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Relating the OT and NT Thought Worlds

N.B. This is an excerpt from the draft of the second volume of my forthcoming study of NT theology and ethics called The Indelible Image (Inter-Varsity Press)

RELATING THE OT AND NT THOUGHT WORLDS

While it would be possible to discuss the relationship of the OT to the NT at this juncture, that is actually a subject for a discussion of the canon, and canonical criticism, which actually is not the focus of this study, and in any case we have discussed it some in the first volume of this work. What we are interested in here is the relationship of OT theology and ethics to the theology and ethics we find in the NT. The reason for this distinction is simple-- the documents of the NT existed in the NT era and are expressions of the thought world of that era, long before there was a NT canon. The thought world of the NT speakers and writers was enormously influenced by the thought world exhibited in many books now found in the OT, though they were certainly also profoundly influenced by Intertestamental Jewish literature and thought as well.
I say ‘many’ books because some books of the OT seem to have exerted little or no influence on the early Christians. To take an obvious example, Esther seems to have made no impact at all, and this is perhaps not surprising since the OT canon was not fully closed in the NT era and one of the debated books was Esther. In fact several of the books which later made up the third part of TANAK, the Writings, are missing in action in the NT as are various other OT books (e.g. Nehemiah), and I don’t just mean they aren’t quoted. I mean they aren’t even alluded to. It is thus better on the whole to talk about the influence not of particular books though we could do this (the most cited in the NT are Isaiah and the Psalms) but rather of the influence of the thought world. And here we note a remarkable fact.
The OT taken as a whole has precious little to say about the afterlife, and only somewhat more about eschatology. And indeed it is mostly the very latest OT books, including especially the more apocalyptic prophets, that have anything of consequence to say on this subject. And yet the thought world of the NT writers is overwhelmingly eschatological in character. In this respect, the NT thought world is far more like the thought world of some of the Intertestamental Jewish literature than it is like the OT. This of course could be said to create a problem for canonical theologians, at least for those who want to limit the discussion within the parameters of what is found in the OT and NT. But there are red flags right within various NT books against taking this sort of approach as well.
For example, the tiny little document called Jude clearly draws on extra canonical material from the Enoch literature and probably from the Apocalypse of Moses as well. Or take Paul, who shows the influence of Wisdom of Solomon, or James who draws on Sirach. Thus while we can focus on the relationship of the thought world in the OT and that in the NT, the discussion should not be limited to such a discussion, not least because important ideas like bodily resurrection of the dead, while they did not germinate in the Intertestamental period, certainly gestated in that period. When it comes to the OT itself, the concept of resurrection is barely mentioned in Dan. 12.1-2, and as a metaphor in Ezekiel. In other words, some of the concepts most crucial and determinative for the early Christian thinkers are barely found in the OT at all. Christian theology and ethics could never be done purely on the basis of the careful interpretation of the OT.
Some will ask why is it so important to consider the theology and the ethics in the Bible in a processive and progressive manner? One answer is that we cannot judge the meaning of a story, and the character of its actors before we get to the end of it. Consider for a moment the example of the great trilogy the Lord of the Rings. One cannot tell whether Frodo will have the necessary character to do what is required with the ring until we get to right near the end of the story. Up to that point we do not know whether he will pass the test. Or even more tellingly, we cannot tell whether Gollum is going to end up being an adversary or an assistant in the process of saving the Shire and the world until right near the end. Or what of Gandalf? Will he return in time or at all to help the human race ward off evil? We don’t know until many hundreds of pages into the story. The Bible involves a similarly epic story from creation through fall through various acts of redemption to the final new creation. Viewing the whole story from the end changes the way we look at the character of God, the character of God’s people, how human history will play out, the nature of redemption, and a host of other subjects. The truth is—we don’t fully know God and the divine character sufficiently for eternal salvation before Jesus turns up to reveal it. We don’t fully understand the depths of human depravity until Jesus shows up and dies on the cross to reveal and overcome it. We don’t understand the importance of creation to God’s eternal plan until we hear near the end that God’s plan is that all of fallen creation be renewed and restored, and that resurrection be the talisman of the final stage of redemption for human beings themselves.

STICKING TO OUR STORY
It is precisely because Biblical history is told in the Bible as an ongoing story that a narratological approach to theology and ethics is not merely useful, it is required to fully understand what is being claimed and taught. The appropriate question to ask about any theological or ethical remark in the Bible is—where in the story do we find it? Is it near the outset, or in the middle or towards the end? During the administration of which covenant was this or that teaching given? Most fundamentally, is this or that theological or ethical remark before or after the Christ event? Does this point in the story reflect the partial revelations of the earlier period or the fuller revelation that comes in and after the Christ event?
These are the right sort of questions to ask when we are thinking about the theology and ethics we find in the Bible and this is precisely why we cannot do Biblical theology in a manner that treats the OT as though it provides as full a revelation of God’s character, plan, people as does the NT. It does not, and the NT writers did not think it did either, even though the OT was the only Bible they themselves had at all. They believed they were the people on whom the ends of the ages had come, and they believed that in fact the author of this whole story had finally stepped out on the stage in person to bring in the final chapters and explain the meaning of it all.
With this reminder about the narratological framework and nature of the thought world we are dealing with, it will be appropriate to say some final things about some of the major symbols in the symbolic universe that generates that sort of thought world and story, but first we must note that we have now found a clue or two as to why the early church completely rejected the so-called Gnostic Gospels when considering what would eventually be their canonical texts.
The first of these reasons is that the canonical Gospels do indeed focus on the passion and death of Christ, indeed they could be called Passion Narratives with a long introduction. The Gnostic Gospels by contrast not only do not focus on the death of Jesus, they avoid doing so. They see no great theological significance in that, or really any other event which depends on historical reality and particularity.
Equally importantly as Luke Johnson says “None of the Gnostic Gospels take the form of narrative. Rather they focus entirely on Jesus as revealer, and take the form of discrete sayings…with no narrative framework (Gospel of Thomas) or revelatory discourses in response to questions (Gospel of Mary, Dialogue of the Saviour). Two of the most important Gnostic Gospels (Gospel of Truth, Gospel of Philip) take the form of teaching about Jesus rather than any sort of story.” In other words, the sensibilities and symbolic universe which formed those documents are very different from those Jewish ones which formed our canonical Gospels. In fact, it is not too much to say that most of the Gnostic texts reject the God of the OT altogether, the God of material creation.
Luke Johnson puts it this way” “Insofar as the God of Israel is the God who creates the material world the Gnostic texts resist that God. A Gnostic sensibility that finds the world to be a corpse and blessedness in detachment and solitariness (see the Coptic Gospel of Thomas ) is far both from the sensibility of Torah and of the canonical Gospels.” The writers of the NT were all Jews, not Marcionites or Gnostics, and so we would not expect them to devalue the OT thought world, nor the OT vision of God and creation, and they do not disappoint us in this regard. The changes we find between the OT and the NT symbol system are Christologically, ecclesiologically, and eschatologically engendered—but all of those categories (the discussion of a messiah, the discussion of God’s people, the discussion of the future in connection with the messiah and God’s people) are Jewish and must be seen as a further development of OT and early Jewish thinking on such subjects in a particular direction in the light of the Christ event.

THE OT THOUGHT WORLD AND ITS RELEVANCE TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT
At the center of the OT symbolic universe and narrative thought world lies a singular God, Yahweh. Scholars have come to call what they find in the OT ethical monotheism, and this is not an inappropriate label. Yahweh, the God of the Bible is a hands-on deity constantly involved in the affairs of the world and his people, and he is constantly making demands of them in regard to their behavior especially, but also in regard to their beliefs. The Shema has been frequently seen as the core credo in regard to the OT God—“Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is One”. ‘One’ here means as opposed to many gods presumably. In other words this is a statement against polytheism, not about the composition or complexity of the Biblical God.
What was believed about this God can be deduced reasonably easily from a close reading of the Pentateuch and the first few historical books. As the only real God in the cosmos, the Biblical God was believed to be the creator of all things and all beings. There was no other being or thing that existed before this God decided to create the universe and all that is within it. This view of course stands in stark contrast to other ANE views about how the universe was created out of a struggle between various deities. The OT writers will have none of that. There is only one God, and one universe that was created by this God and reflects the divine character. The way that is expressed of course in the beginning chapters of the Bible is that God created all things, and made them tov, indeed made them tov m’ov—very good. A good God made a good creation and good creatures to fill it.
This whole idea of monotheism of course created enormous problems when it came to the issue of the origins of evil, the study of theodicy. Polytheism could always explain that evil came about through one or another of the bad deities or through cosmic struggle, but monotheism could not go that route. Some other explanation for evil had to be suggested. What is most interesting in Gen. 1-3 is that we are not told where evil comes from—it simply lurks in the presence of the snake in the garden. It appears that the OT writers were more interested in talking about how to cope with evil than debate its source.
But one thing they were repeatedly emphatic about is that the one and only God was not evil, there was no dark side, no shadow of turning in God, nor did the Biblical God do evil things. The blame for the Fall, as it came to be called, is placed solely on human beings, not on God for making defective merchandise. This pattern of thinking can of course be seen not only in various places in the OT, but in the NT as well. As Paul puts it in Rom. 5 and 1 Cor. 15, Adam is the head of the human race and as a result all of us have sinned and died in Adam, and of course it is also true that all of us have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God all on our own as well. Never once in the Bible is there a discussion about their being some flaw or ethical defect in God. The blame for the human malaise is always laid at the door of human beings, however much they may have been beguiled or bamboozled by the powers of darkness in the universe. God is holy, just, good, and not responsible for sin and evil.
This of course raises questions about the sovereignty of God, and the OT does indeed repeatedly insist that God is almighty. Sometimes this takes the form of insisting that God is the maker and ruler of the universe, but more frequently since the OT is the story of God’s dealings with a fallen and imperfect people, it takes the form of insisting that God is almighty to save or rescue his people. God will not willingly let them go down the path of ruin and self-destruction (see Hos. 11). At the very heart of the Pentateuch is of course the story of the Exodus Sinai events which becomes the paradigm and indeed the litmus test of the character of God—Yahweh is a redeemer God, who rescues his people time and time again. This brings into the picture God’s love, compassion, mercy, for there is no suggestion in such stories, not even in Exodus, that these people earned God’s favor and deserved to be rescued, and thus a righteous God was obligated to extricate them.
True enough, it is stressed that the Hebrews were victims of horrible oppression, but there is no suggestion in these stories that God rescued them because their character was so much better than the Egyptians. Indeed, as the wilderness wandering traditions which followed were to demonstrate, they had some severe issues in regard to both their behavior and their beliefs about the true God. Golden calves and immorality did not come as a total accident or as a total surprise from these people. In other words, while God was just in punishing the Egyptians he was also gracious in rescuing the Hebrews. And here we come upon a crucial point.
Salvation in the OT is, almost exclusively, a this-worldly proposition. It is something God does in space and time to rescue, redeem, restore, aid the return of his people to their rightful place or condition or character. There really is hardly anything of a doctrine of heaven in the OT (though a few saints like Enoch and Elijah get beamed up into the living presence of God), and so whatever justice or redemption that happens must happen in the here and now, in space and time. To be sure, in the later and apocalyptic prophecies we begin to see an afterlife theology in second and third Isaiah, in Ezekiel., in Daniel, and perhaps elsewhere, but clearly enough Sheol is the dominant concept of the afterlife in most of the OT. But nowhere do we find any NT writers who merely conjure with Sheol after death for anyone, it would appear.
There is considerable insistence in the OT on God’s holiness and righteous character. This is of course one reason why we talk about ethical monotheism. The Biblical God is not running around committing immoral acts, or like various pagan deities, attempting to mate with mere mortals, and notably when we have a story like Gen. 6.1-4 in which angels (called sons of God) come down from above and do commit the creation order violation of mating with mortals, the heavens break lose and a flood judgment comes upon the earth. The Biblical God will not tolerate, much less perpetrate a breach of the creation order, much less blur the line between creator and creature in this regard. Thus when we hear in the Holiness Code (see Leviticus)—“be holy, as I am holy” we are beginning to get to the root of the matter in terms of the OT symbolic universe. God is one, and God is holy, and God’s people should be both one and holy as well.
And here is where we say that just as theology and ethics are bound up in the character of God and one could talk about the theological story of an ethical God acting ethically, so also theology and ethics are intertwined in what is expected of God’s people as well. The character of God is to be reflected in the behavior (and belief) of God’s people. Put another way—when one knows and believes in the true character of the Biblical God and has experienced God acting ‘in character’ on behalf of his people, then the only appropriate response is to mirror that character in one’s own community and life. ‘Be ye holy, as I am holy’ means not merely set yourself apart from the behavior patterns of the larger culture but model yourself on the divine character. And interestingly such imitation is never seen to violate the creator-creature distinction, or lead to a human being’s apotheosis. It is the voice of the snake, not God, who promises “you shall be as gods”.
A further feature of the OT thought world which really shapes its contours is of course covenanting. The God of the Bible is a God who cuts covenants with both individuals like Noah or Abraham, but also with a whole group of people—a chosen people. Covenants are of course agreements and the Biblical ones take the form of suzerain-vassal covenants, not parity treaties. Yahweh dictates the terms in these covenants and they have not only stipulations but curse and blessing sanctions. They are all ratified by a sacrifice and have a covenant sign as well—such as circumcision, or even a rainbow. It would be hard to overestimate how important covenanting was in the relationship between God and his people as described in the OT. God made demands, not merely ritualistic ones but also ethical demands of his people, in a fashion similar to an ancient dowry or betrothal agreement. To fail to live up to the stipulations resulted in the curse sanctions being enacted on God’s people.
And this brings up another crucial point. God’s people, either individually or collectively are not immune to judgment. Their chosenness does not exempt them from God’s justice, indeed judgment begins with the household of God according to the OT. It is a singular mistake to muddle up the concept of chosenness or election and the concept of salvation. As we have said, the OT has very little to say about ‘everlasting life’, and when it speaks of ‘chosenness’ it is not spoken of in terms of eternal benefits to particular individuals. Indeed, chosenness normally in the OT has to do with God picking someone or some group for a specific historical purpose—such as the choice of Cyrus to set free God’s people in Babylonian exile. But even when the concept is applied collectively to Israel, it normally has the sense that God has chosen this people to be a light to the nations, bearing witness to God’s character and demands and to be a blessing to the nations (see e.g. the promises to Abraham). Election then has historical purposes in the OT, and little or nothing is said about personal eternal fringe benefits. The corollary of this should be clear—later Christian concepts of election and salvation (especially as blended together into one idea) ought not to be read back into the OT willy nilly. One has to have a sense of progressive revelation and the progress of developing understanding of such concepts as election and salvation when dealing with the relationship of the OT thought world and the NT thought world.

