CCBlogs thinking critically, living faithfully

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Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord: Give me grace so to follow your blessed saints in all virtuous and godly living, that I may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.†

Almighty and merciful God, it is only by your gift that your faithful people offer you true and laudable service: Grant that we may run without stumbling to obtain your heavenly promises; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Not long ago a package of [evo] coffee arrived on my doorstep. “Evo” coffee means “coffee evolved.” It’s a serious fair trade coffee group in Grand Rapids that … “Evo. It’s coffee–evolved. It’s an upside-down take on the value of life in business–beginning with offering farmers more than fair trade and going on to return every drop of profit to their communities. It’s simple. It’s logical. It’s a revolution. So grab a cup–change is brewing.” I am grateful for the number of visionary activists who protect local coffee farmers. So I’m happy to urge you to consider [evo].

“At [evo], we desire to see justice in the coffee industry and restoration for its farming communities. It is simply not okay to pay farmers from 14 cents (in Ethiopia) to a $1.26 a pound (fair trade), and look away as they go hungry. A little work and a little creativity and the world can change. Yet, even a better wage isn’t enough. We can do more. That’s why, at [evo] every drop of profit is returned to the farming communities.”

So what does my package of Guatamalan Andres Micro Lot taste like? Very good. Chocolatey with a hint of cherry.

Here is a copy of the The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others Jesus Creed in a Taiwan bookstore standing proudly next to Tom Wright’s book. We were sent this picture by Dawn Husnick, whose story (the emergency room act of uncommon grace) I told in A Community called Atonement.

Just in case you are interested in the details: we appear on Beliefnet.com Monday.

I wonder if this is a Chicagoan peering into the beauties of Liechtenstein… and this Chicagoan gets a feel from a Netherlands shot why it was that Rembrandt could paint so well.

Centurion ministries — good story.

Scroll down to the bottom of this page and read the two addresses by Tim Gombis on our Trinitarian life. Good stuff.

Psalms, the school of prayer. From another magazine, Wineskins, a piece on immigration.

Mart DeHaan, of Radio Bible Class, takes a gentle, listening approach to the emerging movement. And in his critique he continues his reasonable approach.

Out of Ur spoofs “Url” — one of the great things about blogging is this kind of fun. Bethany Hoang has an interesting post on what we can do besides pray. Michael Spencer’s thoughts on common sins. Dan Kimball … on defining “marriage” … in a California voting context. Jim Martin’s profound question about living in thoughtlessness. Bob Robinson continues his series on the election with why evangelicals could vote for Obama. David Fitch on the temptation to be pragmatic. Karen passes on a piece about Johnny Cash theology.

Tom Smith’s post on atheist advertising.

Forgiveness as the way forward. (HT: RJS)

Recently I was told that many pastors are worrying about budgets.

Emergent Village morphs into a new form: Tony Jones steps down as EV National Coordinator and there will be a continued focus on grass-roots level conversations. Tony’s blog moves to Beliefnet.com. We offer here a collective thanks to Tony.

Wonderful story.

I’ll be in Pittsburgh today and here’s a site that has some live blogging and twittering.

Here comes winter …

1. Baseball, statistics, and health-care improvements.
2. Two parties, three “tendencies,” and a nice analysis. David Brooks is always reasonable.
3. Science and faith: a review of recent books that argue evangelicals can be evolutionists. It’s too bad Daniel Harrell’s book didn’t get into the mix.
4. WWJB?

Mayor Daley, when asked what happened to the Cubs, said “So, you gave the playoffs and the Series to the Phillies. Why the Phillies?! Why not just give it to the Mets!”

5. Joe Sixth-Sense.
6. This isn’t a blog post; it’s a newspaper article!
7. The Vatican develops more screening for evaluating potential priests.
8. “All you need is three guys and a little boat, and the next day you’re millionaires.”
9. I was reading a chp in a book on prophesying godlessness when a friend sent me the fictitious letter of Dobson. It reads like an apocalyptic scenario.
10. Days of King David rediscovered.
11. Mbeki.

Sports:

Scary good athletes.

Please hide the Cubs highlights!

On the Phillies winning the World Series. To begin with, baseball season ended when the NLCS ended because those American leaguers refuse to play real baseball — when the pitcher bats, we’ve got real baseball.

On the Phillies … my brother-in-law, Ron, told us in July the Cubs would not make it to the World Series because the Phillies were the best team in baseball.

That Isiah Thomas story is one odd story and one that draws pity instead of criticism.

Kathleen Norris tells her story, inAcedia & Me: Marriage, Monks and the Writer’s Life, of how she became a poet during her college days at Bennington. It was a teacher who told her she had what it takes.

