confess that they were an evangelical universalist. I suppose they thought I would be a safe ear. While many are not as informed about the issues as this particular Christian, I’d be shocked if we conducted a survey of people in our churches and not many of them were either pluralistic or universalists. There is the official teaching of the church and then there is what the Christians who sit in the pews believe. Often these are two very different things. So applaud the book for raising the issues surrounding heaven and hell and putting them front and center. I think that to assume that there aren’t many people who if they thought about it would be convinced that in the end God’s going to sort it out and a good God will not send most of the world’s population who have ever lived to an eternal conscious punishment.

The third claim is perhaps the least able to stand up under the weight of the evidence not in its favor. It is incontrovertible that there has been a wide range of views with the context of what can loosely be labeled Christianity through the two millennia of its existence. However, it is not accurate by any stretch to call orthodox a view that (1) tends toward universalism, (2) presents a “second-chance” theology, and (3) argues that nothing of what is central to the Gospel story is about “getting in”. This view can claim the label orthodoxy about as much as those found among the Gnostic Gospels. Sure there were so-called Christians used these texts and who thought of them as Christian Scripture, but they were on the very fringes of early Christianity representing only a very small minority.

Paul and the Parousia

Yes, I'm in eschatology mode today, here is Joseph Plevnik's summary on Paul's teaching on the Parousia:

The parousia is the culmination of Christ’s present rule, the beginning of God’s kingdom, and the moment for the resurrection of the dead. The Lord’s coming is thus the moment for the resurrection of the dead. The Lord’s coming is thus the culmination of Christ’s own resurrection and of his lordship, which began with that event. Christ was raised as the first of many and as the one through whom all others will be brought to life. And he was made Lord so that he may put everything under his feet. The parousia is also the culmination of the present existence ‘in Christ.’ Those who belong to Christ will be with Christ at his coming.[1]

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[1] Joseph Plevnik, Paul and the Parousia: An Exegetical and Theological Investigation (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997), 328.

Richard Hays on why we need Eschatology

Richard Hays lists six reasons why the church needs apocalyptic eschatology (includes my own summary, paraphrase, and additions to his chief articles):[1]

1. The church needs apocalyptic eschatology to carry Israel’s story forward. Without a future oriented hope one cannot affirm God’s faithfulness to Israel and God’s covenantal promises become unintelligible. Or even worse, a faithless God means we have fickle deity whom we cannot be sure abut. God intends to vindicate his peple (Deut 32:36) at the appointed time when the Redeemer comes to Zion (Isa 59:20). These promises find their proleptic fulfillment in Jesus Christ in the church as a prefiguration of the eschatological people of God, which is a sign in itself of the full divine embracing (proslēmpsis) of eschatological Israel.

2. The church needs apocalyptic eschatology for interpreting the cross as a saving event for the world. If we are to grasp the centrality of the cross, then we must see it as more than a propiatory sacrifice for the forgivnesss of the sins of individuals. The cross should be interpreted as an atoning even within a larger apocalyptic narrative where God destroys the powers of the old order and inaugurates the new creation (Gal 6:14-16).

3. The church needs apocalyptic eschatology for the gospel’s political critique of pagan culture. The biting edge to Christian eschatology is that Jesus is the Lord to whom every leader and government will one day bow (Phil 2:9-11). Christian apocalypticism reminds us that Caesar’s power (in whatever form it takes) might claim to be totalitarian, but in fact it is transient. Christian loyalty to the Lord means resistance to the power, politics, and pleasures of the world around us. If we train our eyes on the ultimate reversal of fortunes then we will never become accommodated or complacent with the status quo in an injust world.

4. The church needs apocalyptic eschatology to resist ecclesial complacency and triumphalism. The looming reality of a final judgment – a judgment that begins with the church – strikes a chord because it prevents the church from having grandiose concepts of its own importance (see 2 Cor 5:11–6:2). The church is a provisional servant of God, a life boat between shipwreck and salvage, and so must avoid becoming fat, sleepy, or abusive.

5. The church needs apocalyptic eschatology in order to affirm the body. Apocalyptic eschatology is in one sense dualistic between certain temporal and spatial entities (e.g., heaven vs. earth, future vs. present, etc.). However, that dualism is never annunciated as a radical rejection of the material world in toto. For apocalyptic eschatology looks forward the the Creator’s redemption and renewal of the created order and his refusal to abandon it to decay. God redeemes what he creates. That is why Christians look forward to the resurrection of the flesh and not to the immortality of the soul (1 Cor 15:35-58).