NURTURING A SENSE OF PROGRESSIVE REVELATION
This brings us to an important, indeed a crucial point. Biblical theology, or canonical theology, or Biblical ethics or canonical ethics if they are even going to be attempted should not be done in an a-historical manner, as if the Bible could be treated flatly as a thesaurus of theological and ethical ideas in which ‘salvation’ in Exodus, means exactly the same thing as ‘saved by grace through faith in Christ’ means in Ephesians. If there is no sense or sensitivity to the way ideas develop over time, and concepts are modified and change across the Biblical witness, if there is no sense of understanding of progressive revelation, then Biblical or canonical theology or ethics should not even be attempted because one will run roughshod right over the historical character and givenness of these wonderful texts. Don Carson makes this helpful observation: “precisely because God’s self-disclosure has taken place over time, NT theology, as part of the larger discipline of biblical theology, is committed to understanding the constitutive documents within the temporal framework. In this respect, NT theology differs widely in emphasis from systematic theology, which tends to ask atemporal questions of the biblical texts, thereby eliciting atemporal answers.” But the question is—is the latter a legitimate exercise? If we denude NT theology of its historical givenness is such an exercise possible without serious distortion and transformation of the NT material into something other than it was intended to be and to say?
While it is of course true that it is the same God revealed in the OT and the NT, it is not true to say that God’s OT people and NT people had the same level of understanding or even the same understanding of that God. This is perfectly clear from a comparison of the Shema and the Christian modification of it found in 1 Cor. 8.5-6—Christians refer the term God to the Father, and the term Lord to a different person, namely Jesus, and yet paradoxically do not deny the oneness of God. What one could say is that these various witnesses had compatible understandings of God.
As the author of Hebrews reminds us in Heb. 1.1-2—the revelation was partial and piecemeal in the OT era, but now God has revealed himself fully in his Son. This means that any Biblical or canonical theology worth the paper it is written on will have a clear sense of development, of before and after, of partial and more fully revealed, of promise or prophecy and fulfillment, and of typology. In other words, one must have a historical way of thinking about these theological and ethical concepts and their development, and one must conjure with the fact that some things God revealed to and demanded of his people in one era were either partial, or took account of what Jesus calls “the hardness of human hearts”. This is what it means to think in a self-consciously Christian manner about the OT, to think Christologically and ecclesiologically about it, to think historically about it.
From the Christian point of view, Christ is the climax of all God’s revelation to humankind, and the hermeneutical key to understanding all of what has come before, which was only preparatory for the coming of the Christ. If a former Pharisee like Paul can even say of the Mosaic Law that it was only a child-minder (paiadagōgos) of God’s people until Christ came, but when Christ came God’s people reached their majority and moved on beyond the child-minder or tutor, and so on to a new covenant, you know that it will not be enough to either say that the new covenant is just the old one renewed, or to assume that the continuity with what came before is dominant whilst the new elements in the new covenant are subdominant. The whole discussion about the obsolescence of the Mosaic covenant in Galatians and Hebrews prevents us from over-stressing the continuity and underplaying the radical new character of the new covenant in so many ways—both theologically and ethically.
Let me be frank and say that I am assuming as a Christian the truth of the NT witness, and I am assuming as well that the hermeneutic of the NT writers and their way of viewing and handling the OT is the way we Christians should attempt to view it today—which is to say eschatologically, viewing what has come before in the light of the inbreaking Kingdom, the coming of the messiah and the like. And what that meant was not merely ‘new occasions teach new duties (and ethics)’. It meant a new understanding of God, reenvisioned in the light of the significance of the Christ event.
Christ cannot be found under every rock of the OT. Indeed, he cannot be found under many, for there are not many messianic texts in the OT. A generous guess would say that about 5% of the OT has to do with messianism, the longing for a future and more perfect ruler for God’s people. So when I say we must read the OT in the light of the Christ event, what I mean is not that we read Christ back into the OT at various junctures without a clear leading from the OT or NT itself (e.g. Christ is not the angel of the Lord, there was no incarnation of Christ before the incarnation), but rather we have the strong sense that that whole era was preparatory for the coming of the Christ to earth so that—“when the time had fully come God sent forth his Son”. We can learn much about the first person of the Trinity from the OT itself, but not much about the second and third persons of the Trinity—those persons do not come fully to light until and after the Christ event. This way of studying the Bible not only prevents Christian anachronism. It allows us to read the OT with our Jewish friends with profit and respect for the historical givenness and character of that text. It was after all the Word of God for Jews first, before it ever became part of the Christian Bible.
When a covenant’s stipulations were broken in antiquity and we are talking about a suzerain-vassal treaty, then it was entirely up to the ruler to decide what to do next, besides exact the curse sanctions of the original treaty which had to be put into play once the Law had been broken. If the ruler decided to relate in a positive way with a people again, then a new covenant would have to be drawn up, and of course various of the ideas and stipulations and sanctions of the new covenant could be a repetition or replay to one degree or another of various of the previous stipulations. For example honoring parents is affirmed in both the Mosaic Law, and in the Law of Christ, the imperatives that Christ gives. The reason why Christians obey such an imperative is because it is in the new covenant, not because it was once in an old one and the old one is still continuing.
When a new covenant is cut, the old one becomes obsolete. In fact, when the curse sanction of a covenant is enacted, that covenant is over. In the NT, some of its authors seem to see the death of Jesus as the absorbing of the curse sanction against sin in God’s people from the previous covenants and thus the end of that covenant. Paul in Colossians even calls Jesus’ death a circumcision, associating it with the covenant sign and Mark with his rending of the veil of the Temple signals the end of an era of God’s presence located in what was becoming the Temple of Doom. And one more thing—were it the case that election=eternal salvation in the NT how then do we explain the fact that Jesus, who is the one person whom God did not need to save from fallenness is the one who is viewed as the Elect One in Ephesians and elsewhere in the NT? Election and salvation, as it turns out are two different but related concepts in both testaments, but in no instance should we assume that the former idea simply implies eternal salvation.
One of the useful questions to ask about God’s sovereignty as depicted in the OT, is how does the OT depict the way he exercises that sovereignty? Does the OT suggest either that God so controls everything that nothing ever happens that is against his will or that everything that happens is part of his plan? Well certainly the answer to that must be no. God is not the ultimate author of sin, and the OT nowhere suggests such a view. One test case can be considered by reflecting on how God relates to his own people. There is no more poignant depiction of this than in Hosea 11—

When Israel was a child I loved him, out of Egypt I called my son.
The more I called them, the farther they went from me, Sacrificing to the Baals and burning incense to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, who took them in my arms; I drew them with human cords, with bands of love; I fostered them like one who raises an infant to his cheeks; Yet, though I stooped to feed my child, they did not know that I was their healer. He shall return to the land of Egypt, and Assyria shall be his king;
The sword shall begin with his cities and end by consuming his solitudes. Because they refused to repent, their own counsels shall devour them. His people are in suspense about returning to him; and God, though in unison they cry out to him, shall not raise them up.

How could I give you up, O Ephraim, or deliver you up, O Israel? How could I treat you as Admah, or make you like Zeboiim? My heart is overwhelmed, my pity is stirred.
I will not give vent to my blazing anger, I will not destroy Ephraim again; For I am God and not man, the Holy One present among you; I will not let the flames consume you.
They shall follow the LORD, who roars like a lion; When he roars, his sons shall come frightened from the west, out of Egypt they shall come trembling, like sparrows, from the land of Assyria, like doves; And I will resettle them in their homes, says the LORD.

What should we conclude from this poignant prophetic poem? In this poem God is depicted as a parent who calls his children, but they do not automatically or always respond in the way God desires. They continue to behave sinfully over and over again, and with moral consequences as well such as being overcome by their enemies. But God, like a spurned lover, will not give up on Israel. God keeps calling them from exile, and does not express his wrath against Israel’s sin. Rather, like a mighty lion God roars, and his lion cubs finally recognize the sound of his voice and come running back to their parent.
Now I submit this reveals a great deal about God’s character. It reveals that God, while he could simply organize all things and all the behavior of his people in a pre-ordained way, for God has the power, chooses instead to relate to his children in love, and by means of love. He calls them back, he does not compel or pre-determine them to come back. There is something about a love relationship that could not be pre-determined anyway. Love can only be freely given and freely received between personal beings. Love cannot be coerced, compelled, or even just predetermined. And Yahweh had decided not to act like some humans would to compel a response or to destroy those who don’t respond according to the desired script. The power of contrary choice has been given to God’s people, and they do not always respond as they ought to do.
But even more impressively, God has chosen to relate to his people in a loving manner wooing and winning their response. This picture of God comports with texts like John 3.16-17 which tells us that God’s heart is big, and that he does not desire (and has not predetermined) that anyone should perish. It comports with texts like 1 Tim. 2.1-6 which tell us that not only did Jesus die as a ransom for all the world, but that God desires that all come to a knowledge of the truth and be saved. Thus, accordingly the concepts of election and salvation look differently when we understand that this is the character of the Biblical God, and that his M.O. is much as we find it to be in places like Hosea 11 or 1 Timothy 2.1-6.
This however brings us to a crucial point. The OT says very little about the coming messiah, and yet on almost every page of the NT, Jesus takes center stage. I would suggest that there could be no clearer proof that we are not merely dealing with the gestation of religious ideas over time. NT theology is not merely a natural development of OT theology, though there is considerable overlap, and the same can be said about the ethics in the NT compared to the ethics in the OT.
Something happened in space and time to change the thought world of numerous early Jews who ended up writing books of the NT. That something was the coming of the historical Jesus and the impact he had on these Jews. To study NT theology and ethics and leave Jesus out of the equation, or relegate him and his teaching to a presupposition for or addendum to NT thought is a huge mistake, and we strove to avoid that mistake in these volumes.
The person, work, and teaching of Jesus are the chief reasons for the differences between the OT and NT thought worlds. Of course the NT writers pick up the Jesus ball and run with it in several different creative directions, but it is Jesus who is the catalyst for all that is going on theologically and ethically in the NT. This is why, in my view, it is beyond comprehension that one would attempt to examine NT theology or ethics and leave Jesus and the Jesus tradition out of consideration or treat it last as Caird does, as if it had little impact on figures like Paul or James or Peter, and as if they were simply doing theologies all on their own after the fact, politely ignoring the teachings and life of their founder. While it is a challenge to show the relationship between the thought world of Jesus and that of his followers, it is not an impossible one as we have tried to show in this study.

An IGOD? Cartoon of the Day

THE NEW ROB BELL BOOK--- A PREVIEW OF COMING ATTRACTIONS

Jesus Wants to Save Christians, by Rob Bell and Don Golden, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008), $19.99 (224 pages) Due out in October.

I thoroughly enjoy the creative material that comes out of Rob Bell’s grace-filled and artistic brain. Even when I disagree with him, there is no denying he is tapping into a deep well of truth and riding the wave of a new movement of the Holy Spirit which the church, especially in America, so desperately needs. Rob Bell, and until recently, Don Golden have been doing this together at Mars Hill Church in Grand Rapids, and undoubtedly this book comes out of some of their ministry together. This third of the Bell books, this time with collaboration from a partner in ministry has the same bite and passion as the first two, but mostly missing are the personal stories and anecdotes which peppered Velvet Elvis, and Sex God. This book is all business, and it is God’s business the writers are about. Whether the Evangelical world wants to hear this or not, these authors feel it needs to do so desperately. This book deserves a thorough review.

It is thus with some excitement that I recently discovered that my friends at Zondervan had sent me a pre-pub copy of Jesus Wants to Save Christians (and boy do many of them need it!), which as it turns out, is a good faith attempt to articulate a specific theology for our post-modern situation, articulating what the author’s call a New Exodus perspective. New Exodus theology is of course not totally new, though it will be new to many in the blogosphere, and in the Introduction our authors acknowledge right off the bat an indebtedness especially to the work of Professor Tom Holland who teaches Biblical Theology at Wales Evangelical School of Theology, and has focused in his writings on the Pauline corpus (e.g see his Contours of Pauline Theology). Thus we could say that Bell and Golden are attempting to turn some of that Welsh grape juice into vintage wine in this little book, or perhaps we should envisage the process the other way around, since Holland’s is the more technical scholarly work, and this book more the distillation and clarification. But let the buyer beware--- anyone brave enough to take on and milk the All American sacred cows of greed and sex are bound to get to some other nice little non-controversial golden calves like ‘Christians and politics, or Christians and war’, or Christians and social justice, or Christians and the oppressed and the poor-- right? Right.

One of the things I immediately resonate with about this book is its attempt to do theology out of the Grand Narrative or meta-narrative of the Bible. This is precisely what I have been arguing for, for a long time even when it comes to more didactic material such as Paul’s letters (see e.g. my Paul’s Narrative Thought World). What we discover pretty quickly in the first chapter is that this book is more than just a theological exercise by young theologians (to borrow a phrase from Helmut Thielicke’s classic little guide), it is something of a social manifesto, a probing of the necessary socio-political implications of the Gospel. Writing this is of course either a brave or a foolhardy thing to do in schizophrenic America which actually thinks you can keep religion and politics (and church and state) in hermetically sealed off comports in one’s brain, ones town, and one’s nation, and never the twain should meet. In short, this book comes at precisely the right time (due out October) in the latest political cycle of things.

The book begins with a retelling of the tragic tale of Cain and Abel which gives the authors the opportunity to suggest that this story is about all of us—somewhere East of Eden, trying to build a city and a civilization outside of Paradise and in a fallen world. Ain’t it the truth. But this book is especially about the indigenization of human falleness in America particularly, and how our behavior as an Empire, in some ways much like the Roman Empire, is a particular manifestation of what is deeply wrong with human society, something which is more like the behavior of Cain, than Abel.

One of the roots of the problem in America is pointed out at the very outset of the book is put in these terms—“A Christian should get very nervous when the flag and the cross start holding hands. This is not a romance we want to encourage”(p. 18). Indeed, if pushed far enough it becomes a form of idolatry, the ultimate fallen behavior. And of course Bell and Golden are right. When you are spending a trillion dollars in Iraq and untold billions here in America for Homeland In-Security, and invest 50 billion in one plane with helicopter features as a ‘better weapon of mass destruction’ and of course it still is not making us safe, indeed it makes us feel less secure in many cases not more, isn’t it time to ask—Is fear or faith dictating our dominant national behavior in such matters? What’s wrong with this picture from a Christian point of view? At least Bell and Golden are brave enough to ask the right questions about all of this, even though doubtless they are going to be slammed as unpatriotic, rather like Jews were by the Roman Empire when they refused to worship at the altars of the Emperor cult.

And interestingly, quoting Colin Powell no less they put their finger on it early on: “The only thing that can destroy us is us. We shouldn’t do it to ourselves, and we shouldn’t use fear for political purposes—scaring people to death so they will vote for you, or scaring people to death so that we create a terror-industrial complex”
(Colin Powell in interview in GQ October 2007 http://men.style.com/gq/features/landing?id=content_5900).
I knew I liked that Colin Powell. With this opening salvo, Bell and Golden turn to a retelling of our story, our meta-narrative, the story of salvation history.

CHAPTER ONE In the first major chapter of the book, the authors turn to Exodus and isolate a particular key motif. If we ask what it is that gets the ball rolling, the juices flowing, and more to the point what sets God into motion and into action, it is the cry of the oppressed. Whether it’s the blood of Abel crying out, or the oppressed Israelites laboring under Pharaoh’s hard yoke, it is the cry of the oppressed for help that sets the Biblical story in motion in regard to God’s divine intervention and redemption activity. God doesn’t just hear, he is a crisis intervention specialist. But not like an EMT team. More like someone who is rescuing his own bride to be, and longs to have a permanent binding covenantal relationship with them. And God has a mission for this bride, to become a priest, a mediator between God and humankind, a light-bearer to the nations.