Any Kathleen Norris readers out there? What do you think of her works? What do you think of her story of rediscovering faith? (By the way, her story here reminded me of those mentioned in Finding Faith, Losing Faith: Stories of Conversion and Apostasy, as told in the fine work of Timothy Larsen, who walked away and then came back to the faith.)

This chp tells the depressing story of some poets who could not find peace, and Norris winds in and out of her discovery of her gift for writing her own loss of faith, her marriage, and her move to South Dakota — where she began to discover her faith again.

In college she “came to believe that outgrowing a religious faith was something I needed to do in order to become a writer” (50). That is, “To challenge authority, convention, and traditional religion: that was the poet’s calling.” She also learned that depression was the proper mood for writing poetry.

She and her husband then moved from NY to SD: “The people I encountered every day were not other writers but farmers and ranchers, and something of their deep respect for God, the land, and the weather began to rub off on me” (52). She occasionally attended her grandmother’s Presbyterian church, discovered a Benedictine abbey in the area, was advised to read Hans Kung or Flannery O’Connor — she chose Flannery.

Both Norris and her husband were poets and how they learned to live together — she going to bed early and arising early and he staying up late and rising late.

Acedia doesn’t really come up in this chp much — one might guess that she is here connecting acedia to depression, the depression that poets know.

Our post today is written by Mary Veeneman, a member of our BTS department here at North Park. Her chp focuses on the 3d chp of Race: A Theological Account. She’s got some good questions at the end.

Recently, I attended a panel on politics and voting in light of the upcoming election at North Park. The panel involved three faculty members from three different departments: Philosophy, Biblical and Theological Studies and Political Science. All three faculty members discussed grappling with the issue of how one should vote as a Christian given that the two major presidential candidates can be seen as each advocating policies that are very much in concert with the values of the Christian faith and policies that ultimately oppose the values held by the Christian faith.

Of course, it is nearly impossible to discuss the current election without getting to the issue of race, and it certainly came up in the course of this discussion, though perhaps in a somewhat unexpected way. One member of the panel mentioned Rev. Jeremiah Wright and questioned the judgment of anyone who would be closely connected to him. Another member of the panel made a claim which was likely seen as very provocative by most of the people present. He argued that Rev. Wright likely reads the Bible in a manner much closer to the way in which Jesus read it than the dominant white evangelical culture does.

Underlying this claim is a central component of Catholic Social Thought often referred to as the preferential option for the poor. This is the idea that because the original audience of the New Testament was an oppressed and often poor people, the poor and oppressed in the contemporary world have an advantage in biblical interpretation in that their social status is somewhat similar to that of the original audience. As a result, the Catholic Social tradition has called on the faithful to take very seriously the way in which the poor and oppressed read the Bible.

I bring up this instance not to weigh in on the claim made by the panel member. Certainly Rev. Wright has been controversial and I have no desire to ignite a discussion about him here. What I found interesting about this exchange is that it reinforces in different ways some of the same claims made by J. Kameron Carter in the third chapter of Race: A Theological Account, titled, “Historicizing Race.”

In this chapter of the book, Carter discusses the work of Albert J. Raboteau, whose most well-known work is Slave Religion: The ‘Invisible Institution’ in the Antebellum South’. Raboteau, a scholar who researches American Religious History, has taught at Princeton University since 1982. Carter, in this chapter seeks to trace a development in Raboteau’s thought from Slave Religion, which he published in 1978 to An Unbroken Circle (1997) and finally to some lectures he gave in 2003. In tracing this progression, Carter is attempting to examine the relationship between faith and history in Raboteau’s thought. During the twenty-five years between Slave Religion and the aforementioned lectures, Raboteau’s position on the relationship between faith and history develops from his initial view that sees faith only vaguely touching history, where faith is essentially beyond history or any kind of historical analysis. Later, Raboteau will argue that history can challenge faith and help faith to appreciate both that which is unique in the faith and that which is particular to the faith.

Of course, history has another role for Raboteau and this is the role that Carter notes is particularly central to his own arguments. Raboteau discusses the tradition-making activity of history. This is the activity of locating the members of a particular group or country within that group or country’s history. In this way, then, Carter says, “history does the work of identity formation” (145). Through history, he says, we read ourselves “dramatically” as “participants in a drama” (145). American history has failed to include African Americans in the drama of American history in any way other than as simply a problem for the narrative, according to Raboteau, and Carter adds that religious faith and Christian faith in particular has not improved upon this situation. In fact, he argues that both history and Christianity have promoted a religious myth of whiteness. This is particularly the case when Christianity is tied to and is used to support nationalism.

Question: In your learning of American (or your country’s) history, how much focus was there on ethnic minorities or marginalized people? Were the voices of such persons muted? valued?

