Went camping this weekend, so this weeks blog will be somewhat short. I had a good friend of mine ask me recently "What percentage would you say you should take the Bible literally?" This is an excellent question, but one you can't really answer with percentages, though to be honest it also very much depends on what you mean by "literal." If by literal you mean "take the plain meaning from the words on the page," the answer is you should never, ever take the Bible literally. What is plain to us living in urbanized secular 21st century America would not remotely be plain to a desert-roaming beduin tribe, as a for instance. The ancients understood the world through lenses radically different from ours and it is those understandings that are built into Scripture.
Take an email that you sent off last week. That email is very grounded in your cultural worldview. We live in a civilization that has benefited from many, many years of scientific and philosophical developments. We can talk about evolution, the 9-11 tragedy, and the Big Bang theory amongst zillions of others without any further explanation. If I translate that email into perfect Taiwanese and show it to a farmer or rancher who has had no exposure to Western culture, that person is at best going to just hazard a guess as to what is going on. If this email is important enough to them, they will actually manufacture the meaning using their own cultural concepts, thus replacing what the author wanted to convey.
This is what we do with Scripture. We take our own culture and manufacture meaning. This is why we can't read Scripture literally if we want to take Scripture seriously at all. To give a salient example, the ancients had a very agrarian understanding of procreation. A man had his seed and when he copulated the seed (literally sperma in Greek) would be implanted in the woman who would either be fertile or infertile. There was no understanding that the woman contributes any genetic material because they are basically just surrogates; all the genetics comes 100% from the male. This is why ancestry was so incredibly important, you were your ancestor. Who you are as a person is absolutely bound up with who your ancestor was; you're basically a variation of them. This is also why Jesus can be God's son and still be God Himself.
So you see, even something as monumentally important to Christianity like the Incarnation was still described and understood in the terms and concepts of the people at that time - in fact that's how God always works. He works with the understandings of His children for His redemptive purposes, not against them. Taking the birth of Christ, however, in the way we usually do manufactures a different meaning than what the author intended. If we do that, we are creating our own Scripture and in my opinion are involved in worship of the self, not God.
Still, can I take some of the Bible and does the plain meaning then match the plain meaning now? Yes, lots of times. Do not murder, Love your neighbor as yourself, among numerous others. However, these things cannot be answered with a percentage. When to take something literally as opposed to figuratively is ultimately a question of Biblical genre...i.e. what kind of writing is it? That question we will save for next time.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Thursday, August 4, 2011
The Bible (we were gonna talk about it sooner or later)
Been having a large number of issues come up concerning the Christian Bible lately, so I thought this would be a good blog topic for this week. Apparently because a lake in Texas has turned blood red due to algae there's an idiot out there quoting Revelation, a book that only barely made it into the canon of Christian Scripture and is certainly one of the most difficult books of the Bible to muddle through (probably one of the reasons it only barely made it in).
So here's the playing field here in America today. On the right we have what seems to be Christianity, holding that the Bible is the direct, inerrant and infallible Word of God. To disobey the Bible is to disobey God Himself. On the left we have the rest of society who see that literally interpreting the Bible winds up with people without tattoos or women's rights while also making the favorite method of punishment being stoned to death. Seeing these things as really rather backward and thus damaging to many people (plus tattoos rock!) intelligent secularists will usually try to undermine the Bible's authority by asking questions of authenticity. The usual suspects are questions of authorship, i.e. whether one person wrote a book and was recording what was given to him or whether it was compiled by a much later person using barely remembered stories and myths of that culture, or questions of copyist accuracy, i.e. whether these books look the same after several thousand years of human copying by hand.
Here's my issue...the Bible never refers to itself as a rule book, so it does little good to follow it like one or undermine it. The school math textbook was written by someone other than Albus B. Numberaddition! Numberaddition was assembling the the math theories of those before him! The subtraction problems were changed in the new edition! These arguments bear no real weight on teaching book. Not only does the Bible look nothing like a book of statutes, being full of songs, short tidbits of wisdom, personal letters, and stories, but it actually never has any understanding that it's Divine legal code. The only understanding the Bible has of itself is that it is teaching not rules.
"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness" 2 Tim 3:16
"For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope." Romans 15:4
Take the word "Torah." Previously considered to mean "law" by many previous Christians, many scholars now understand it to mean "instruction" or "teaching", which makes sense because God who gave Torah became a teacher when He became incarnate, or so Christians usually hold. Even Leviticus, the most rule oriented book in the Bible has been described as continuing "the genre of the Pentateuch as a whole - that is, primarily instructional history." (Longman & Dillard, Intro to the Old Testament, Zondervan (2006) p. 83)
You see the entire point is not that there is a one-to-one correlation between what the Bible says and how we should act. The point is to know how people interacted with God and each other then so we can have a good idea of how to interact with God and each other now. To pretend we can take the writings of a culture that existed at least 2000 years ago with no attempt to know in what context they were writing them isn't God worship, its book-worship.
The problem lies in the phrase, "the Bible is the Word of God." First, the Reformers themselves did not understand the Bible to be word for word from God himself - that comes generations after Luther and Calvin through conflicts with Catholicism.