Much is made by Bell and Golden of the word sa’aq which Walter Bruegemann has referred to as the primal scream of a wronged people. Not a lament or a cry of resignation but the strong voice of a person badly wrong crying out and believing it will be heard and remedied. God responds to the primal scream of humanity for liberation, freedom, rescue. The cry for release from injustice and oppression.

Egypt is viewed as the epitome of anti-kingdom. It is seen as what happens when sin becomes structured into society itself and its laws. “Egypt shows us how easily human nature bends towards using power to preserve privilege at the expense of the weak.” (p. 27). Pharaoh is “part of a larger system, a complex web of power and violence and industry and technology that exploits people for its expansion and profit.” (p. 26). Bell and Golden are enunciating a certain kind of non-Marxist liberation theology, but they have indeed drunk from the well of Horsley and Crossan as they trek across the desert towards the oasis they are looking for.

One of the more interesting points in this chapter is that God deliberately calls his people away from the city away from fallen civilization to a place where he can speak to them “And it happens in the wilderness, which has global implications. Because the Sinai event happened in the wilderness and not in the midst of a nation or city or province where someone could make ownership claims, it was for all the people of the world.” (p. 29).
This first chapter could be called a tale of going from Exodus to Exile. And there are many helpful and key points along the way. What does God do when his oppressed people, once they begin to prosper, turn around and oppress others? Does God stand idly by when that happens? No, he sends his very own people off into exile. There is both a helpful exposition of the ten commandments in this chapter and then an eye opening exposition on Solomon and how he became like Pharaoh, an oppressor.

In regard to the ten commandments the authors stress that this is an exegesis and a reminder of the Israelite experience in Egypt and thereafter. So for example, it reminded them they lived in Egypt in a polytheistic environment which was an insult to the one true God, as he was about the only God not honored there! The Sabbath commandment is said to remind the Israelites that Pharaoh made them work every day without rest, that is it reminds them of their life as slaves not allow shalom or restoration or a time to honor their God.
The ten commandments then are seen as a new way of being human, getting one’s life in proper order in relationship to God and others. God’s people are to go and hear the cry of other oppressed peoples—the widow, the orphan, the stranger in the land, the foreigner. “They’re commanded: Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt. Do not take advantage of a widow or an orphan… Do not deny justice to your poor people….It is as if God is saying, ‘The thing that has happened to you—go make it happen for others….God measures their faith by how they treat the widows, orphans, strangers—the weak—among them God’s desire is that they would bring exodus to the weak, in the same way that God brought them exodus in their weakness.” (p. 35). And later when they speak about the perfidies of Solomon they remind us that it was the Queen of Sheba who said “Because of the Lord’s eternal love for Israel, he has made you king to maintain justice and righteousness.” (p. 37). But in fact Solomon failed in this enterprise and became a king like unto Pharaoh. The authors then chronicle not only the buildings based on slave labor, but the building up of homeland security at Megiddo and elsewhere. And Solomon becomes an arms merchant, buying chariots and horses from Egypt and selling weapons of war to the Hittites and the Aramaens. (p. 41). Solomon creates an anti-kingdom for his own pleasure and protection and honor, in direct violation of Deut. 17.16-17 telling a Israelite ruler what he must not do.

One of the gems of insight is that “The Bible is full of stories in which the ‘pagan’ characters seem to have better insight into the ways of God than the people who are supposed to have that insight. See Jethro in Exodus 18, Rahab in Joshua 2, the magi in the Gospels, and Numbers 22, we’re not sure about Balaam’s donkey” (p. 198). To this they add the telling example of the Queen of Sheba who reminds Solomon that his job as ruler is to uphold justice and righteousness, not build a glam temple on the backs of slave labor, and set up military bases in Megiddo, Hazor and elsewhere in the Holy Land, or have loads of concubines and wives, and thereby one’s heart is turned away from the Lord. The one oppressed has become the oppressor, and where this leads is straight to exile, do not pass go, do not collect any more shekelim (see 1 Kngs 11). What’s the point here? “God doesn’t have a problem with eating and drinking and owning things. Its when those things come at the expense of others having their basic needs met—that’s when the passionate rants of the prophets really kick in.” (p. 46). They are right on the money about this.

Another of the major themes of this chapter is that God wants or needs a body on earth. No, this is not Mormon theology coming out of the mouths of Bell and Golden. By body they mean a tangible people, a real people of flesh and blood to carry out God’s will and plan on earth. Herein we see the deep impact that Jewish scholars like Abraham Joshua Heschel have had on their theologizing (see p.200). God gives power and blessing so that justice and righteousness will be upheld for those who are denied it (p. 44).

CHAPTER TWO The second major chapter in this book is entitled ‘Get Down Your Harps’ and chronicles what it means to be in exile. One of the major leitmotivs in the first two chapters is that it seems that for a fallen people “take away the comforts of kingdom, deprive a person of the structures and institutions of empire, and they just might find the spine to envision a new tomorrow. Push a person to the limits of suffering, and they just might become a revolutionary.” (p. 54). No not a Che Guevara kind of revolutionary. A non-violent sort who is sold out for God, and whose bread is God’s Word, and whose hope is in the Lord, not in empire, or military protection or the like. As this chapter goes on to show, one Exodus was not enough. There needed to be an Exodus from Exile as well, and vision borne in exile that was big enough to include all of humanity—a cry for all of humanity to come home to their God.

‘The kings of the Babylonians, the prophets concluded wasn’t the real problem any more than Pharaoh the king of the Egyptians was the real problem for their ancestors…The real problem, the ultimate oppressor, is something that resides deep in every human heart. The real reason for their oppression is the human slavery to violence, sin, and death.” (p. 57). It is the Cain in all of us that is the real problem.

One of the stresses in both the first two chapters is the conditional nature of God’s promises in some respects—God had told Moses that if his people would be faithful and obey fully then they would be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. And on the other hand, if they did not. If they forgot their true identity and story, there would be consequences, called covenant curses (p. 59). Penalties happen when you break a contract. Exile is a consequence of a nation’s infidelity.

But the vision of return, the vision of remarriage would involve a new sort of marriage covenant, according to Jeremiah, one where truth was buried deep in the inward parts of the believing people. And they would not go back to the Solomonic days, they would go forward, according to Isaiah into a place of beating swords into plowshare—exchanging destruction for food production. Turning spears into pruning hooks—exchanging the implements of killing for the implements of rescuing the least the last and the lost. And then there is the word about one’s worst enemies coming to love the Lord and be one’s brothers.
Jerusalem would become a city without walls, Israel a country without borders, and human beings people without racial bias, ethnocentricity, or national bias. “In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria a blessing on the earth. The Lord almighty will bless them, saying ‘Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance” Is. 19.24-25). Hmm…. This doesn’t sound anything like some TV preachers’ visions of the future.

Salvation to the ends of the earth, which Isaiah also forsees means no more partiality. God is the God of all people, he loves them all, and desires to redeem them all. The lion is going to lie down with the lamb and not dream of lambchops. The wolf is going to den with the sheep and not wolf him down. And we will study war no more…… “For the prophets in exile, no vision was too large, no dream too big, no hope too beyond what would happen in the new exodus….A movement bigger than any one nation, bigger than any one ethnic group, bigger than one religion” (pp. 67-68).

To their credit, Bell and Golden point out that when Isaiah talks about this new leader, they see that he was to be like Solomon, only wiser and better. One who would use power purely to help the oppressed and the poor. One who would in fact be a servant—a suffering servant. A righteous and just servant. The authors see the promises in Isaiah 7,9,11 pointing to a leader that not only has a miraculous conception but can rule forever, some sort of interesting servant who is both truly human and yet truly divine. A prince of peace who will bring shalom forever.
What if David had another son, like but much greater than Solomon? “What started as a promise of hope for a particular group of people beside a particular river turned into a universal hope for all of humanity, whatever river they find themselves beside.” (p. 71). But these dreams were deferred for a long time. These hopes were left hanging in air, and even the moment of Macabbean glory did not fulfill these dreams. What or who could? The Old Testament leaves us hanging like the last episode in season 4 of Lost.

CHAPTER THREE Bell and Golden subscribe to the theory that Jews of the first century in Israel saw themselves as still in a sort of exile since the Roman oppressors were in their land, and they were not free, since even their temple was abutted by a taller Roman installation like the Antonia Fortress. I would call this occupation which involved some oppression to be sure. But not exile. The portrayal of Jesus as the true Son of David, like Solomon was supposed to be, is poignant and accurate, beginning on p. 78. There is also a stress on how much the story of Jesus is seen in light of Isaiah 40ff. and further there is a stress on how the ministry of Jesus is seen as not just one more return from exile, one more exodus, but in fact a new genesis—the beginning of the kingdom on earth leading to the new heavens and the new earth. There is a stress on the universal intent and scope of Jesus’ ministry—“this new son of David isn’t just leading a new exodus for a specific group of people; he’s bringing liberation for everybody everywhere and ultimately for everything everywhere for all time.” (p. 83).

There is a helpful discussion, beginning on p. 85 of the Emmaus road story. The authors remind us that Jesus’ frustration with the two fellow travelers is not because they believed the prophets and Jesus’ death had dashed such hopes. It is because they had not believed the prophets that spoke of the servant suffering. “For the fellow traveler, Jesus’ death isn’t the end of hope; its actually the beginning of hope.” (p. 86). Jesus was not going to change the world by killing, but rather by dying. “If evil always takes some form of violence, then more violence isn’t going to solve anything.” Jesus came to change the paradigm for “those addicted to the myth of redemptive violence.” (p. 87, and here an indebtedness to Walter Wink is acknowledged). Instead there is the truth of redemptive suffering and death. Violence cannot bring peace, the death of the prince of peace can, for only by absorbing the world’s attempt to be Cain over and over again, can the paradigm be changed, and the world be changed, and even God’s people be changed.

CHAPTER FOUR This chapter begins with a bit of a historical problem. Apparently the authors think that Philip the Evangelist is the same person as the Philip mentioned in the Gospels. This is probably incorrect. The Philip of Acts 6-8 is not one of the apostles, but someone picked to relieve the apostles of their table waiting duties, and their duties to care for the widows. And a picture is painted of this Philip that he comes from an ultra orthodox region of northern Galilee including Bethsaida. This idea they got from Ray Van der Laan, and it is likely wrong as well as it is based on what that region was like long after A.D. 70 when it became a haven for Jews after the debacle and destruction of Jews in Jerusalem. Bethsaida was not known as part of the orthodox triangle in Jesus’ day. Indeed, it was known as a border town dangerously close to pagan influences from Gerasa and elsewhere.

In their retelling of the story of Pentecost they connect it with the Mt. Sinai experience of Moses, and the Jewish tradition that Moses got the Big Ten and these truths were then spoken in the languages of all nations. This story is more likely to be alluded to in Acts 2 than the usual suggestion that Babel is alluded to, for Acts 2 is quite specifically not about the return to one world, one language. It is about how the Good News can be indigenized in all languages and cultures.

One of the features of Bell’s approach to Scripture is to look for small correspondences between Biblical stories and then connect them—for example the mention of 3,000 killed at Sinai, and 3,000 added at Pentecost. Some of these connections are far more plausible than others and this one is just barely possible. The danger of course is to read too much into the use of specific numbers that were not particularly symbolic for Jews (though there were perhaps a dozen or so numbers that were symbolic) or specific terms, like the word ‘east’, as in east of Eden.

Another example occurs in this same chapter where the reference to too much wine is taken as an allusion to weddings and marriages, and then we are told that Pentecost is about the beginning of the new marriage with God. This is something Luke does not even remotely suggest, and indeed what is said by Peter rules it out--- the taverns are not open this early in the morning. He’s not thinking weddings, he’s thinking happy hour. Or again in this same chapter the fact that the Ethiopian eunuch is riding in a chariot is used to connect this story to the chariots of Pharaoh, never mind this eunuch is already a God-fearer reading an Isaiah scroll! Is the chariot seen here as a symbol of oppression and baptism a liberation from that sort of oppression? Luke does not say or imply that is his message here. He is concerned about Good News traveling to the ends of earth, by means of folk like the Ethiopian (see my Acts commentary).
We are then given the picture of ultra-orthodox Philip who would have qualms about baptizing a eunuch. But nothing in the story indicates this was an issue for Philip at all. And indeed, we are not given a scenario where Philip has a crisis of conscience before baptizing the eunuch. This is reading too much into the story, on the basis of dubious background info. Context is great when it’s the right contextual info, to illuminate the text.
There are however better connections made later in the chapter for example between Paul in Rom. 1 seeing himself as a servant and sort of priest to the nations, thus fulfilling what is said in Exod. 19 and elsewhere. Bell and Golden are right, that the new covenant did want to emphasize the more universalizable aspects of the prophets words, and indeed of the words of Moses.

If we wonder where the title of this book comes from it comes from insights like the following: “Paul is gathering with the religious leaders, trying to persuade them about Jesus. He doesn’t first go to the Gentiles, he goes to the religious faithful, he attends their gatherings, he speaks to them in their language. Paul does this because he knows that if the church gets converted, the whole world will follow.” (p. 115, emphasis added). Of course in Acts 28 Paul is talking to Jewish leaders, not Christians, and of course they are synagogue leaders, not church leaders, and it is not clear whether the whole world’s following is meant to be an allusion to Rom. 11.25 and context where the full number of the Gentiles and all Israel being saved are connected. This is the weakest chapter in this book in terms of sound exegesis at various points, but it does manage to stay on message and rightly emphasis the new creation theme and the new covenant character promised in Isaiah and Jeremiah. The early Christians did believe they already lived in the age of fulfillment. Indeed every conversion was already a new creation, at least in that life.


CHAPTER FIVE This chapter begins with a bang, the big bang of the bombing that began Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003. As is reported here while we were busily lauding the precision of our new weapons, in fact the hospitals nearby were reporting almost entirely civilian casualties—women, children, the elderly, and men. Not soldiers, not a one, and not Saddam Hussein. The accurate report from that day of one Iraqi trying to overcome the disaster is given. He said “Due to this [inhuman] behavior. America will fail. She will fail completely among the countries. And another nation will rise and take America’s place. America will lose because her behavior is not the behavior of a great nation.” (p. 118). The bombs you see fell in the wrong place, and any one who calls innocent people killed ‘collateral damage’ has certainly forfeited the right to think they stand on the moral high ground.

Now Bell and Golden are well aware of all the good that Americans have done in so many corners of the globe. They are well aware of , and agree that the loyal service of someone to their nation, is often to be applauded and honored. They quite agree that those who actually sacrificed their lives so we could live in freedom deserve our respect. That is not the issue. The issue is that Jesus has called Christians to participate not in Empire and ‘military solutions’ but in the Gospel and the attempt to save the world for true freedom in a very different manner. To the questions about the unjust terrorist act called the Crucifixion which happened to Jesus, and how we should respond, Jesus’ suggests “those who live by the sword shall die by it”. In short, Christians are not called to participate in the ‘military solution’.

Jesus has “an entirely different understanding of what just took place in Jerusalem [to himself], an understanding that strikes at the core of their entire worldview [which looked for the military restoration of Israel], and in the process of explaining to them what really just happened [namely the fulfillment of God’s plan—see Lk. 24], he reaches out to save them from perpetuating the very thing he came to save them from.” (p. 121, emphasis added). That is he came to save them from, among other things, the ways of Cain, the ways of violence to try and solve our problems. This stress on the Christian call to non-violence is both welcome, and Biblical. Its what Jesus would do.