Some people argue that the slaves and slave children essentially gave in to their masters in taking up Christianity. Carter argues that a more compelling case can be made for the realization, on the part of the slaves and their descendants, that “American manifest destiny” (147) was based on problematic historical foundations. It understood America as the New Israel and equated the migration of Europeans to North America as an escape from Egyptian bondage into the Promised Land. In other words, Americans were understanding the move of their ancestors to North America and then the move west across the continent as the same as the move of the people of Israel from Egypt into Canaan.

Of course, the slaves did not read the movement of their ancestors from Africa to North America in the same way. America, in their eyes, was not Israel but was Egypt. American slaves appropriated the story of the people of Israel in Egypt to understand their own plight. Carter quotes Paul Gilroy who paraphrases historian Vincent Harding in making a point that is particularly apt: “It is an abiding and tragic irony of our national history that white America’s claim to be a New Israel has been constantly denied by Old Israel still enslaved in her midst” (147).

The question Carter asks in reflecting upon this is, “What kind of consciousness (and unconsciousness) is at work? These differences of interpretation ‘result from the fact that history has served in the past and still serves today to establish and legitimate the identities of various communities…’” (147).

To return to the earlier anecdote, the panelist who made the claim about Rev. Wright’s reading of the Bible further argued that there are things in scripture that people who come from a privileged group (whether racial, economic or otherwise) will have a very difficult time seeing. His point seems to be that it is far too easy to pass through a passage of scripture, thinking that we know what it is about when we may have missed the main point altogether. This is exactly what happens with nationalistic readings of scripture that support what Carter has called the “religious myth of whiteness.”

The questions I want to leave you with are:
1. How are some of our contemporary readings of scripture supporting this religious myth of whiteness?
2. What are other ways in which we read scripture too quickly and miss the underlying truths? These could be instances in which our initial read is not wrong per se, but has missed something important along the way.

I’m holding in my hands at this very moment the original German edition of Gerhard Kittel’s famous Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. I’ve got volume 4. The foreword, written by Kittel himself, is preceded by a page of German theologians, collaborators in the 4th volume of TDNT, who were killed in WWII as soldiers of Hitler’s merciless campaigns. Kittel ends in Greek: “To whom be the glory forever!” Kittel’s foreword speaks of the blood offering of those who died.

The story doesn’t end there, of course. Gerhard Kittel was given a brilliant expose in the relatively unknown book that once shook me up for weeks: Robert P. Ericksen, Theologians Under Hitler: Gerhard Kittel, Paul Althaus and Emanuel Hirsch
. In the 4th volume of TDNT Kittel expresses his gratitude that he could get the volume in print — and it was about the time the Nazis were breathing down the neck of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and banned him from any further writing. He eventually was hung in Flossenburg; Kittel lived on. Kittel, Ericksen clearly shows, should not be scapegoated (even if Kittel must be used judiciously and critically) but Kittel spent, beginning suddenly in 1933, a dozen years on the Judenfrage and he framed foundations for virulent anti-Semitism that led some to the Holocaust. Ericksen: “He swam in the Nazi stream, though he may have preferred a different stroke” (74). The volumes, in other words, were sanctioned by those who banned Bonhoeffer.

Why bring this up? Kittel swam in a stream that goes back to Kant. It was Kant, you will remember, who clearly and heinously articulated white supremacy in racialized tones. Africans, American Indians, Asians each were races, rotting was a term Kant used, and the whites were in the stream of teleological perfection of an ethico-civil state. The danger was the Jews who were a contagion and intermarriage was the fear. All of this is sketched in chp 2 of J. Kameron Carter’s must-read Race: A Theological Account.

Perhaps we need to be reminded of this: Kant explained both Paul and Jesus as framing a religion well outside the Jewish boundaries. Fundamentally, Jesus’ religion was a universal religion, one that moved beyond Judaism by grasping Greek wisdom and perfecting it, that would lead to the ethico-civil state and Paul was one who broke free from the YHWH God of Israel and moved outside the covenant connection of the Old Testament. For Kant the “race question” was tied up with the “Jewish question.” For Kant Jesus ceased to be Jewish.

When I began postgraduate work in the 70s, the Jewishness question — of Jesus, Paul and the first Christians — was coming into its own. The affirmation of Jesus’ Jewishness is a major step in the right direction of affirming race and undoing racism. The major books of my PhD days were Strack and Billerbeck as well as W.D. Davies Paul and Rabbinic Judaism. Before I had begun my doctoral work E.P. Sanders wrote a book that changed NT scholarship more than any book in the last fifty years: Paul and Palestinian Judaism. It called into question the lack of Jewishness in Christian understandings of Paul. This is standard fare today, of course. But we must not forget that 75 years ago there were reputable scholars asking if Jesus was a Jew.