"But this does not mean (Luther) was a rigid biblicist, for what he understood by the 'Word of God' was more than the written word in the Bible...The Bible declares that, strictly speaking, the Word of God is none other than God the Son who was made flesh and dwelt among us...Given this biblical understanding of the Word of God, what makes the Bible the word of God is not that it is infallible, nor that it can serve as a source of authority...The Bible is the Word of God because in it, Jesus, the Word Incarnate, comes to us." Justo Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity Vol. 2., HarperSanFrancisco (1985) pp. 29-30
The question during the Reformation is what vehicle is best for getting at Christ - the Church or Scripture. Indeed, Biblically speaking many perfectly orthodox scholars see no evidence within the Bible itself the belief that God authored it. It has God's words in it, but is itself not God's direct inerrant Word. Personally I cannot find a theological institution that taught that the Bible is word for word from God Himself until the 1820's and it did not receive open attention until decades later.
So here's where I am: I respectfully disagree with those who will say that the Bible is made up, that the miracles of Jesus are metaphor or whatever else you want to toss into the pot. I entirely agree with their motivations, however. Katrina didn't happen because God hates gays, liberals, or even bottled soda it happened because this country is two steps away from being a bunch of Pharisees for Jesus. The people that worship him now are the very ones who would've nailed him up on the cross in the first place! IN WHAT STATE IS CHRISTENDOM WHEN GOD HAS TO USE THE ATHEISTS TO KEEP PEOPLE FROM MAKING THE BIBLE INTO IDOL?!
(actually Katrina happened due to a combination of Atlantic storm cells, crappy dikes, and a bunch of people who willingly lived below sea-level, but you get the idea)
So here's the playing field here in America today. On the right we have what seems to be Christianity, holding that the Bible is the direct, inerrant and infallible Word of God. To disobey the Bible is to disobey God Himself. On the left we have the rest of society who see that literally interpreting the Bible winds up with people without tattoos or women's rights while also making the favorite method of punishment being stoned to death. Seeing these things as really rather backward and thus damaging to many people (plus tattoos rock!) intelligent secularists will usually try to undermine the Bible's authority by asking questions of authenticity. The usual suspects are questions of authorship, i.e. whether one person wrote a book and was recording what was given to him or whether it was compiled by a much later person using barely remembered stories and myths of that culture, or questions of copyist accuracy, i.e. whether these books look the same after several thousand years of human copying by hand.
Here's my issue...the Bible never refers to itself as a rule book, so it does little good to follow it like one or undermine it. The school math textbook was written by someone other than Albus B. Numberaddition! Numberaddition was assembling the the math theories of those before him! The subtraction problems were changed in the new edition! These arguments bear no real weight on teaching book. Not only does the Bible look nothing like a book of statutes, being full of songs, short tidbits of wisdom, personal letters, and stories, but it actually never has any understanding that it's Divine legal code. The only understanding the Bible has of itself is that it is teaching not rules.
"All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness" 2 Tim 3:16
"For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope." Romans 15:4
Take the word "Torah." Previously considered to mean "law" by many previous Christians, many scholars now understand it to mean "instruction" or "teaching", which makes sense because God who gave Torah became a teacher when He became incarnate, or so Christians usually hold. Even Leviticus, the most rule oriented book in the Bible has been described as continuing "the genre of the Pentateuch as a whole - that is, primarily instructional history." (Longman & Dillard, Intro to the Old Testament, Zondervan (2006) p. 83)
You see the entire point is not that there is a one-to-one correlation between what the Bible says and how we should act. The point is to know how people interacted with God and each other then so we can have a good idea of how to interact with God and each other now. To pretend we can take the writings of a culture that existed at least 2000 years ago with no attempt to know in what context they were writing them isn't God worship, its book-worship.
The problem lies in the phrase, "the Bible is the Word of God." First, the Reformers themselves did not understand the Bible to be word for word from God himself - that comes generations after Luther and Calvin through conflicts with Catholicism.
"But this does not mean (Luther) was a rigid biblicist, for what he understood by the 'Word of God' was more than the written word in the Bible...The Bible declares that, strictly speaking, the Word of God is none other than God the Son who was made flesh and dwelt among us...Given this biblical understanding of the Word of God, what makes the Bible the word of God is not that it is infallible, nor that it can serve as a source of authority...The Bible is the Word of God because in it, Jesus, the Word Incarnate, comes to us." Justo Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity Vol. 2., HarperSanFrancisco (1985) pp. 29-30
The question during the Reformation is what vehicle is best for getting at Christ - the Church or Scripture. Indeed, Biblically speaking many perfectly orthodox scholars see no evidence within the Bible itself the belief that God authored it. It has God's words in it, but is itself not God's direct inerrant Word. Personally I cannot find a theological institution that taught that the Bible is word for word from God Himself until the 1820's and it did not receive open attention until decades later.