Bell and Golden are quite right that it is difficult to read the Bible from the posture of the oppressed when one is part of a nation that is not under oppression in the way ancient Jews were. When one is part of the world’s biggest super power it is hard to read the Bible with the eyes of the original writers of these stories that saw super-powers as the ultimate manifestation of evil, and even severely criticized their own nation when it briefly became a super power under Solomon. While it would be easy to put America on a guilt trip for how much it has and has done to obtain it and how much better we have it than any other country in the world (see pp. 122-23) Bell and Golden take the high road.
They do want to deconstruct the sense of smugness and entitlement, and make us realize we have indeed been blessed to be a blessing, and we need to get on with it, not being a curse to other nations. They stress that prosperity brings with it the temptation to forget not only one’s past poverty and exodus from it, but to forget one’s God who did the blessing and rescuing.
They stress that what so often is a telltale sign that you have in fact forgotten God is “you forget the people God cares about…the widow, the orphan, and the refugee.” (p. 124). They are right about this. One measure of the character of country is how it treats the foreigners and strangers in the land. They stress “Entitlement leads to becoming immune to the suffering of others, because ‘I got what I deserve’ and so, apparently, did they….In the empire of entitlement, when the fundamental awareness is lost that this is all a gift, luxuries can begin to seem like necessities. Excess can become normal. And it can be very easy to lose perspective on just how much we have.” (p. 125).

But Bell and Golden are not just critiquing luxury and excess. They are wanting Americans to see themselves in different places in the Bible than they usually see themselves. “If you are a citizen of an empire that has the most powerful army in the history of humanity and is currently on the way to spending a trillion dollars on a war, passages in the Bible about those who accumulate chariots and horses from Egypt are passages about you and your people.” (p. 128). It is no surprise that the Psalmist contrasts those who trust in chariots and those who trust in God.

One of the more key insights that Bell and Golden emphasize that makes the Bible a different sort of book is that the Bible records how God wanted God’s people to be self-critical. The Bible records both the good points about Solomon, but also the full critique of his attempt to make Israel like the other nations, an accumulating empire. This is a God thing, as not too many empires are self-critical. “This is a warning to us of the powerful impulse within an empire to tell only one version of the story, the version that glosses over the dark side and injustices in order to serve the larger story of continued supremacy and success.” (p. 130). When you begin believing your own rhetoric, you are self-deceived.

Not surprisingly in this chapter considerable time is spent on the book of Revelation, which is rightly seen as a profound critique of empire and the Emperor cult and the tendency of God’s people to compromise with the pagan culture and its values.
The critique of some popular forms of Dispensational interpretation of Revelation is trenchant: “Imagine how dangerous it would be if there were Christians who skipped over the first century meaning of John’s Letter [i.e. Revelation] and focused only on whatever it might be saying about future events, years and years away. There is always the chance that in missing the point, they may in the process be participating in and supporting and funding various kinds of systems that the letter warns against participating in, supporting and funding. That would be tragic. That wouldn’t be what Jesus had in mind. That would be anti-Jesus. That would be anti-Christ. Were the people in John’s church reading his letter for the first time, with Roman soldiers right outside their door thinking, ‘This is going to be really helpful for people two thousand years from now who don’t want to get left behind.”? (p. 135). They ask the pertinent question—how do the children of the empire hear a critique of the fallen tendencies toward and the existence of empires? They spend the final major chapter of this book trying to answer that question.

CHAPTER SIX The title of the final major chapter is striking—Blood on the Doorposts of the Universe. The image of course comes from the original Passover, which is seen as an occasion where the power of the Empire was rendered inert and the Pharaoh powerless to stop the angel of death because the God of the exodus was going to hear his people’s cry and rescue them. An extended comparison is drawn between the original Exodus which involved the sacrifice of a lamb, and its blood on the doorpost in lieu of the loss of the first born son, and the new Exodus in Jesus’ blood on the cross where in fact, by contrast God’s first born did lose his life. The lamb, and more specifically the sacrificed lamb becomes a symbol of freedom, of that which sets a people free. The authors then go on to discuss the Passover meal Jesus celebrated where he reinterpreted two of the elements, bread and wine, in light of himself, and his own coming sacrifice. When you change the referents of the symbols, you are changing the symbol system, and in this case that means new covenant, and not just a renewal of the old one.

On p. 150 much is made of the fact that Christ is called the firstborn of all creation, which is taken to mean that Jesus is the representative of all of creation. In fact Colossians is talking about his being preeminent over all creation, but they are right in general about the point they are making. Christ did die for all. God is reconciling all things unto himself through the blood of the cross. This is the language of estrangement overcome, not liberation from bondage, but it is said to be for all of creation. Probably preeminent over creation and preeminent and first in the new creation of resurrection is what Col. 1 is about, a statement about Christology, not so much about new exodus. In fact “making peace thru the blood of the cross” is more about cessation of hostilities between God and humankind, not about liberation from Egypt like oppression and bondage. The problem with paradigms is that when you try to read new Exodus into too many things, some texts get distorted like Col. 1.

The authors go on to stress that Paul apparently saw himself as, like Christ, a thank offering poured out for the world. They argue (see pp. 152-53) that we are all supposed to be offering ourselves as sacrifices and servants, for the world. One striking remark comes while they are discussing 1 Cor. 9, and notice that Paul does not say “to the strong I became strong” whereas he does say to the weak I became weak”. The reason this is notable is because of the previous antinomies (I became a Jew to the Jew, a Gentile to the Gentile etc.). Why not? Because a Eucharist is not about self-strengthening or identifying with the strong. “For someone to receive, someone has to give. For someone to be fed, someone has to provide the food. …if someone somewhere benefits, then someone somewhere has paid something” (p. 152). Eucharist is about self-giving, not self-aggrandizement or self-enhancement.

One of the things that is strongly critiqued in this last chapter is a consumer approach to church, especially when that makes a church an exercise in niche marketing for a specific subculture or cultural group. As Bell and Golden stress that doesn’t look like the new humanity talked about in Ephes. 2 that Christ died to create. They put it this way-- “A church is not a center for religious goods and services, where people pay a fee and receive a product in return. A church is not an organization that surveys its demographic to find out what the market is demanding at this particular moment and then adjusts its strategy to meet that consumer need.” (p. 161). The question is what does it look like to break ourselves open and pour ourselves out for the world, as Jesus did. A church’s authority in the world comes from its Christ’likeness is in essence what they are saying.

At this juncture, lest we think that Bell and Golden might be suggesting something ‘liberal’ about politics they make clear that is not their intent--- “This is why when Christians organize politically and start flexing their muscle, making threats about how they are going to impose their way on others, so many people turn away from Jesus. Jesus’ followers at that point are claiming to be the voice of God. But they are speaking the language of Caesar and using the methods of Rome, and for millions of us it has the stench of Solomon, its not the path of descent.” (p. 164).

In other words, they are all for Christians living out the radical demands of the Gospel, but they do not see this as a political program by which a Christian group weds itself to a particular political party or movement, and uses the world’s tactics to try and accomplish God’s ends. This would not be taking the way of the servant, the way of sacrifice, the way of eucharist. Giving unconditionally to others is different from demanding things of others, manipulating others, brow-beating others, and the like. Working for justice in the world does not just help the oppressed, it rescues us from becoming oppressors and forgetting we were once slaves who were set free by God. “The Eucharist is about people with the power empowering the powerless to make a better life for themselves.” (p. 168). The church is said to be an organization that exists for the sake of non-members.

”The church is the living, breathing, life-giving, system-confronting, empire-subverting picture of the new humanity.” (p. 172). Or at least it is supposed to be, but have you seen an American church much like this? I hope so.

EPILOGUE Perhaps the strongest plea from the end of this little book is that we are all indeed our brother’s keeper. And so “Jesus wants to save our church from the exile of irrelevance. If we have any resources, any power, any voice, any influence, any energy, we must convert them into blessing for those who have no power, no voice, no influence.” (p. 179). In other words, like God we are to hear the cry of those in need of help, relief, food, medicine, rescue, redemption because in fact all of this is the social outworking of salvation, and the spiritual and social dimensions of salvation should not be severed. God wants to save the whole person, body and soul, life and situation.

These two rather young men believe passionately in the whole Gospel for the whole person in the whole world. Listen to how they put it in the end, because indeed Jesus needs to and wants to save the American church from irrelevance—
“Jesus wants to save us from making the good news about another world and not this one. Jesus wants to save us from preaching a Gospel that is only about individuals and not about the systems that enslave them. Jesus wants to save us from shrinking the Gospel down to a transaction about the removal of sin and not about every single particle of creation being reconciled to its maker. Jesus wants to save us from religiously sanctioned despair, the kind that doesn’t believe the world can be made better, the kind that either blatantly or subtly teaches people to just be quiet and behave and wait for something big to happen ‘someday’.” (p. 185). In other words, “do not ask for whom this Golden Bell tolls, it tolls for thee.”

BW3

Methodism founder Charles Wesley's secret code diary cracked by Anglican priest

Charles Wesley is one of the most interesting of all the early Methodists, not least because of the kind of relationship he had with his older brother John. Some long time ago, Richard Heitzenrater and other fine Methodist scholars decoded and translated John Wesley's secret diary, and now the same has been done to Charles Wesley's diary. You can read the story in the Times, and here is the string----

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article4614293.ece


A professor from Liverpool Hope University, Kenneth Newport, has done the decoding and translating of the some 1000 handwritten pages, that cover the years 1736-1756. The diary begins with his time in Georgia in Savannah and elswhere and it provides various clues as to why Charles so opposed John Wesley's marriage to Grace Murray, and how that whole mess (which included Charles kidnapping Grace and forcing her to marry another Methodist!) put an enormous strain on the relationship between the brothers. The work of John Tyson and others has opened up the study of Charles Wesley in recent decades and he deserves further scrutiny not only for his enormous hymn output (over 6,000 hymn texts)but for the role he played in birthing the Methodist movement. This diary will add grist to the mill and help us understand this crucial figure in the English revival of the 18th century.

Here is a juicy little sample of one page from the diary translated:

"Monday, March 22 [1736] While I was persuading Mr Welch not to concern himself in this disturbance, I heard Mrs Hawkins cry out: “Murder!” and walked away. Returning out of the woods, I was informed by Mr Welch that poor blockhead Mrs Welch had joined with Mrs Hawkins and the Devil in their slanders of me. I would not believe it till half the town told me the same, and exclaimed against her ingratitude."

Oh those Wesley boys and their tempestuous relationship with women!

Smith's Museum of Stained Glass

One of the best kept secrets in all of Chicago is the Smith Museum of Stained Glass on Navy Pier, which we visited a week ago. Its free, its spectacular, and here is just a sample. You will notice that many of these windows, which have been collected out of old churches and homes mostly are made by the famous Tiffany Glass manufacturers which began in the Victorian era. There is something especially moving about the combination of beauty and truth and craftsmanship, for example in the Tiffany window above of King Solomon, or the dark skinned Jesus. Enjoy, and see if you can figure out which of the windows depicts a famous Tar Heel who landed in Chicago for a while. BW3

Eric Liddle-- A Christian for the Ages

One of my all time favorite movies with a Christian theme is the 1981 film entitled 'Chariots of Fire' a story about two runners, one a Jewish Englishman named Harold Abrams, one a Scottish Evangelical named Eric Liddle who both did remarkable things at the 1924 Olympics in Paris. NBC and Mary Carillo this afternoon did a wonderful tribute to Liddle, which if you can find on their website you should watch it. What Carillo rightly points out, is that Liddle was the first athlete born in China (of missionary parents in 1902) to win a gold medal at any Olympics.

Eric Liddle lived a short life (1902-45), but the importance of a life cannot be measured in its quantity, rather it must be measured in its quality, and as Carillo movingly said, "most athletes come to the games desiring to be great and do great, Eric Liddle came to the Paris Olympics desiring to be good, and to do good." Liddle famously refused to run in the race that was his speciality because the heat was on Sunday, and he was a strict Scottish sabbitarian. Even the pleas from the royal family went on deaf ears. This was a great blow to Britain recovering from WWI as Liddle was undoubtedly the best in the world in 100M. But his old rival whom he had beaten in that very distance before, Harold Abrams, ran and won the race for Great Britain. Liddle however was persuaded to run the 400 meters. As his daughter Patrica Russell tells the story, the thing was he ran it as if it was the 100 meters. He ran it like an all out sprint, smashing the world record, winning by a comfortable margin. There is a famous line in the movie 'Chariots of Fire' where Eric's sister is arguing with him about his going to Paris instead of going instantly to the mission field in China. Eric's response was memorable, "God has made me to be a missionary, aye, but he has made me fast, and when I run, I feel God's pleasure". I know exactly what he means, having been a runner most of my life. When I ran the Boston Marathon in 1993 on an unusually hot muggy day in April, I came down to the last few miles on fumes, and kept saying to myself "are you running with me Jesus", "are you running with me".

Eric Liddle after the Paris Olympics did return to the country of his birth, China, where he was a missionary. Unfortunately, China was invaded by Japan, and Liddle had to send his family home to Canada (his wife was Canadian), and he himself ended up in a concentration camp with many others 300 miles south of Beijing. In the camp he pastored and taught and loved his fellow inmates. In the Carillo piece, one of the interees said that Liddle taught him that he must pray for the Japanese who had done this to them, for the NT says 'pray for those who persecute you'. Liddle was a genuinely Christian person from start to finish in his 43 years of life. Only six months before the liberation of China by the Allies in 1945, Eric Liddle became suddenly ill, and then died. He had a massive brain tumor. To this day, the Chinese do not erect monuments to foreigners on their soil, but they made an exception for an exceptional man who called two nations his home. Still today you can see the monument erected with an English script and a cross on it honoring Eric Liddle for his good work in China.

Though what Michael Phelps accomplished at this Olympics will long redound to his glory, what Eric Liddle did both at the 1924 Olympics and throughout his life will redound to God's glory, and, as those bonny Scots would say, "that's more than a wee bit greater."

The Great Troubadours and their Albums

One category we haven't much talked about are the balladeers or troubadours. Some of these artists would be categorized as folk, some as country, some as bluegrass, some as folk rock, but they are certainly all on the penumbra of rock n' roll and deserve some discussion. These are our master story tellers and lyrical writers. Here is a list of some quintessential examples:

Recently honored precisely for these sorts of skills, Paul Simon has to be at or near the top of this list. To get a sense of his lyrical gifts checkout:

1) from the Simon and Garfunkel era--- the Sounds of Silence, Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme, Bookends, and the Bridge over Trouble Waters lps
2) from his solo career there are many to mention--- the Rhymin Simon, Still Crazy after all these Years, Graceland, and most recently the Surprise lps.

Equally talented as a songwriter, singer in this sort of tradition is of course the late lamented Dan Fogelberg. The best way to sample his work now is the Portrait box set which has most of his classic tunes. James Taylor absolutely falls into this category, but since I have already done a blog post on North Carolinian musicians, I will just mention from his early work, Sweet Baby James, Shower the People, and from more recent years lps like Hourglass or New Moon Shine. These sorts of artists are quite intentionally continuing a tradition of folk music that ultimately goes back to English, Irish and Scottish folk music brought over by the immigrants to this country.