Anyone who wonders if Christian theology is implicated in racism needs to be aware of this brief and inadequate sketch.

How many times have you asked or been asked this question: How can I learn about the Dead Sea Scrolls in a way that I can understand what is going on? Books about the DSS tend to be very academic and for specialists, so I was pumped when I saw this book: my colleague and friend, Joel Willitts, has a new book: The Dead Sea Scrolls.

The first thing to say is that an introduction that lay folks can read needs to be brief: a 400 page introduction won’t fit the bill. Joel’s book is 32 pages — glossy, colored, and filled with pictures and maps and graphs.

The second thing is that it’s got to have prose that keeps our attention: this book does that.

Third: it’s got to have good pictures and good maps and good graphs. This book’s got them.

If you need a brief, readable and illustrated introduction, this book is it.

Gospeling, gospeling, gospeling … that’s what Paul does. And today we look at his great address on the Areopagus in Athens:

Acts 17:16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was deeply distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17 So he argued in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and also in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. 18 Also some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers debated with him. Some said, “What does this babbler want to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a proclaimer of foreign divinities.” (This was because he was telling the good news about Jesus and the resurrection.) 19 So they took him and brought him to the Areopagus and asked him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 It sounds rather strange to us, so we would like to know what it means.” 21 Now all the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new.

Acts 17:22 Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. 23 For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. 24 The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, 25 nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. 26 From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, 27 so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us. 28 For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said,
‘For we too are his offspring.’

29 Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. 30 While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, 31 because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.”

Acts 17:32 When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some scoffed; but others said, “We will hear you again about this.” 33 At that point Paul left them. 34 But some of them joined him and became believers, including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris, and others with them.

Paul’s gospeling involved: Jesus and the resurrection and the Gentile philosophers think he is talking about foreign gods (revealing, in part, how Paul spoke of Jesus in exalted terms).

Paul’s gospeling involved “touchstones”: he started where the audience was. What those gods were pointing at Paul knew: the one God created it all, this one God made all humans to search for God and is not far from any of us — in fact, we dwell in God — but idols are not God.

Paul’s gospeling involved the call to repentance in light of God’s judgment. And the Judge will be Jesus Christ.

Dear Emerging,

The number of folks who surrounded you with advice and wisdom continues to draw our admiration, but I do want to put some of this together from my angle.

There are so many streams flowing into this emerging movement that it is no longer very useful even to use the word “emerging.” But I think by using the names you do use that it is clear to me that you are part of the world-wide emerging movement.

Young pastors need to have a wise, elderly mentor who listens, counsels, and steps in only when necessary. So, I hope you have that sort of person you are going to: perhaps a spiritual director or, better yet, a wise pastor who has been around the track a few times to put all of this into perspective. I cringe at the thought of young pastors making life-shaping decisions without the wisdom of the grey-headed folks. I learned this in Proverbs and it has stuck with me. Seek the wise if you want to become wise.

There is no reason for you and your pastor to hide from one another, hope things settle down, or wish that the issues will go away. They won’t. So my recommendation is a simple one: pick one (emerging-type) book (Tom Wright, The Challenge of Jesus
or Simply Christian) that both of you can agree on and read it together, meet weekly for coffee or lunch or breakfast and discuss the book. For you to flourish in the ministry under this pastor’s guidance you will eventually — the sooner the better — have to convince him that you are orthodox, that you are within your church’s parameters, and that you can think critically about the emerging movement. (It saddens me in situations like this that too often it all comes down to what the senior pastor thinks — and too often in a congregation polity!) Work through the book with him and if he thinks you don’t fit, he’ll let you know.

Search for guidance and discernment on what you are called to do. You are young and you’ve got decades in front of you — Deo volente — and you are in a situation that will give you some opportunity to discern where you are headed. Perhaps it will be to seminary; perhaps not; perhaps to a different church; perhaps not. Instead of turning this into a struggle, seek the light.

Focus on the center. So often in tough situations, like what you are in, we dig in our heels and convert the particular issue at hand into the most important issue in the world — and it almost never is. To get your bearings on this I advise sitting back, taking into view the big arc of the Bible, the Story, the Gospel … etc … however you want to frame it, and ask how your issues fit in. We ought to be able to dwell together in the gospel and we usually refuse to dwell together for non-gospel issues.

Some particulars: I’m sorry to hear your pastor taking pot shots at emergent. It is irresponsible to talk about emergent without reading the stuff with a hermeneutics of love. You might think of modeling how to respond to these writers instead of confronting him on it, but it is not outside your relationship to mention that it is unwise to take folks to task whom one has not read.

On the blog: I’ve said this before — don’t write on your blog what you don’t want everyone in your church to read. Blogs are permanently public, friend.