So here's where I am: I respectfully disagree with those who will say that the Bible is made up, that the miracles of Jesus are metaphor or whatever else you want to toss into the pot. I entirely agree with their motivations, however. Katrina didn't happen because God hates gays, liberals, or even bottled soda it happened because this country is two steps away from being a bunch of Pharisees for Jesus. The people that worship him now are the very ones who would've nailed him up on the cross in the first place! IN WHAT STATE IS CHRISTENDOM WHEN GOD HAS TO USE THE ATHEISTS TO KEEP PEOPLE FROM MAKING THE BIBLE INTO IDOL?!
(actually Katrina happened due to a combination of Atlantic storm cells, crappy dikes, and a bunch of people who willingly lived below sea-level, but you get the idea)
Sunday, July 31, 2011
PSA
Today I'd like to discuss a topic that deeply affects the Christian Church in America. Thousands of churches will close this year because of it (far more than will open in fact) and it is currently the reigning factor in not only Christian clergy being fired from their congregations but also why many churches continue to dwindle in numbers. The horrific disease affecting our American churches is none other than American church-goers...they stink on ice.
I remember being shown in seminary a picture of Jesus holding a gun, wrapped in the American flag, and having an anti-gay triangle as his insignia. Sadly this is the Jesus for approximately 99% of Christians in America, because the NRA was popular in Jerusalem in AD 30, after all. This and other nonsense will cause half of seminary graduates to be run out of ministry entirely in five years, and only one in ten of us will actually get to retire as a pastor if the statistics are to be believed.
Indeed, I just had one of the worst Bible Studies I have ever had the displeasure of hosting, and all for trying to show that the Old Testament has real consistencies with the New and that the Canaanite invasion historically wasn't genocide. I guess people get really mad if you don't get to the part where God kills everybody, everybody but them of course.
So remember, even though only 20% of Americans or less actually show up to church on a given Sunday this is a Christian nation and any attempts to make God seem consistent, reasonable, and not a monster will be considered heresy.
The more you know...
I remember being shown in seminary a picture of Jesus holding a gun, wrapped in the American flag, and having an anti-gay triangle as his insignia. Sadly this is the Jesus for approximately 99% of Christians in America, because the NRA was popular in Jerusalem in AD 30, after all. This and other nonsense will cause half of seminary graduates to be run out of ministry entirely in five years, and only one in ten of us will actually get to retire as a pastor if the statistics are to be believed.
Indeed, I just had one of the worst Bible Studies I have ever had the displeasure of hosting, and all for trying to show that the Old Testament has real consistencies with the New and that the Canaanite invasion historically wasn't genocide. I guess people get really mad if you don't get to the part where God kills everybody, everybody but them of course.
So remember, even though only 20% of Americans or less actually show up to church on a given Sunday this is a Christian nation and any attempts to make God seem consistent, reasonable, and not a monster will be considered heresy.
The more you know...
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
Original Sin
My name is Keven. I am both a law school graduate and will be graduating from Bethel Seminary and officially entering ministry at the end of the next academic year (God willing). As a Christian and someone who is deeply invested in God’s Church, one of the things that absolutely astounds me to this day is the number of sacred cows that exists for a religion that isn’t remotely Hindu. The definition of a sacred cow is of course a belief or practice that is viewed as foundational and essential to the faith but no one is really quite sure why.
Take Original Sin, the doctrine that Western Christendom has held for many centuries which holds that human beings inherit not only Adam’s sin but also God’s judgment for Adam’s sin. This is all very well and good, except for the part that this doctrine dates back not to Christ in the first century but to Augustine and his battle with Pelagius in the fifth. This means that whole craploads of Christians, as a matter of fact every single Christian, before Augustine had no notion of original sin nor a need for it. Additionally we have the problem of Augustine being a Latin Church Father who was unfortunately fairly awful in his Greek, which the New Testament happened to be written in. Despite all this Original Sin persists in Christian Theology notwithstanding its inability to actually be traced back to the founder of the religion.
Do I believe that I was born the way God wanted? Not remotely. Do I believe I have a proclivity to sinful behavior? You bet your buttons I do, but I also believe that I pay for my own mistakes and nobody else’s. What I really, really do not believe in, however, is that when a new baby is born God sneers, spits on the ground and says, “Great, more sin.” God is not an unthinking force that reacts to wrongdoing like an allergic reaction. Rather God judges the heart, seeing not whether it has a proclivity to sin but whether it revels in it.
What really chaps my religious rear, though, is growing up in the church you’re made to think original sin is as Christian as the Nativity. It’s not like we go through religious instruction and they say, “This is how some Christians have understood the issue.” What’s worse is the number of Christians that will absolutely fight you tooth and nail over this, because apparently a millennia-old religion spanning multiple cultures and continents telling of a loving and forgiving God won’t attract people unless we convince them they're screwed right out of the starting line.
And such is the first of many, many sacred cows to be addressed in this blog. Original Sin has been used to the point it slanders God’s character and quite frankly I’m sick and tired of it. For a great while in this country it was used to justify the doctrine of infant damnation, because you know God just loves to torture babies for eternity. Original Sin…we don’t need you anymore and we’ll be shopping around for a better product in the near future. In the meantime, leave a comment asking your own ugly questions of God, Christianity and the Bible and we'll answer them as time permits!
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