There are midwestern versions of these sorts of artists, for example some of John Mellencamp's work especially Scarecrow or my favorite Lonesome Jubilee, and several of the important more folk oriented albums of Bruce Springsteen belong in this discussion--- The River, Devils and Dust (and the recent tribute lp to Pete Seeger), and especially The Ghost of Tom Joad. Of course some of these artists were capable of doing straight ahead rock n' roll as well, but my concern is here with the more folk side of things. Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead belong in this conversation when you think of lps like American Beauty or Working Man's Dead. If one wants a more urban version of a troubadour whose music was often stark and dark, and very influential in this whole sphere of music, check out Leonard Cohen.

Of course no discussion of this matter could even be undertaken without considering the overwhelming ouevre of Robert Zimmerman aka Bob Dylan. In general, it is especially his early material that most would mention, and you already see what he is capable of in the Free Wheelin' lp. We could probably list ten lps, and notice that Bob has always been willing to push the envelope, dabbling in country briefly in the wonderful Nashville Skyline lp, or in more rootsy sounds like in his Time Out of Mind lp, and I would add that even his Gospel lps such as the marvelous Slow Train Comin' are essentially folk done in a Gospel mode.

Of the female troubadours early on Joan Baez had the best voice, but she was not the songwriter that Joni Mitchell was. Joan was at her best singing protest songs, and wonderful renditions of Bob Dylan tunes, but she did have some fine original numbers like 'Diamonds and Rust'. I love her tribute to William Blake lp on Vanguard, but unfortunately it and many other great old Vanguard lps are no longer available. The second best voice of this whole group of female troubadours was Judy Collins, no question, and I still get chills hearing her version of Amazing Grace. Wildflowers is perhaps her most lyrical lp. She did have some gift for songwriting for sure, but it was her versions of Joni Mitchell tunes (like 'Both Sides Now') that were most popular. I once saw her in the Kennedy Center in D.C. and she was just magical. To this I would add the wonderful work of Joan Armatrading and Tracy Chapman who belong in this discussion.

Joni Mitchell was by far the greatest of these female balladeers, and she also had the most scope to her work, even going into jazz and jazz rock (listen to her Mingus CD or Court and Spark and the Hissing of Summer Lawns), but her very firstlp, simply called Joni Mitchell (produced by David Crosby no less)is absolutely lightning in a bottle and proved what she could do. The Both Sides Now and Blue lps were natural developments of her more folk side. Most of her most recent work has combined the jazz and folk sides of her interests and she has many wonderful more recent Cds-- Try for example Taming the Tiger. On top of all this, she was a wonderful painter as well. I even love her recent ventures into singing old classic show and jazz tunes.

There are of course many more male and female folk artists that deserve mention in such a discussion, people like Leo Kottke, Tom Rush, and on the more country side of things John Prine, especially his early stuff.

Of the country folk rockers several artists stand out above the pack--- Poco for example. Check out the lp with the Big Orange on the front, or their live in Boston CD, or their Good Feelin to Know Cd. Even more country was NRPS, the New Riders of the Purple Sage, and the later incarnation of the Byrds ala Sweetheart of the Rodeo. Jimmy Messina was essentially a country rock artists, and one can see this in the wonderful Loggins and Messina 'Sittin' In' lp. I saw them with full band at Duke, and they blew us right on out of the building with songs like Vahevala, or Peace of Mind, or I Don't Want Nobody but You.

If one wants to push a bit further one has to talk about artists who were influenced by blues and early rock, but were essentially country artists, like Willie Nelson or Johnny Cash. Both of these artists had good gifts of singing and songwriting, especially Willie who is indeed mainly a ballad writer and acoustic guitar player in a Texas kind of mode.

If we move even further into Bluegrass then we have to talk about artists ranging from Doc and Merle Watson, to the more recent work of Allyson Krauss and Union Station, or Ricky Skaggs. Bluegrass Gospel is wonderful as well, as Allyson Kraus' early work with the Jones family shows. There are many more such talented folks, who could writer ballads and sing but this list will have to do.

If we look at all of this music from a broader perspective, what they all share in common is: 1) a commitment to acoustic music; 2) a commitment to quality song writing and close attention to the lyrics; 3) a commitment of harmonies; 4) a commitment to telling honest stories of real life. This is indeed blue collar music, vox populi, and it could be urban or rural in origins and focus but it reflected the wide open spaces of North America and the day to day tragedies and triumphs of ordinary people.

The Biblical and Impressionist Art of the Art Institute of Chicago

Over the weekend we went and visited our Russian daughter who is starting her PhD in Chicago. One of our main and favorite stop was at the Art Institute on Michigan Ave. What you see in these pictures includes figures such as John of Patmos, Job, Peter and the girl who recognized him at Caiphas' house, Adam and Eve, Moses sending the Red Sea onto Pharaoh's army, angels in stone, Marc Chagall's famous white crucifixion, and two El Grecos, one of James the Less, and one of St. Francis.

Reeling in the Years--- My ten Favorite Live Rock Concerts

In the wake of the huge response to the previous rock n' roll posts, I offer the list of the ten best concerts I have seen and would love to have captured on my reel to reel recorder. Of course everyone will have a different list since we haven't all gone to the same concerts. And of course it is also true that you might catch a band on an off day, or on a remarkably good day. The issue is-- were they in top form when you saw them, or not? A lot of things can factor into such a list: 1) the weather; 2) the equipment; 3) the performance; 4) the length and breadth of the performance; 5) who were the preliminary bands (if any)?
I am listing these in no particular order.

1) The Rolling Stones and Stevie Wonder in the Charlotte Coliseum. The acoustics were o.k., but the performances could hardly have been more of a study in contrasts. I loved them both, but actually Stevie Wonder, who opened the showed, was better than the Stones in terms of actual performance.

2) Bob Dylan and the Band in Charlotte Coliseum. The Band came out and did a wonderful set of their own first, and then Bob came out and did an electric, and then an acoustic set. His voice actually sounded decent (ala Sarah vintage) and he did not mumble through things. Pure magic, especially the acoustic set.

3) The Eagles and Joni Mitchell in Cameron Indoor Stadium (at Duke)-- This was just after the first Eagles lp was released, and they were an 'item' as country rockers. This was also just after Mitchell's Blue lp hit the top of the charts. They were both in peak form, and all the cigarette lighters burned out asking for more encores this was so great.

4)The Moody Blues at Blossom Center (near Cleveland)-- This was later in their career but they came out smoking and did not slow down. I was amazed how good the vocals were, especially Justin Heyward, and they did a nice cross-section of their good stuff. The symphonic sound was even better than in the old Melletron days.
Question was the last encore and everyone was ready to enter the Kingdom at that point.

5)The Little River Band at House of Blues (Myrtle Beach)-- This was stunning, and I love concerts in small venues anyway. They did all their multitudinous hits singing with verve and playing immaculately. It was an evening to remember, and even my children loved it and sang along to the tunes.

6) Bruce Hornsby Solo (Kentucky Theater, Lexington)--- I have always liked his incorporation of southern folk music into his performances, and he is an amazing pianist. It was wonderful, and he sang well.

7) Joe Cocker and the Greaseband and Jefferson Airplane (at Fillmore East, N.Y.)-- This was my first introduction to what big time rock concerts were going to be lie, and I was simply blown away. "I got by with a little help from my friends"

8) Linda Ronstadt and Neil Young at the Kennedy Center (D.C.)-- We hitched a ride from Chapel Hill to see this one, and took the Sunday night all nighter bus back to the Hill for Monday classes. And it was worth all the lost sleep. Ronstadt had just released Heart Like a Wheel, and she blew everyone out of the building with her killer vocals and band. Neil needed to be completely up to snuff to beat that opening act, and he was--- playing both acostic and electric numbers with verve. Another magical night.

9) David Crosby and Graham Nash at Duke--- These guys could take you right on out of the building and into the sky with their immaculate harmonies and the wonderful 12 string guitar playing by Crosby. They did songs from the Byrds days (Hey Mr. Tamborine Man) the Hollies days, the CSN days, their solo lps. It was acoustically fabulous and enough to make anyone fall in love with their music unless they had a heart of stone. I later saw Crosby here with his son's band (CPR) in Lex. and he still has the juice. The CSN concert in Charlotte was good as well, and Still added a hard edge with his blues songs and great guitar licks.

10) Eric Clapton and Friends in the Greenboro Coliseum-- (the friends being Duane Allman, Ringo Starr, Pete Townsend). This was great, and we got a selection of all Clapton's ouevre, even from Yardbirds and Cream and Blind Faith days. Naturally, Layla was the encore that brought down the house. I did also see the Who much later do Quadrophenia, in Indiana of all places, and they were good, but it was long after the Moon and Entwhistle days, sadly.

Other concerts I loved just outside the top ten-- Dan Fogelberg, James Taylor, Uriah Heep, Poco, Foreigner, Collective Soul, the Allman Brothers, Seals and Croft, the Beach Boys, America with Christopher Cross, Elton John (in Boston Garden after I ran the Boston Marathon in 1993), Gordon Lightfoot, Howard Jones, Leo Kottke, Judy Collins, and the beat goes on.

RETHINKING ELECTION, IN AN ELECTION YEAR :)

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N.B. I continue to work away on my two volume NT Theology, entitled The Indelible Image. Here is a preliminary sampling from the second volume where I am pulling together the threads and looking at topics in a holistic and Biblical theology kind of way. Let me know what you think. BW3


ELECTION IN THE BIBLE: WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, AND WHY?

The Biblical concept of election is an important one, as it is one of the themes we find in both the OT and the NT, and therefore it is a theme of interest not just for OT theology or NT theology, but both, and beyond that for canonical or biblical theology as well.

There are several issues of importance here, not the least of which is—What is the relationship between the concept of election, and the matter of salvation? If we begin all the way back with the primeval history of Genesis, no theology of election is enunciated of course, because election implies that there are various persons to chose or select from, for whatever ends. Adam and Eve were not ‘elect’ in the sense that later we hear Israel is elect. Election then can be defined as the choosing of a, or some, person(s) for some divine purpose or end. But is that end which God has in mind salvation? There are various things that are peculiar about simply assuming that to be the case: 1) the theme of personal or eternal salvation is not a major theme at all in the OT, early or late, and yet most of the early Biblical discussion of election comes precisely in the presentation of Israel as a ‘chosen’ people. Furthermore, when salvation is discussed in the OT it usually has a broader of more generic sense--- rescued from danger or harm or near death experiences, saved from death by illness, and the like. This is also often the sense the term ‘saved’ takes in the Synoptic Gospels. When Jesus says to the woman with the issue of blood “your faith has saved you” he means, “your faith has healed you”; 2) many of the persons said to be amongst the elect group Israel, are also said, in the end to be lost, left out of the promised land, judged by God, and the like. Whatever election meant in those kinds of contexts (e.g. the wilderness wandering generation), it certainly did not include the idea of some sort of guarantee of eternal salvation, or avoidance of divine judgment; 3) when one gets to the messianic thinking in the latter part of the OT and then in the NT, and one focuses that whole discourse on Christ, who is then viewed as the ultimate chosen one, anointed one, elect one of God, here again there is a disconnect with the Christian doctrine of salvation. Election does not imply salvation in the case of Christ, not least because Christ does not require salvation, indeed he is the savior of others. In addition to all of this, there is no disputing that in various places in the OT God is said to chose or elect one or another person for some specific historical purpose (e.g. a Cyrus is called ‘my anointed one’ in the Isaianic literature), but this has absolutely nothing to do with that person’s individual and eternal salvation. Indeed, in some cases it is obviously excluded.

All of these observations lead to a crucial point—If all the above is true, and most scholars would say it is, should we then conclude that the idea of election is somehow welded to the chassis of eternal salvation only in the NT such that in the NT election becomes a different, and suddenly much more soteriological concept? This would seem to present enormous problems for those wishing to do Biblical theology starting from the front and moving to the back of the canon, rather than vice versa. And what exactly should we make of the discussion in Rom. 9-11 where Paul does indeed talk about election and selection within the election, and in the same breath about the breaking off of various of the natural branches of the olive tree (the symbol of God’s people), at least temporarily, and the grafting in of some wild olive branches (read Gentiles) into that same tree. And furthermore, various of the natural branches who are broken off, are broken off precisely because they rejected the Christ, and are said to be grafted back in later, by grace through faith, when Jesus returns and they own their savior (see the climax of Rom. 11). This would seem to imply that salvation and election is not in the end all about God simply choosing some from amongst the many, but is also about an individual response of faith to whatever choices God has made, a response that was not pre-determined. Does election only imply salvation, if one freely responds to the call to accept Christ as the messiah at whatever point? Is election simply God’s initiative, reflecting his desire that all be saved, but an initiative that neither pre-determines nor predisposes a particular person to respond positively to the call and selection?

And what should be made of the fact that in the NT Christ is said to be the elect one, and only those who are ‘in Christ’ are said to be saved. And when the subject of salvation arises, it is always couched in the context of a clarification which says that salvation is by grace, but through faith (see e.g. Ephes. 1). What a text like Ephes. 1 suggests is that Christ, before the foundation of the world, was chosen by God to come to earth to be the savior of humankind, and to the extent we are in Christ, by grace and through faith, we are not only Christians, we are the elect, the chosen ones, being ‘in’ God’s only begotten Chosen One. God may well have names in the Lambs Book of Life, but the same document which says so (Revelation), also warns that someone’s name, whilst provisionally entered, could be erased from the Lamb’s Book of Life. In short, human history involves the interesting interplay between the divine and the human, and while God clearly has plans, and takes initiatives, throughout the Bible, the human response is seen as crucial to the outcome, and it is more than debatable whether it should be seen as pre-determined. Indeed, many Biblical texts suggest otherwise. No Biblical author disputes or denies the Sovereignty of God in all these matters nor is it denied for a moment that God is THE major actor on the stage of human history who can weave all things together for good ends, but the issue is--- How exactly is that sovereignty exercised in the divine/human encounter when it comes to the matter of personal and eternal salvation?

It is precisely these kinds of initial reflections that need to be undertaken before one can come up with a coherent Biblical doctrine of election that does justice to the sweep and variety and complexity of the canonical witness on this subject, and in the end, one must do justice to the whole witness, not just one’s personal favorite texts.

The principle of coherence and consistency in the end must be given its due if the Bible as a whole is seen as the Word of God, which means that when it becomes clear that if Text A means X, and there appears to be a Text B that means not X, either the interpretation of Text A or B or both is wrong, but they cannot both be true at the same time, in the same way, applied to the same concept or person. It cannot both be true that election in Christ is unto eternal salvation and necessarily entails eternal security and it also be true that apostasy is possible and one’s name could actually be erased from the Lamb’s book of life, after it was entered into that book in heaven in the first place.

Which theological approach better does justice to all the Biblical texts on this issue—the one which says God has pre-determined all things from before the foundations of the world (including predetermining some to be lost forever, to be vessels of wrath predestined for destruction) and that there are no genuine apostasy texts in the Bible, because an elect person can’t go there, or a theology that says that the Biblical concept of election does not involve a concept of eternal security or predetermined final salvation? I cast my vote for the latter option as making better sense of the whole sweep and scope of the Biblical witness.