Teaching students to think historically is part of the hermeneutical method we have to learn how to use, but it doesn’t come easily. I teach college students and I’m not sure some every care to embrace a historically-shaped reading of the Bible. You might think here of things you don’t care that much about — in my case it is mathematics — and think what it would take for you to become passionate enough about it to make it your own.

On truth … I think I know what you are getting at: for you truth is expressed in particular contexts in particular ways for particular days. (This is what I call “wiki-stories” in Blue Parakeet.) If you are in an evangelical church, you will need to get clear in your head what you mean by this sort of thing. If you think all truth is contextually expressed and your pastor thinks the Bible is shaped by its context, then you may have some common ground. But I would say this: this issue is very complex and it takes some good philosophical studies and a sound perception of the doctrine of revelation to make orthodox sense.

One final point and I may be missing the mark here: you might be in a situation of an authoritarian pastor who is threatened by change and by any kind of challenge. He may well be surrounded on the elder/deacon board by those who protect him and support his every move. If so, I’m sorry and, apart from a work of grace where a pastor sees the light on the need for genuine conversation and congregational input, your days could well be numbered. Even though I prefer for us all to dwell in unity, you might not be able to remain in that situation.

I hope these thoughts are of help to you. Our prayers, and the prayers of the Jesus Creed community, are with you.

Write us later on how things are going.

Blessings,

Scot

I’ve got a big question today, but first let me sketch two items quickly. First, think about it, we’ve seen the following as prophets of doom: the puritans with their weekly jeremiads, Thomas Jefferson, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Add someone else to this list: Abraham Lincoln, about whom Wayne Wei-siang Hsieh says: “For better or worse, there has been no more messianic a figure in American history than Abraham Lincoln” (Prophesies of Godlessness: Predictions of America’s Imminent Secularization, 75).

Big question: Is apocalyptic rhetoric, the kind of rhetoric that declares that if we don’t change society and culture will collapse, simply a rhetorical package that is designed to get people to wake up and change? (If folks change, mission accomplished.) Or is it a rhetorical package that also predicts what will happen? You may know where I’m going: are biblical apocalyptic warnings more the first than the second? In other words, is it a way to get folks to change? Or is it a way to get folks to change because of what will surely happen? Is it prediction or it is simply religiously-charged rhetoric?

And a point about blogging about this book: we’re not getting quite as much discussion as I had hoped, but I’d like you to consider just how significant this jeremiad of predicting godlessness is in America and what its impacts are.

Nothing brings out the jeremiad and apocalyptic rhetoric like war, so this chp’s focus on the Civil War and the beliefs of Lincoln and Sherman are excellent examples, but their examples resonate with anyone who pays attention to how our nation has talked about war in the last decade.

Back to Lincoln and what the author of this chp calls his “ironic absorption into his age’s American religious culture” (because Lincoln was hardly an evangelical but his obsession with discerning God’s will was noteworthy). In contrast, William Tecumseh Sherman repudiated republican, evangelical and Enlightenment Christianity. Mark Noll observed that despite all the jeremiads tossed into the public by both the North and the South, the beliefs of both sides largely continued on after the Civil War.

The jeremiads unleashed permitted the South to see their defeat as a temporal, providential chastisement and the North to see God purging the nation from sin. Belief in God’s working in history held out hope for redemption, and this powerful jeremiad form was more potent than the rational notion of progress that many adhered to … including Lincoln.

Lincoln was a skeptic as a young man and lawyer in Springfield, Illinois. His own view of the “doctrine of necessity” was not the same as the evangelical belief in Providence. That is, he held to a “gradual, orderly, rational, and … secular conception of progress” (79). Hsieh explains how Lincoln’s view of Providence became more personal and it led him to make a covenant with God, a kind of Gideon’s fleece, that if the North won a particular battle he would take it as a sign and he would issue the Emancipation Proclamation. The Second Inaugural, however, reveals Lincoln’s conviction of the inscrutable providence of God. Lincoln illustrates how difficult it is for many to discern the plan of God. If the jeremiad is found in Lincoln, there is a humility about it that demonstrates his belief that God’s plans are inscrutable.

But Sherman, who is not emphasized in this chp, came at the issues from a different angle. We find in him a warrior-ized vision: God is nearly equated with Union and the Confederacy becomes a rebellion against God.

Where are we today? Do we opt for the inscrutability of God’s providence? to warrior-izing the plan of God? to a confidence that God is on our side?

Paul keeps on gospeling and we turn today to Acts 16 and 17.

Acts 16:6 They went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. 7 When they had come opposite Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them; 8 so, passing by Mysia, they went down to Troas. 9 During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” 10 When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them….

13 On the sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. 14 A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. 15 When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.” And she prevailed upon us.