6. The church needs apocalyptic eschatology to ground its mission. The resurrection and ascension of Jesus was a sign that Israel’s restoration was indeed at hand (Acts 1:11). Yet it was also a call to engage in witness to the expanding kingdom. That witnessing inevitably brings the witnesses into conflict with a world hostile to the message of the lordship of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit empowers the church and forms the community as a missional organism that works out God’s purposes for redemption and judgment. Without this endtime perspective the content and urgency of the Christian mission is greatly retarded.

7. The church needs apocalyptic eschatology to speak with integrity about suffering and death. Those armed with an apocalyptic eschatology need not live in denial of the sufferings of this age and the groaning that accompany it. Cynicism nor despair takes over Christians because they know that their telos is the resurrection of their body assured by the resurrection of Jesus’ body. Christians therefore know how to grieve with hope in the face of the horror of death knowing that every tear will one day be wiped away their eyes in the new creation.

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[1] Richard B. Hays, “‘Why Do You Stand Looking Up Toward Heaven?’ New Testament Eschatology at the Turn of the Millennium,” in Theology at the Turn of the Millennium, eds. L.G. Jones and J.J. Buckley (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), 113-33.

Ian Paul on 1 Tim 2:11-14

Ian Paul gives a spirited defence of an egalitarian take on 1 Tim 2:11-14 and tries to answer several pointed questions. Still not sure if the use of the article can mean that Paul refers to one "specific" birth!

Jesus and the Eucharist 1

My friend and Catholic New Testament scholar Brant Pitre, for whom I have the greatest respect, has just released an interesting, accessible and important book on the Lord’s Supper (i.e. the Eucharist, for those of us low church folks!). The book is Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist: Unlocking the Secrets of the Last Supper.

I grew up a Protestant low church Baptist so my understanding of the Lord’s Supper has always been very Zwingli-ish. In other words, I have understood the Lord’s Supper as primarily memorial. In the Lord’s Supper we “remember” and reflect on the death of Jesus. Brant’s provocative thesis in the book is that the traditional Catholic view of transubstantiation, which believes that the bread and wine in communion are transformed literally into the body and blood of Jesus, is rooted in Jesus’ own teaching and first century Jewish context. The book presses me, and all readers, to consider a fresh Jesus’ teaching on the Eucharist. However, this is more than a book about the Eucharist.

In the book, Brant shows the importance of understanding the Jewish context of Jesus. This, for me, is a lesson nearly as important as his thesis on the Eucharist. I will be reflecting on the book in a series of posts.

Brant begins in this introduction with a somewhat darkly comical but yet poignant story of a pre-martial interview with his soon-to-be wife's family's Baptist pastor over 15 years ago. Upon hearing that Brant was a Catholic, the meeting turned from a pre-marital interview into a theological interrogation. As Brant recounts it, the pastor "grilled me on every single controversial point in the Catholic faith". pulled no punches in his questions of Brant over all things Catholic: Mary, the Canon of Scripture, the Pope and the Eucharist.

On the latter topic, the Eucharist, the pastor asked/asserted "How can Catholics teach that bread and wine actually become Jesus' body and blood? Do you really believe that? It's ridiculous!" Brant reflected on the fact that in the moment he was unable to provide a biblical and theological response. He left the meeting devastated. To make matters worse, the pastor said to Brant's fiance that "he has serious concerns about yoking you with an unbeliever".

Brant reflected that this experience was a "major turning point" in his life. He shares that this event became one of the reasons he is a biblical scholar today. Brant writes, "In effect, my exchange with the pastor poured gasoline on the fire of my interest in Scripture". One of the major lessons he learned as he pursued a biblical studies in undergrad, graduate and post-graduate work was this:

If you really want to know who Jesus was and what he was saying and doing, then you need to interpret his words and deeds in their historical context. And that means become familiar with not just ancient Christianity but also with ancient Judaism.

Clement on Love

1 Let him who has love in Christ keep the commandments of Christ.

2 Who can describe the |blessed¦ bond of the love of God?

3 What man is able to tell the excellence of its beauty, as it ought to be told?

4 The height to which love exalts is unspeakable.

5 Love unites us to God. Love covers a multitude of sins. Love beareth all things, is long-suffering in all things. There is nothing base, nothing arrogant in love. Love admits of no schisms: love gives rise to no seditions: love does all things in harmony. By love have all the elect of God been made perfect; without love nothing is well-pleasing to God.

6 In love has the Lord taken us to Himself. On account of the Love he bore us, Jesus Christ our Lord gave His blood for us by the will of God; His flesh for our flesh, and His soul for our souls.

(1 Ceml 49:1-6)