The Best Bands and their Best Lps in Rock n' Roll Heaven

It was a hot steamy day, and I was in Woolworth's going through the now marked down 45's (for those of you who are technology challenged those were really small records that played at 45 revolutions per minute). I found the one I was looking for, which was, the Who's "I Can See for Miles". I have to be honest and say, I didn't like their really early stuff much, like 'Happy Jack'. But when I came home and played this 45 and listened to it in my huge ole headphones--- it was a whole new ballgame. Hard rock had showed up with a tremendous thud!!! It was released October 14, 1967 and the world has not been the same since. The Beatles were a pop band, and they were wonderful, but the Fab Four couldn't play anything like this! The Rolling Stones were good, and 'I Can't Get No Satisfaction released in 1965 complete with fuzz lead guitar, was heading in the right direction, but again, those boys could not play nearly as well as the Who. Long before Led Zeppelin was saturation bombing the airwaves and even before Jimi Hendrix lit his guitar on fire at Monterey and Woodstock, the Who were destroying guitars, amps and eardrums right left and center. The irony was, they could really play and didn't need the theatrics at all to sell an audience. John Entwhistle was simply amazing on bass, Keith Moon was the ultimate mad drummer whose machine gun speed was incredible, and then there was of course Daltrey and Townsend. I saw the Beatles in 1964 on the Ed Sullivan Show, and that definitely got the party started

It will be necessary to divide this list up into two parts-- best live bands, and best studio bands (and there is plenty of crossover of course).

I honestly do not understand all the hype about the Rolling Stones being the best rock n' roll band ever. I've seen them even in their prime, and they are not, if the issue is performance. They're not if we are ranking them in terms of skill in playing, actual on key singing, and the like. They are a lot of fun, and have a lot of wonderful tunes, but neither Ronny Wood nor Keith Richards (basically a rhythm guitarist with ambitions) can hold a candle to some of the bands who had major guitarists in them.

BEST LIVE ROCK BANDS (including more popish and folk ones) EVER (in no particular order, except the Who are first)

1) The Who (as I said before, go listen to the remastered Live at Leeds)
2) Cream-- (like the Hendrix Experience, these three were equally to about six others)
3) Led Zeppelin
4) The Allman Brothers
5) U2
6) Santana
7) Joe Cocker and the Grease Band
8) Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company
9) The Jimi Hendrix Experience (and it was)
10) ELP (simply unbelievable drumming and piano playing. Greg Lake had a hard time keeping up on guitar)
11) Derek and the Dominoes (Eric Clapton and Duane Allman--- enuff said)
12) the Moody Blues (of the more symphonic bands they were better live than Renaissance, Pink Floyd and other atmospheric favorites, though I am listing next...)
13) Pink Floyd
14) Crosby Stills and Nash-- best harmonies on the planet, with the occasional exception of the Beach Boys and the Beatles
15) James Taylor and Carole King together, doing each others songs--- magic
16) Joni Mitchell (when she had her later Tom Scott and Brian Blades led band)
17) Loggins and Messina (maybe the best live folk rock concert I ever saw)
18) The Eagles
19) the Rolling Stones (they were lots of fun)
20) Bob Dylan and the Band (a truly amazing concert run, and tandem)
21) the Eagles
22) the James Gang (Joe Walsh blowing away the neighbors eardrums)
23) The Grateful Dead (their albums do not capture the live effect of this band in their prime)
24) Collective Soul (really very good live)
25) Foreigner (with Lou Gramm, superb live)
26) The Little River Band (great tunes, sung wonderfully)
27) AC DC--- (Angus we hardly knew ye)
28) Uriah Heep-- (not together long enough. They were very good live)
29) Jefferson Airplane (saw them at Fillmore East-- they burned down the house, and Bill Graham couldn't stop them)
30) Aerosmith-- These boys can still bring it.
31) Van Halen

I could go on, but I will move on to the best bands in the studio.

1) the Beatles (they were good performers early on when they were doing the really simple early stuff up through Beatles 65 and a Hard Day's Night. But truth be told they owed much to George Martin in the studio, especially on things like Sgt. Peppers)
2) the Moody Blues (as a classical musician I know how hard it was for them to do some of this both in the studio and live, but they were better in the studio. They were one of the few bands who could play with a classical orchestra, and hold their own, and be commended by the orchestra)
3) the Who (Tommy, Quadrophenia and Who's Next, to mention but three)
4) Pink Floyd (Dark Side of the Moon-- one of the all time great lps. The Wall is down the list compared to Dark Side)
5) Michael Jackson's killer Thriller Band (with Eddie Van Halen)
6) Prince (Purple Rain)
7) Sly and the Family Stone (check out the greatest hits-- you'll be dancin')
8) Led Zeppelin ( I love the first second and 4th lps)
9) Bob Dylan (some amazing lps-- including Blonde on Blonde, Nashville Skyline (didn't see that one comin'; Time Out of Mind and so many others)
10) Elton John (the Your Song album and the Goodbye Yellow Brick Road lps were great)
11) Billy Joel (52nd Street, among others)
12) the Eagles (the first lp and Hotel California)
13) Fleetwood Mac (the second incarnation that produced the untitled lp and Rumors)
14) Genesis (post Peter Gabriel)
15) U2 (this band has kept getting better over the years in the studio, but Joshua Tree already showed what they could do)
16) Deep Purple (Smoke on the Water and Hush)
17) Traffic (check out John Barleycorn and Low Spark of High Heeled Boys)
17) Jim Hendrix (Are You Experienced and Axis Bold as Love)
18) Eric Clapton (too many to choose from, but the Layla lp is mighty great)
19) ELP (I love their first lp)
20 King Crimson (again the first lp with Greg Lake especially)
21) Joni Mitchell (Blue, Court and Spark etc.)
22) James Taylor (Sweet Baby James, Copperline)
23) Carole King (the all time best folk rock selling lp of the 60s-80s-- Tapestry)
24) the Eagles (their most recent Long Road CD shows just how good they still are in the studio)
25) Crosby Stills Nash and Young (listen to their first two CDs closely, especially Suite Judy Blue Eyes, and Carry On)


THE IF I WAS STRANDED ON AN ISLAND WITH THE CAST OF 'LOST' AND WERE ALLOWED TO TAKE ONLY TWENTY ROCK LPS WITH ME COLLECTION----

1) The Beatles, Hard Day's Night
2) the Beatles Sgt. Peppers
3) the Beatles Abbey Road
4) the Rolling Stones-- Import very Greatest Hits
5) Carole King- Tapestry
6) Michael Jackson-- Thriller
7) Pink Floyd-- Dark Side of the Moon
8) U2 Joshua Tree
9) Elton John-- Good bye Yellowbrick Road
10-12) Led Zeppelin-- I, II, IV
13-15)-- The Who-- Tommy, Live at Leeds, Who's Next
16) Eagles-- Hotel California
17) Crosby Stills and Nash
18) Moody Blues-- Question of Balance
19) King Crimson-- Court of the Crimson King
20) Traffic-- John Barleycorn is dead

(of course I would rather have taken a lot more to the desert island, including some more recent ones)

A CARPENTER'S CONFESSION

All of us must make a living
Even on a holiday week,
I had my family to think of,
Our finances looked pretty bleak.

But on that day I made a huge error
Working down Golgotha way
And here comes a Roman procession
Ruining my whole day.

For I am but a carpenter
Who works beside Zion’s door,
I couldn’t help being drafted
Though I had work galore.

It was me who fashioned ‘that’ cross
It was me who provided the nails
It was me who lifted the crossbeam
And saw those two bandits from jail.

It was me who heard his forgiveness
And the promise of paradise
It was me who witnessed the horror
And I can tell you it wasn’t nice.

The spear was thrust right up inside him,
The vinegar quenched no one’s thirst
His mother stood silently weeping
As if it had all been rehearsed.

Then the cry of desolation
God forsaken for goodness sakes,
When I hear it echo in my memory
My whole body gets the shakes,

And where were the famous ‘apostles’
Where was the Rock and the Thunders
The only ones there were the women,
And a ‘son’, it sure makes you wonder.

Where was the peace of Passover,
And Pilate’s clemency oath
Where was divine intervention
Before death stunted his growth?

There are things I’ll never decipher
Things which never make much sense,
For I am just a carpenter
Working hard for my pence

But from my view it seemed a disaster
That shouldn’t have happened at all
I hated the hand I had in it,
There’s more I shall not recall.

But when the disaster was over,
Right after he said it was done
The rain came pouring in torrents,
The skies blocked out the sun.

I heard that the great holy curtain
Was torn from the top to the ground
The earth shook like an earthquake,
The cross almost fell down.

No brothers stood by to bury him,
No family remained at all,
Just two old men from the Council,
Came quickly to cover death’s pall.

Later they called it Good Friday,
I can’t imagine why
Jesus was too full of life for this end
Too young and too good to die.

But now I remember one more thing,
Though at the time I sure thought it odd,
The soldier who stood right beneath him,
Proclaimed him the Son of God.

------------------

The Best Songwriters in Rock n' Roll Heaven

---------------
A few caveats about this category: 1) we are going to include folk-rockers, country-rockers, and pop-rockers in this list because we aren't doing another one. This is not a list of the best rock and roll bands (that's for a later post), but of the best writers of songs sung by various kinds of rockers; 2)priority should be given to those who have had sustained excellence over a long period of time. Writers of One hit wonders (e.g. Sugarloaf's 'Green Eyed Lady'; Rod Argent's 'Hold Your Head Up'; Jay Ferguson's 'Thunder Island', Shocking Blue's 'Venus') do not consistute great songwriters worthy of Rock n' Roll Heaven; 3) Music and lyrics matter, not just one or the other. In general the folkies do better and try harder on the lyrics, the rockers on the tunes, but this is not always the case. Bearing all this in mind, I propose the following starter kit in no particular order, to which you are welcome to add on---

THE ROCKERS (HARD OR POP)
1) Lennon and McCartney (of course)
2) Jagger and Richards (also of course)
3) Plant and Page (ditto that)
4) Hayward and Lodge (of the Moody Blues)
5) Townsend with occasional help (the Who)
6) Wilson and Wilson (the Beach Boys)
7) Carlos Santana
8) Steve Winwood
9) Billy Joel
10) Elton John
11) Bruce Springsteen (Give the Boss his due)
12) Eric Clapton
13) Bono, the Edge
14) Michael Jackson
15) Prince
16) Buckingham/Nicks/ McVie (Fleetwood Mac)
17) the Pink Floyd folks (after Syd)
18) Neil Diamond
19) Gaudio and company who wrote for the Four Seasons
20)Lamm/Kath/ Pankow. Cetera etc. (the Chicago folks)
21) Maurice White/Phillip Bailey etc (Earth, Wind and Fire folks)
22) Bon Jovi and co.
23) Greg Lake (of ELP)
24) All those Little River Band writers
25) Bryan Adams
26) Rod Stewart
27) Jimi Hendrix
28) Sting and co.
29) Simon le Bon etc. of Duran Duran
30) Lukather the Porcaros etc. of Toto

THE FOLK AND COUNTRY ROCKERS
1) Bob Dylan (did you think I would leave him out?)
2) Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young
3) Various of the Eagles (especially Frey, Henley and Walsh, but also Schmidt)
4) Joni Mitchell
5) Rickie Lee Jones
6) Roger McGuinn
7) Richie Furay
8) Kenny Loggins
9) Dan Fogelberg
10) Leonard Cohen
11) Carole King
12) James Taylor
13) Bruce Hornsby
14) Simon and Garfunkel

OF MORE RECENT VINTAGE
1) Dave Matthews
2) Michael Stipe of REM
3) The team at Counting Crows
4)Neil Finn of Crowded House (just fantastic and under appreciated)
5) The Coldplay dudes
6) The Oasis dudes
7) The Train dudes
8) John Mayer

Recent Honorable mentions-- Richard Page of Mr. Mister and several other bands;
Rob Thomas of Matchbox 20.

Guitar Heroes in Rock n' Roll Heaven

Let's start with the big three who ALL played in the Yardbirds in the 60s (though not all at the same time)

1) Eric Clapton
2) Jimmy Page and
3) Jeff Beck

To these we must of course add quite a few others who could 'bring it' on any given night.

1) Pete Townsend
2) Jimi Hendrix
3) Eddie Van Halen
4) George Harrison (well, sometimes)
5) Stephen Stills
6) Neil Young
7) Carlos Santana
8) Mr. Lukather (of Toto fame)
9) Joe Walsh
10) Steve Howe
11) Duane Allman (and his side kick Dickey Betts)

There are others who deserve honorable mention: 1)Leslie West; 2)The various lead guitarist of bands like AC DC, Queen, Journey, Collective Soul, Johnny Winter, Jefferson Airplane (not the Starship version), maybe Z.Z. Top, and though he was mainly a blues guitarist-- Stevie Ray Vaughn.

Of the much more recent generation of guitarists Eric Johnson and Mr. Vai come to mind who could both 'shred' on demand.

As for the best albums featuring a lead guitarist, I would start with the best live (and remastered) album ever, bar none--- The Who-- Live at Leeds.

One listen to the amazing versions of Magic Bus and several of the others on this album and it is over. You ask yourself-- Who were the other five guys also playing guitar in that band?

There are some performances by Jimi Hendrix that are right up there as well, but sadly no definitive live lp. The live performance of Carlos Santana at and after Woodstock performing material from the first lp and Abraxas ranks up there, as do some of the performances of Eddie Van Halen and Steve Howe.

As a guitarist, I have to say that speed is not everything. There were often complaints that Clapton could not play as fast as Townsend or Page or Hendrix, and they were justified. 'Slow Hand' was not slow, but he was slower than some, but his musicianship and facility could not be questioned.

If you had a 'shred off' between someone like Van Halen and Mr. Vai, it appears clear to me that Mr. Vai would win, but Van Halen is a better guitarist over all, and he is very fast indeed.

Hands down, the best tandem that played in the same band together over a considerable period of time were Allman and Betts when they played songs like Whipping Post at Filmore East.

But then there is the issue of style and creativity. Walter Becker of Steeley Dan was a very influential jazz-influenced guitarist and when teamed up with Larry Carlton those boys could hum. One has to also mention the MIT grad guitarist of Boston as well who was very creative and technologically well ahead of his time and one could add a classy Fender Stratocaster player like Jimmy Messina as well, though he falls into the folk and country rock slot.

Some bands had a BIG guitar sound, without actually having world class lead guitarists. I'm talking about bands like Poison, Guns and Roses, Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, Nickelback, and I could go on, but the subject of this post is LEAD GUITARISTS.

I once went to an all star concert fronted by Eric Clapton called Eric and Friends. Two of the friends turned out to be Duane Allman (who played with him on Layla), and Pete Townsend--- YIKES!!! There were not enough amps in the world for that trio, and I went home deaf and happy :)


Who would you like to add?

Britain is Repossessing America--- I'm John Cleese, and I approved this Message

-------------
Britain is Repossessing the U.S.A. ----A Message from John Cleese

To the citizens of the United States of America:

"In light of your failure to nominate competent candidates for President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately."

"Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths, and territories (except Kansas ,which she does not fancy)."

"Your new prime minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed."

"To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. "You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary, then look up aluminium, and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.

2. "The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'favour' and 'neighbour.' Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters, and the suffix -ize will be replaced by the suffix -ise. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. (look up 'vocabulary').

3. "Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. There is no such thing as U.S. English. We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of -ize. You will relearn your original national anthem, 'God Save The Queen'.

4. "July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday."

5. "You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns,lawyers, or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun.