Soon some opposition and persecution. In prison…

29 The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. 30 Then he brought them outside and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” 31 They answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” 32 They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. 33 At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. 34 He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.

That’s gospeling for Paul. Salvation offered and responded to in faith in the Lord Jesus. On to Thessalonica…

17:2 And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three sabbath days argued with them from the scriptures, 3 explaining and proving that it was necessary for the Messiah to suffer and to rise from the dead, and saying, “This is the Messiah, Jesus whom I am proclaiming to you.”

Off to Berea…

Acts 17:10 That very night the believers sent Paul and Silas off to Beroea; and when they arrived, they went to the Jewish synagogue. 11 These Jews were more receptive than those in Thessalonica, for they welcomed the message very eagerly and examined the scriptures every day to see whether these things were so. 12 Many of them therefore believed, including not a few Greek women and men of high standing.

Now to Athens… tomorrow

Chapter 3 of Henri Blocher’s book Original Sindeals with discerning the mind of Paul on the issue of Adam and the Fall. Any Christian discussion of the evolution life, the evolution of homo sapiens, and the doctrine of Original Sin must reckon with Paul and his contrast between Adam and Christ. As death came through one man so life comes through one man. Romans 5:12-19 and to a lesser extent 1 Cor. 15:21-22, 45.

First the texts:

Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned–for until the Law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come. But the free gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one the many died, much more did the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many. The gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned; for on the one hand the judgment arose from one transgression resulting in condemnation, but on the other hand the free gift arose from many transgressions resulting in justification. For if by the transgression of the one, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ. So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous. (Ro 5:12-19)

For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. (1 Cor 15:21-22)

So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. (1 Cor 15:45)

To deal with the question at hand we need to consider what these passages intend to teach about Adam, Original Sin, the transmission of sin, the nature of man, and role of Christ. Obviously we will not cover everything in one short post. But we can highlight some key points.

First – It is a non-negotiable for the orthodox Christian faith that Jesus Christ existed at a specific point in time in human history; that he was a unique individual who was crucified, dead, buried, and who rose again on the third day. We are saved, redeemed through the faith of Christ and through the act of Christ. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus effected a change in actual being or enabled a future change in actual being for those who call upon his name.

Second – Ro 5 supported by 1 Cor. 15 appear to also require that Adam existed as a unique individual and that the act of Adam in rebellion against God was a unique act localized at a specific point in time. Certainly Blocher dismisses the notion that Adam was not a unique individual alive at a specific point in time. According to Blocher the Barthian interpretation of Adam as Every Man or Cosmic Man misrepresents Paul and it misrepresents scripture. Blocher finds support here in Dunn’s commentary on Romans 1-8. Paul undoubtedly viewed Adam as an individual and his transgression as historical. I admit, I (RJS) am not convinced Adam was a unique individual or that it matters that Paul thought he was - but this is an issue I am still thinking on. (I don’t know what Scot thinks here.)

But there is another concept intertwined with consideration of the Fall. Clearly what Paul thought and taught about sin matters. Romans 5 suggests that the sin of Adam results in the guilt of all mankind. But is this the case - is Paul actually proposing that sin and guilt are transmitted physically and biologically from Adam to all mankind? In an attempt to wrestle with the teaching of Paul, Blocher works through several interpretations of Romans 5 acknowledging a fundamental difficulty here for reformed theology in general.

A looser interpretation of Romans 5 (Dunn, Cranfield…) admits Adam as historical in some sense while rejecting a tight analogy between Adam and Christ. Paul’s emphasis is not on Adam and one act constituting all men as sinners as much as it is on Adam and the introduction of sin. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. All excepting Jesus have lived sinful lives in their own right and are condemned on the basis of inclination and act. Ro 5:13 is something of an enigma here however.

A tighter interpretation of Romans 5 considers the sin of Adam as imputed to all mankind as all were present in the loins of Adam. The sin of Adam changed the nature of mankind. His sin and guilt are transmitted and reckoned to the account of all – even to the babe who dies within minutes or seconds of birth. Augustinian thought along this line has permeated much of the western church.

A proposal Blocher suggests that both the looser and tighter options hold an unjustified assumption. Paul did not consider sin as existing without law – it was simply undefined. Thus Romans 5 does not really deal with Original Sin. Perhaps the best course here is simply to quote Blocher: “My hypothesis, then, is as follows: I submit that the role of Adam and of his sin in Romans 5 is to make possible the imputation, the judicial treatment, of human sins. His role thus brings about the condemnation of all, and its sequel, death. If persons are considered individually, they have no standing with God, no relationship to his judgment. They are as it were, floating in a vacuum. Sin cannot be imputed. But God sees them in Adam and through Adam, in the framework of the covenant of creation. (p. 77)”

Well this begins to get quite deep. Blocher considers Adam as an historical individual and the original sin an important event – but appears to remove Romans 5 from a primary role in developing the doctrine of Original Sin. He also removes – although he does not say so specifically – the problem of considering how the sin of Adam changed the nature of mankind. The latter is a particularly difficult concept to reconcile with evolution as God’s creative mechanism. We will interact with Blocher’s ideas on Original Sin more completely in the last post on this book.