6. "Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

7. "All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.

8. "All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Both roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

9. "The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling gasoline)-roughly $6/US gallon. Get used to it.

10. "You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called crisps. Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with vinegar.

11. "The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as beer, and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as Lager. South African beer is also acceptable as they are pound for pound the greatest sporting Nation on earth and it can only be due to the beer. They are also part of British Commonwealth - see what it did for them.

12. "Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors to play English characters. Watching Andie McDowell attempt English dialogue in Four Weddings and a Funeral was an experience akin to having one's ears removed with a cheese grater.

13. "You will cease playing American football. There is only one kind of proper football; you call it soccer. Those of you brave enough will,in time, be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American football, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a bunch of nancies). Don't try Rugby - the South Africans and Kiwis will thrash you, like they regularly thrash us.

14. "Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the World Series for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. You will learn cricket, and we will let you face the South Africans first to take the sting out of their deliveries.

15. "You must tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us mad.

16. "An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due (backdated to 1776).

17. "Daily Tea Time begins promptly at 4 pm with proper cups, never mugs, with high quality biscuits (cookies) and cakes; strawberries in season."

"God save the Queen."

Paul on Money, Ministry, and Work

N.B. The following is an excerpt from a book I am working on, on Money in the NT. Enjoy.....but take off your bling while reading it :)
----------------------------


CHAPTER SEVEN: PAUL—ON WORK, REMUNERATION, AND THE LOVE OF MONEY

“The rule is not to talk about money with people who have much more or much less than you.”--- Katherine Whitehorn

There is, especially in some forms of low church Protestantism, a notion that Paul advocated a principle of ministers earning their own living and engaging in raising their own support for ministry. Sometimes this approach is even called ‘tent-making ministry’, based on what Paul says, largely in 1 Corinthians and Acts 20 about supporting himself by making or mending tents, and perhaps other leather goods. Unfortunately, this approach misunderstands almost everything Paul says on the subject of a ‘workman being worthy of his hire’, and this is because of the failure to interpret Paul’s letters in the light of the actual social world and social practices Paul had to deal with. In fact, as we shall see, Paul is quite happy to receive support, so long as it does not involve the entangling alliances of patronage, and so in this, as in so many other things, the problematic situation in Corinth, and Paul’s response to it, should not be taken as indicative of some general principle in regard to minister’s raising their own support. Indeed, 1 Corinthians itself suggests that the congregation had an obligation to give and provide support, but Paul had the freedom to choose to reject that support, and support himself, if he desired to do so.

A. BEARABLE BURDENS AND THE BURDEN OF PROOF

Perhaps the best place to begin a discussion of Paul’s view of money, possessions and remuneration is with what is probably his earliest letter--- Galatians. After promising the Jerusalem Church on one of his visits some time in the 40s A.D. that he would ‘remember the poor’, Paul had embarked on a series of strenuous missionary journeys to plant churches in various places in what we would call Cyprus and Turkey. The letter to Galatians, probably written in A.D. 49 shortly before the Jerusalem Council recorded in Acts 15, discusses a variety of matters of praxis, and our focus must be on Galatians 6.1-10. As it turns out, this material reveals a great deal about Paul’s views on the subjects we are concerned with, and we must attend to this text in some detail, which provides us with the last salvo, the final rhetorical argument in this discourse.

There is a reasonably clear structure to Paul's final argument and it falls into two subdivisions-- 6.1-5 and 6.6-10, the former portion focuses mainly on the Law of Christ, the latter portion on the aphorism about sowing and reaping. There seems to be in this section an alternating between words about corporate responsibilities to one another, and words concerning individual accountability as follows:
6.1a-- corporate responsibility to correct a sinning Christian
6.1b-- individual accountability-- `look to yourself' (you singular)
6.2 -- corporate responsibility to bear the burdens of one another
6.3-5-- individual accountability-- test your own works, bear your own load
6.6-- corporate responsibility to support those who teach
6.7-8-- individual accountability-- how one sows will be how one reaps
6.9-10-- corporate responsibility-- everyone should do good to all, especially to Christians.

Throughout this argument Paul is seeking to give some specificity to his exhortations in the previous argument, making clearer what the Christian life should look like.

The question that affects how we interpret all of this advice is-- How specific is this advice really? Is Paul simply collecting and arranging some general maxims here that he sees as reasonably apt for his convert=s situation, or is this advice more pointed? Without neglecting the spiritual dimension of what is said here, I would suggest that this argument has a social dimension usually overlooked by modern commentators, but it was not always thus. Chrysostom in commenting on this very material not only sees 6.6 as an explicit reference to the financial support of Christian teachers, but sees vss. 7-10 as an expansion of the same idea of giving material aid to others, including especially the household of faith.

In a detailed study, J. G. Strelan has argued at length that the primary subject of discussion in this whole passage is matters financial. In support of this conclusion he argues that if one looks to the Greek papyri and other Greek resources the following comes to light: 1) Prolambanein in 6.1 can refer to money received previously or in advance or money given as a retainer, and paraptwma can refer to an error in the amount of payments; 2) In 6.2 baros is used at least half the time in Paul=s letters to refer to financial burdens, bastazein can mean carry, as in assume someone else=s indebtedness, and anaplhroun often in the papyri means to pay in full, fulfill a contract, make up a debt; 3) in 6.4 dokimazein refers regularly to the testing of the genuineness of metals and coins (cf. Prov. 8.10; 17.3) while ergon is ofen used of trade or commerce (cf. Rev. 18.17); 4) in 6.5 fortion regularly refers to freight, cargo, wares, merchandise; 5) in 6.6 koinwnein can of course refer to sharing a financial burden or material resources in common (cf. Acts 2.42ff; 4.32) while logos can refer to an account or account of expenses (cf. Phil. 4.14-15); 6) in 6.7-8 we have the language of sowing and reaping, and the only other places in Paul that we have this language, the context indicates that money matters are at issue (cf. 1 Cor. 9.10-11; 2 Cor. 9.6); 7) in 6.9-10 the term kairos can refer to the time when a payment is due; 8) to this we may add the argument of J. Bligh that the ‘household of faith= in 6.10 refers to the Jerusalem Christians, to which L W. Hurtado has added the suggestion that 6.10 is about the collection for the Jerusalem church.

This last suggestion can perhaps build on Gal. 2.10 and it would seem strange that Paul simply drops the matter with the passing reference in 2.10. Another example of the fruitfulness of Strelan=s argument can be seen when one pays attention to the fact that 6.3 is connected to 6.2 by means of a gar (for). Unless the term is purely superfluous, then one must posit some connection between ‘bear one another=s burdens' and ‘if anyone thinks he is something...'. Strelan plausibly suggests that Paul has in mind a person who balks at the thought of having to share a common financial burden with persons of lower social status, because of that person=s sense of self importance. "No matter how important a man is or thinks he is, he is not relieved of the obligation to take a responsible share of the work in and for the Lord." Or again there can be seen to be a connection between 6.5 and 6.6, with the latter being a qualification of the former. Christians should carry their own weight financially, but when someone gives a great deal of their own time to the task of teaching fellow Christians, there is an obligation to support such a person. This builds on the notion that Paul has in mind a saying of Jesus in 6.6 (cf. below).

Not all of this evidence is of equal weight, but taken as a whole the case is impressive. One must however bear in mind that Paul is quite capable of using ‘material' language in transferred and spiritual senses, for instance when he uses the various terms and ideas associated with slavery to speak of salvation and of service in the Christian community. Yet Strelan's explanation makes good sense of various aspects of the text, and we shall in part be following his suggestions. This means, that far from offering merely general maxims here, Paul in his concluding argument provides us with some very specific examples of what it means to bear burdens and follow the Law of Christ.

6.1 begins the discussion of this subsection with a conditional statement. The protasis is a third class future more probable condition (ean with a future subjunctive verb), indication a condition that is deemed likely to happen. The apodosis gives clear directions of what to do if and when such a thing happens, but there is an added statement, by way of concession, to guide how the response should be carried out. The verb suggests an unanticipated interruption of an action in progress, not a dealing with an action already completed. Paul is talking about a violation of an existing law of some sort.

Now it is most unlikely that Paul would be offering up hypothetical remarks about the Galatians violating in the future a law code that he has been urging them not to submit to, especially not in this kind of conditional statement that assumes they will indeed be under this law and likely to violate it. Rhetorically that would be to concede the case Paul has been arguing against throughout the letter which is no way to make one=s concluding arguments if one wishes to persuade. We must be dealing here with some sort of law that Paul does see his converts as already under, and in the future, in some danger of violating. There are, it would appear, only two options. Paul is speaking of a transgression against some secular law code or against a code he will mention in this very context-- namely the Law of Christ. Strongly in favor of this last suggestion are the parallels in substance between Gal. 6.1 and the teaching of Jesus found in Mt. 18.15 ‘If your brother sins [against you], go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the brother listens to you, you have regained that one.'

In both Mt.18.15 and in Gal. 6.1 then, we hear about what to do when a follower of Christ is found to be sinning. In both texts the concern is with restoration of the believer, not disciplinary treatment of him or her. What we are going to discover is that Paul in his final argument will begin each division of his argument (vss. 1 and 6) with his own restatement of two of the ‘words' of Jesus. This, in part, must be considered part of what Paul means by the Law of Christ.

There has been considerable debate about what Paul means by ‘you, the spiritual ones'.

Is Paul referring to a particular group of Christians in Galatia? This is unlikely on at least two counts. Firstly, whenever we have had the address ‘you= previously in this letter it has always referred to all Paul=s Gentile converts in Galatia who are the recipients of this letter. Secondly, Paul in this letter has repeatedly spoken of all Christians as having the Spirit (3.2-5, 14; 4.6, 29; 5.5, 16-18, 22-23,25; 6.8) and has emphasized that the Galatians received the Spirit when they were converted, indeed this is what distinguished them or set them apart as and to be Christians (cf. 3.1-5). There may be however a contrast between the ‘transgressor= and the `spiritual ones=, namely all those in the Galatian assemblies not involved in this sinful matter. Paul is saying `though you must watch out, lest any one of you (singular) be tempted.= Paul is reminding the correctors that they too are morally vulnerable and so they must take care lest they get caught up in the same transgression. Gentiles correcting Gentiles in regard to sins that they were both vulnerable to in view of their shared pagan past left no room for any attitude of moral superiority on the part of the correctors.

6.2 should probably not be seen as connected to 6.1 as there are no connecting particles here. Notice that the word ‘one another' is in the emphatic position, stressing the placing of others first. The words ta barē refer to some sort of burden or load. It was not uncommon for it to be a reference to a financial burden (see Sir. 13.2, cf. Neh. 5.18). About half the time in the Pauline corpus the term and its cognates refers to some financial burden (cf. e.g. 1 Thess. 2.5-9; 2 Thess. 3.8; 2 Cor. 12.16), and this is quite possible here as well. It will be remembered that there is the exhortation in the Jesus tradition to ‘give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you= (Mt. 5.42), to which one may add the probable allusions to the Jesus tradition in James 2.15-16. We know for a fact Paul was concerned about the burdens of the poor Christians, as Gal. 2.10 shows. It thus possible that Strelan is right about this verse and also its connection with 6.3. On the other hand, it appears to me a stronger case can be made that Paul has a broader reference in mind here, which would include helping fellow Christians financially (see on vs. 6 below), but is not limited to that sort of aid in this verse.

A strong case has been made by R.B. Hays that Paul has in mind here the example of Christ as the ultimate burden bearer. Even if one limits oneself to what Paul says in Galatians about Christ we hear of ‘Christ who gave himself for our sins, so he might deliver us out of this present evil age' (1.3-4), or in 2.20 about ‘the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me', or in 3.13-14 about Christ who ‘redeemed us out of the curse of the Law by becoming a curse for us' probably alluding to the notion of burden bearing scapegoat. To this we may add the phrase ‘the faithfulness of Jesus Christ' a shorthand way of speaking of his obedience even unto death on the cross in conformity with God's plan that he bear the burden of the punishment for human sin.

Furthermore, account must be taken to the language in Galatians about both Paul and other Christians bearing the image of Christ, even the image of his passion. APaul understands his own life as a recapitulation of the life-pattern shown forth in Christ. The most important text here, of course, is Gal. 2.19b-20: 'I have been crucified with Christ. No longer do I live but Christ lives in me.' In other words, this pattern of burden bearing and self-giving is seen as the essence of what Christ was about and so rightly at the heart of what Paul means when he speaks of the Law (or main principle) of Christ. This exemplary pattern is fleshed out from time to time with the judicious use by Paul of the Jesus tradition as is the case in this very passage. In other words by `the Law of Christ', Paul does not mean Christ=s interpretation of the still binding Mosaic Law, nor even the Torah of the Messiah in some general sense not based in the actual experience of Jesus, including his death on the cross. The apostle who is capable of speaking of two covenants in Galatians, and of a new covenant in 2 Cor. 3 is also perfectly capable of speaking of two different Laws. Christians live in the age of fulfillment of prophecies and of covenants, and in general of all God's plans for humankind.

Vs. 3 may not begin a new subject, but rather may be a further development of what has just been said. Paul is here chastising those who think they are something, but in fact are nothing. This could be a chastisement of those who think they are too good or important for burden bearing. This stands in stark contrast to the pattern of Christ who while he was certainly something and somebody special in Paul=s view, emptied himself and made himself as nothing, taking on the form of the servant (Phil. 2). In other words, Paul is probably here making a not too veiled reference to those who are not following the pattern of Christ in the way they live and behave, those who are basing their estimate of self on the basis of false criteria. The word frenapata is a hapax legomena, not only in the Pauline corpus but in all the NT, nor does it appear in the LXX or any other Jewish writing. It refers to deception, in this case self-deception, and presumably the conceit involved leads a person to be unwilling to bear other people=s burdens, or perhaps being unwilling to shoulder the burden of the shame of the cross (cf. 6.14-15).

It is important to keep in mind both how natural boasting and self- promotion was in an ancient honor and shame culture, and at the same time how counter-intuitive it was to suggest that some one of higher status should actually step down and become a servant of those less well off and more burdened. The pattern of Christ and the message of the cross went against many of the major social assumptions of Greco-Roman culture. Few pagans were eager to take on the jobs of a slave, which of course included various forms of burden bearing.

Vs. 4 shows that Paul indeed operates within a world that had conventions about when and what sort of boasting or self praise was appropriate and what sort was inappropriate. Notice that Paul does not say that no boasting is appropriate, but that one may consider one=s own work a cause for pride, not that of a neighbor's. Notice that Paul here is not talking about the eschatological testing of one's works, but rather of critical self-appraisal.

The question then becomes in vs. 5-- What is Paul referring to when he says that each person must carry their own loads? Does this not contradict what he has just said in vs.2? Is there some reason why Paul uses a different word for ‘burden' here than in vs. 2? First of all, it is not likely Paul would flatly contradict himself in the span of three or four verses. It is even possible to conclude that fortion is a synonym for the word for burden in vs. 2 and still find an explanation for the apparent contradiction between these two verses. One could argue that here Paul is saying that a person who can be self-supporting should not expect others to take care of them, but at the same time if one is able to help bear someone else=s burden who really needs the help, this one should do. In other words the two verses are about the difference between an egocentric imposition on other people=s good will (vs. 5), and the Christian duty, self-sacrificial in character, for Christians to help each other with life=s burdens (vs. 2).