What do you think? Does Romans 5 teach that the Adamic sin changed the very nature of mankind? That sin and guilt are transmitted physically and biologically to his descendents?

I have asked two of my fine students, Brittany Bennett and Nick Johnson — who are getting married this summer — and who have a ministry passion for issues of justice and the church, to take a look at Shane Claiborne’s and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove’s new book, Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers: Prayer for Ordinary Radicals. I think their thoughts are spot-on.

Here’s the question: Does prayer imply action to work with God for the answer to that prayer? (As long as it is something we can do.) Put directly, does prayer for justice imply a commitment to work for justice?

Here are our thoughts on this new book, “Becoming the Answers to Our Prayers,” by Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove.

The book “Becoming the Answer to Our Prayers” puts a new spin on prayer, making it about what we can give to God rather than what God can give to us. Claiborne and Hartgrove emphasize social justice and being the solution to the very things that we are asking God to answer. Prayer is taught as less of an inward act and more of an outward response to God. They look at the Lord’s Prayer, John 17, and Ephesians 1:15-23 as an outline of how to move prayer past just words and into movement that becomes the fulfillment of prayer. The focus is on us, the people of God, as the way in which God wants to answer our prayers. While we might be looking to some external or alternative answer to fix the problem, it is us that God wants to use.

We (Nick and Brittany), believe that it is easy to become completely dependent upon God to answer our prayers while we forget that we have the ability to answer our own prayers through Christ in us here and now. Shane and Jonathan do a good job of addressing this issue and giving an active solution. While this is an important and usually neglected conversation about prayer, it only covers one key understanding of prayer. We recognize a lot of situations and circumstances that don’t “fit” into this way of prayer. Things that are out of our control do require us to lean solely on God’s power. Prayer allows us to give God control in situations that are beyond our own abilities. To take this element of giving God control out of the equation doesn’t fully demonstrate prayer. So, we think that yes, Shane and Jonathan are right to couple prayer with action yet it cannot stand alone as the solution to all prayer. Prayer just like any other way of communicating with God is about a two way street. A place where we become the alternative solution through the Holy Spirit that lives in us while still keeping this in tension with the desperate need that we should have for God to show up in our lives.

We believe this a great book to read in contrast to a more traditional view of prayer. Claiborne and Hartgrove make it easy to follow and understand through the three main prayers they analyze.

The issue of whether or not to circumcise Gentile believers led to the first church council, establishing as I think it did a precedent for leaders to gather to discern the mind of God, and a ruling that Gentile converts needed to show some respect for Torah observance. (Incidentally, time wore this ruling down for Gentile Christians and I take this issue up in The Blue Parakeet: Rethinking How You Read the Bible.) After this event, Paul and Barnabas deliver the letter to the church at Antioch.

Acts 15:35 But Paul and Barnabas remained in Antioch, and there, with many others, they taught and proclaimed the word of the Lord.

A brief note today: Paul’s message was “the word of the Lord”. It was verbal; it was about Jesus Christ as Lord. Paul’s gospel is no different, then, than the message of Peter and the early Christians for whom the gospel was “Jesus is Lord.”

It can be inferred, but it is no more than an inference, that “Jesus is Lord” means “Caesar is not Lord.” But the big point I’d make is this: Caesar is only one of the many, many “lords” who cease to be “Lord” when “Jesus is Lord.” So, I take this to be as anti-empire as it is anti-everything-else-that-could-be-Lord.

More importantly, I think, is to see in “Jesus is Lord” a comment that the Lord who was anticipated in the OT and the Lord is who is seen in the OT, namely YHWH, is Jesus.

I got a letter from a young high school pastor in the southeast and he’s happy to share it with our blog community. This young pastor leans in some emerging directions but his pastor is now criticizing emergent. I’d like us to give him our wisdom today.

Hi Scot,

I have followed your blog for a long time now and I have commented in other places on your book Embracing Grace: A Gospel for All of Us and I really like it. I am writing to you because I am concerned about something that is going on in my church and I was wondering, if you have the time, if you could respond or give your opinion on the matter. Recently my church has been having fun taking pot shots at the emergent movement. In particular, they are most worried about too much social justice, not enough penal substitution in explaining the gospel, too much postmodernity and one of the elders the other day said he had read your description of some emergents as having “ironic” faith and it bothered him deeply.

I have recently come into trouble at my church because I am teaching the book of Luke to our new junior-senior high mission group. (By the way, I have a degree from a Christian college.) One of my problems is this: I keep a blog that I didn’t think anyone from the church read (shows how much I know) and one of the parents came to me very upset. I had written on the blog that the Bible has tensions within itself and that there have been differing interpretations of the Bible over time (I was using Oden’s IVP series on early Christian interpretations) and that the students seem to have trouble thinking about the Bible historically (to avoid present-mindedness). Also, in light of RJS’s posts — I really like her stuff by the way — about science and faith, I have said a few things about how we read Genesis 1–3. I sat down with one elder and he understood what I was doing, and said it wasn’t a big deal, but that I have to be careful what I put on my blog. I met with our pastor, though, and he was concerned that I had too many links to emergent folks on the sidebar.

This would all be well and good, but after talking with him for about an hour about the emergment movement I am realizing that he really knows very little about it. He has never read Dallas Willard or N.T. Wright or Dan Kimball or any of your books, let alone anything by McLaren.

Here’s where I see the big issue: Sometimes I feel like the people in my church are living in a time vaccuum. They are fighting to “protect marriage” in the State and to ban abortions and I just think there are better ways than legislating morality. But more importantly, we differ on the nature of truth. I believe all truth to be contextual whereas my pastor believes all context, no matter what, will lead back to one truth. Teaching Luke’s understanding of God’s work in this world has a different focus than how Paul understands God’s work in this world. These are the ways I view things and my pastor might be beginning to think that I am “too liberal.” The problem is I am not liberal enough for him to ask me to stop teaching. I’m somewhere in the middle, but I am starting to feel seriously constricted by my home church after four years of college.

Is this something that you would suggest I stop teaching over? Is this something worth leaving a denomination over? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Sincerely yours….

Please respond thoughtfully to this young pastor, and I will post my thoughts Wednesday.

This weekend Kris and I flew out to see Lukas, Annika and our new grandson, Aksel. We always enjoy their quaint village, filled as it is with unique Victorian homes and the aroma of Concord grapes hanging in the air. It was also good to see Annika’s mom and dad, Gordie and Marleen Nelson, and to see two of our former NPU students, Jay and Betsy Baehr, and their son, Mathis. Here are two pictures of Aksel:

Kris was with them last weekend but Aksel has changed so much. Infants primary preoccupation, other than eating and sleeping, seems to be filtering the barrage of information from this world and making sense of it. Kris reads to him every morning, and I taught him the Jesus Creed in Hebrew. He’s a cute little guy and we had a wonderful time with him (and them).

The “Main Diner” — a little restaurant downtown.

Acts is a rich source for “gospel” and we turn today to Acts 14:

Acts 14:1 The same thing occurred in Iconium, where Paul and Barnabas went into the Jewish synagogue and spoke in such a way that a great number of both Jews and Greeks became believers.

Here we see Paul and Barnabas “gospeling” and the result is that many — both Jews and Greeks — become believers. The goal of gospeling is believers. This preaching led to opposition.

14:3 So they remained for a long time, speaking boldly for the Lord, who testified to the word of his grace by granting signs and wonders to be done through them.

Gospeling involves bold speech (parresiazomenoi) about the Lord and Luke tells us that the Lord responded to this preaching of the “word of his grace” (a definition of gospeling) with signs and wonders. This, too, led to opposition and they moved on to Lystra and Derbe “and there they conintued ‘gospeling’” (14:7).

In Lystra Paul was used by God to speak a word of healing (not far from the word of grace) and the crowds overdid it, thinking Paul and Barnabas were gods. Paul’s response:

15 “Friends, why are you doing this? We are mortals just like you, and we bring you good news, that you should turn from these worthless things to the living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. 16 In past generations he allowed all the nations to follow their own ways; 17 yet he has not left himself without a witness in doing good—giving you rains from heaven and fruitful seasons, and filling you with food and your hearts with joy.” 18 Even with these words, they scarcely restrained the crowds from offering sacrifice to them.

Paul’s gospeling: the good news that they should turn from idols to the living God. Again a narrative arc to explain it all follows. Nature reveals this good God. Opposition again and Paul was stoned, apparently to death. Disciples nurtured him to health evidently and he and Barnabas moved on to Derbe.

After they had proclaimed the good news to that city and had made many disciples, they returned to Lystra, then on to Iconium and Antioch. 22 There they strengthened the souls of the disciples and encouraged them to continue in the faith, saying, “It is through many persecutions that we must enter the kingdom of God.” 23 And after they had appointed elders for them in each church, with prayer and fasting they entrusted them to the Lord in whom they had come to believe.