It is possible however that Paul intends a slightly different nuance to `burden' here than in 6.2. The term here seems to have been used less frequently in a metaphorical or non-material sense. For instance, in Xenephon Mem. 3.13.6 the word fortion refers to a soldier=s pack, and it is commonly used in this sense. It is most unlikely that Paul is promoting the Greek philosophical notion of self-sufficiency here in vs. 5. Paul doesn't believe in that idea, he believes in the sufficiency of depending on God. Nearer to the mark about this verse is J.D. G. Dunn when he says that the 'mature spiritual community... is the one which is able to distinguish those loads which individuals must bear for themselves, and those burdens where help is needed.'

If we are meant to see a connection between vss. 5 and 6, with the latter qualifying the former, then another view is possible. I suggest the following hypothesis: 1) the relationship between the word work (ergon) and ‘burden= in vss. 4-5 must be considered. Paul is talking about a persons= own work or gainful employment and how one assesses it; 2) the burden in vs. 5 is indeed a financial one-- each person should carry their own financial weight if at all possible and not be an unnecessary burden on another=s patronage or charity; 3) the exception to this rule is the one offered in vs. 6 which alludes to the teaching of Jesus when he says ‘a worker is worthy of his hire', a saying which Paul draws on in several places to affirm that he, and other evangelists and missionaries, had the right to financial support from the congregations they were or had been serving. These proclaimers could refuse such aid if they wished, but they had a right to it, so they could be freed up to concentrate on sharing the Gospel; 4) ‘all good things' in vs. 6 refers to material support for the teacher given by their disciples 5) the agitators and whoever followed their lead in and teaching about circumcision however were mocking God, sowing unto the flesh and were going to reap the whirlwind in due course; 6) the warning is given to the Galatians lest they follow in the footsteps of the agitators; 7) the Galatians should not weary of doing good of the sort specified in vss. 1-2 and 6 as there will in due course be reward for such and 8) this meritorious doing should concentrate on the household of God, but should also include within its scope everyone. If I am right about the above there is more of a flow of thought to the argument, especially its second part, than is usually thought. We must consider some more of the details of the second half of the argument however at this point.

The second half of the argument, which is connected to the first half by de making vs. 6 a qualification of vs. 5, focuses primarily on matters financial. As with the first half of the argument, Paul will begin with his own paraphrasing of a teaching of Jesus, now applied to his Galatian converts' situation. He says ‘but the one being taught the word should share in common with the one teaching in all good things'. This exhortation is based on the dominical saying found in Lk. 10.7 and expounded on by Paul at some length in 1 Cor. 9.3-14. In that latter text we also have the discussion about being scrutinized or examined by others (9.3), about the right to be supported as teachers of the word (9.6,13-14), and about teachers sowing spiritual good and reaping material benefits (9.11). These parallels must be allowed to have their full weight, and they make it likely that throughout vss. 6-10, Paul is talking about pertinent financial (and spiritual) matters. It is however difficult to know whether Paul here is making a veiled reference to himself, and the Galatians= obligation to support him. This is certainly a topic which comes up regularly in Paul=s letters (cf. 2 Cor. 11.7-11; 1 Thess. 2.9; 2 Thess. 3.7-10; Rom. 15.24; Phil. 1.5, 4.15). Then too, the phrase ‘the good things' comes up elsewhere in the NT with reference to material support or aid or food (cf. Lk. 1.53; 12.18-19).

Is the singular ‘the one teaching' to be taken literally? If so, then a reference to Paul may be meant. The alternative however, and perhaps more likely, is to suggest that Paul has in mind some local Christian teacher or teachers in Galatia that are deemed worthy of the Galatians' support. The reference to ‘good things' here may well prepare us for the concluding exhortation in vs. 10, in which case ‘the good' there is not some vague reference, but alludes back to the `all good things' here, which would include material and financial aid.

Paul quotes, in vs. 7b, what was likely a proverbial saying found in both Greek and Jewish literature (cf. Aristotle, Rhet. 3.3.4; Plato Phaedrus 260D; Job 4.8; Prov. 22.8; Jer. 12.13; Sir. 7.3; Test. Levi 13.6), in order to provide backing or basis for the warning just given. For our purposes what is important to stress is that the only other two places Paul draws on this metaphor, in 1 Cor. 9.10-11 and in 2 Cor. 9.6 financial matters are at issue. This sort of use probably goes back to the discussion in Prov. 22.7-9: ‘The rich man lords it over the poor, the borrower is the lender's slave. He who sows injustice reaps disaster and the rod of anger falls on himself.' Notice too that the exhortation not to grow weary in doing good also shows up in 2 Thess. 3.13 at the end of an exhortation about earning one's own living and not being idle.

If we put all this together the meaning of vss. 7-8 becomes clearer.

Vs. 7b gives us a statement about anyone, including Christians, which Paul then applies in vs. 8 using his flesh- Spirit antithesis. I would suggest that the sowing unto the Spirit which Paul has in mind is the supporting of proper teachers, materially and otherwise. Vss. 6-8 must be read together. In vs. 8 then Paul has contrasted an essentially self-directed act, getting oneself circumcised, with concern for and actions on behalf of others. The former is of the flesh, the latter is of the Spirit. This comports with the overall theme of this section stressing other regarding actions and warning against selfish ones. It also comports with the same sort of discussion of the relationship of present deeds and future destiny in Rom. 2 as we have seen above.

Vs. 9 warns against weariness in doing good, and promises that at the appropriate time in the future a harvest will be reaped by these doers, if they do not give up. Since this verse is connected to vs. 8 by a de we should probably see a qualification here of the preceding remark. This verse like the last suggests the pay off is in the future. The final adverbial participle sets a condition on reaping. It will not happen for individuals, even for Christian individuals, automatically. They must not grow weary of well doing and also they must not give up. Here as elsewhere Paul conjures with the possibility that those currently in Christ might commit apostasy or give up the faith, and so miss out on eternal life and the rest of the eschatological benefits (see 5.3-4). Paul is not saying a person is saved by good works, but he is saying that where there is time and opportunity for doing such things, one will not be saved without them. They are not optional extras in the Christian life.

In vs. 10 Paul will conclude his argument by making a little clearer what he means by sowing unto the Spirit, a little clearer what vs. 9 was meant to imply. ‘Therefore then', here as elsewhere in Paul signals the conclusion and the or a main point of an argument (cf. Rom. 5.18; 7.3;,25; 8.12; 9.16, 18; 14.12, 19; Ephes. 2.19; 1 Thess. 5.6; 2 Thess. 2.15). Its presence here makes quite clear that it is inadequate to see this section as simply individual maxims with little or no connection to one another or with the larger argument of the letter. The qualifier for what follows is ‘as time allows' or `as we have time (and opportunity)'. Paul says that we Christians (both the author and the audience here as in vs. 9) should `work the good to all'. Paul has absolutely nothing against working, or good works, his earlier critique had to do with very specific sort of works-- the works of the Law. Indeed, Paul throughout this whole argument in vss. 1-10 has argued for the necessity of good works by his converts, as well as the necessity of avoiding bad ones. Doing good to all would surely at the very least include charitable works toward the needy and poor. The phrase ‘the good= is not a philosophical term here but must be seen in light of the reference to all good things in vs. 6 and the good in vs. 9. Paul qualifies his final positive exhortation by urging that especial efforts should be made on behalf of the household of faith. Paul has ended with some practical exhortations about what the Galatians ought and ought not to be doing. Far from being vague and purely general maxims, the Galatians are told specifically they are to restore erring Christians, bear one another's burdens, support their teachers, and indeed do good to all, especially to Christians. In all of this they are following the pattern of life and teaching of Jesus, which Paul calls the Law of Christ.

The principles we find here enunciated already in Paul’s earliest letter, will play out in more detail in his subsequently letters. These principles include: 1) Christians should provide for themselves and carry their own financial burdens, and those who will not work should not be expecting to eat, freeloading on the congregation or the congregational meals. This issue is addressed in some detail in 1 Thess. 4.11 (‘mind your own business, work with your own hands…so that you will not be dependent on anybody”) and 1 Thess. 5.14 (“warn the idle”), and 2 Thess. 3.10 (“let those who will not work, not eat”); 2) when there is a need, then the congregational members are expected to step in and bear one another’s burdens, and this is seen as a very specific fulfillment of a commandment of Christ to his disciples. 3) teachers are worthy of financial support, and congregations should expect to support them, though of course the teacher can refuse such support, for a variety of reasons. This leads us quite naturally into discussing what Paul says about the remuneration of ministers in 2 Thess. 3 and 1 Cor. 9

B. REMUNERATION OF MINISTERS—A WORKING HYPOTHESIS

One of the real problems in reading Paul’s letters is anachronism. The assumption is that conditions today are identical to those in Paul’s day so that we do not need to understand the social differences between then and now to understand and then apply the words of Paul. This sort of thinking, when it comes to the issue of money and remuneration of ministers, is particularly flawed because it fails to take into account the ancient systems of patrons and clients, and the problems that accrued when one got enmeshed in the web of duties to a patron. Paul, above all things, needed to remain free wherever he went, to do ministry on his own terms without entangling alliances. If support could be garnered and given without strings attached as acts of pure generosity and without the assumption of reciprocity, well and good. If it could not, Paul then would fend for himself. Paul is carefully navigating around the encumbrances of a reciprocity and patronage culture whilst trying to offer the Gospel of God’s free grace. It was a tricky business, and there were places where people did not understand why Paul did and said what he did and said, when it comes to money and remuneration. Finally, there is the further difficulty of the use of technical language by Paul. Phrases like “send me on my way” or “a relationship of giving and receiving” had quite specific financial overtones (e.g. the former referred to providing traveling funds and supplies, the latter to a parity relationship as opposed to a patronage one). Bearing these things in mind, let us consider what we find in 2 Thess. 3.6-10 and 1 Cor. 9.1-18.

I have argued at length that there were both socially elite and non-elite Christians in Thessalonike, and Paul is not at all happy that some of the latter who have been idle, expecting to be someone’s client so they would not have to do any sort of strenuous work, whether being the client of a Christian or non-Christian patron is not clear. We are not talking here about poor people who are beggars, we are talking about people whom patrons would see as worthy clients, people with prospects and abilities but without patrician or an elite heritage. Paul is concerned that such behavior on the part of Christians is a terrible witness to the world, but by the same token he is not happy with the ‘business as usual’ approach of patrons, including Christian patrons, who expect to enlist their fellow Christians in entangling alliances. In some cases there were Christians who were clients of non-Christian patrons who might well expect them to undertake activities deleterious to their spiritual well being (e.g. attending idols feasts, or offering sacrifices to the Emperor etc.). The reason Paul might well have felt some urgency about this when he wrote 2 Thessalonians was because he was apparently in Corinth and was seeing first hand the morally compromising effects of attending idol feasts on his converts there (1 Cor. 8-10). It was hard to resocialize pagans who had become Christians because of their previous alliances with pagan religion and pagan friends which continued to enmesh them in pagan religious practices.

From stem to stern, 2 Thess. 3.6-12 is about work, and indeed the need of the Thessalonians to follow Paul’s example of working. What had once been a suspicion of Paul’s about the idle in Thessalonike when he wrote 1 Thessalonians had become a confirmed fact by the time he wrote 2 Thessalonians. The disorderly and idle conduct of some had become apparent. These folks were not just being idle, they were ‘out of order’ because they were failing to follow Paul’s example and do the positive things to serve the community that they ought to be doing. Paul makes clear that his personal example had already been part of the received tradition of this church, for as 1 Thess. 2.9 made clear, when Paul first came to Thessalonike he worked hard with his hands both day and night. As a missionary strategy this was particularly smart in Thessalonike and in Corinth because in both these locales there would be a periodic need for tents, because both cities held Olympic style games (in Corinth they were bi-annual).

Paul states here in vs. 9, just as clearly as he does in 1 Corinthians, that he had a right or authority to ask to be supported as a teacher and apostle (cf. below on 1 Cor. 9.3-18, especially vs. 15), but he waived that right so as not to get caught up in patronage relationships, like various of the idle were doing or attempting to do in Thessalonike. The basic principle Paul lived by was the word of Jesus “the laborer deserves his food” or put another way “the workman is worthy of his hire”, but he knew that he had the right to receive such support, especially if it came with the assumptions of patronage. Paul is probably quoting a traditional saying here about “let those who will not work, not eat’ (cf. Gen. 3.9; Gen. Rabbah 2.2 on gen. 1.2; Prov. 10.4). He is addressing those who refuse to work. Vs. 11 involves a clever pun--- the idle are to be busy, not busybodies, being sychophants sponging off others when they are perfectly capable of working. Vs. 12 says these folks must be quiet, settle down, and earn their own food to eat. This reinforces what was said about living quietly, minding one’s own business, and working with one’s own hands. It is telling and interesting that Paul is not as hard here on the idle as he is on the Corinthians who are so clearly misbehaving. Here shunning the idle is advised, there, Paul will even talk of excommunication. We must turn to the Corinthian material now.

1 Cor. 9 is not to be seen as a defense of Paul’s apostolic office, but rather a clear statement that Paul has the right to be supported by his converts. This is perfectly clear from 1 Cor. 9.4ff—the rhetorical question “don’t we have the right to food and drink?” has only one possible answer--- “of course we do.” Paul then uses a series of analogies with soldiers who have a right to expect pay, a vintner who has a right to expect to eat some of his grapes, a goatherd who has a right to expect to drink some of the goat’s milk, and then as a clincher he quotes the example about a ox having a right to eat some of the grain that it threshes, based on Deut. 25.4. This is a from the lesser to the greater kind of argument, whereby Paul is in effect saying if even these sorts of workers have a right to expect remuneration or payback of some sort for their work, how much more a minister of the Gospel. In vs. 12 however there is a turn in the argument.

After having established clearly that Paul has a right to be remunerated, he then turns around and stresses he has a right to refuse pay, refuse support of various sorts. The reason he does not do so in Corinth is said to be “avoidance of hindering the Gospel”. What is he talking about? He is referring to the culture of paid teachers/philosophers/rhetoricians who accepted patronage or pay for their proclamations or teaching, and thereby were viewed as ‘compromised’ or ‘bought and paid for’ and likely to say anything to please the patron or paying audience. Corinth, it must be remembered was a Roman colony where Roman patronage relationships were numerous as it was a boomtown in the A.D. 50s. Yet having said what he does in vs. 12, he turns around once more and then stresses again that he, like a priest at the altar, or even a temple servant in the temple, had a right to share in what was offered on the altar. 1 Cor. 9.14 states emphatically “the Lord has commanded that those who preach the Gospel should get their living from the Gospel.” What then could possibly have caused Paul not to accept remuneration in Corinth, is the proper question to ask. Not, “Does Paul think ministers have a right to be paid?’ In other words, he must provide a rationale for not accepting remuneration, so much is it a matter of course that Jesus’ dictum should be followed. But if Paul preaches and gets paid, then it is a matter of services rendered and there is nothing to brag about and no reward for work which is compulsory. Paul however wants to have the honor of offering the Gospel freely so he will have something to boast about. Is this just Pauline hubris in over-drive? Well, no, there is more to it than that. And the ‘more’ can be seen in the word hinder. Preaching for pay would have hindered the Gospel of God’s free grace in Corinth, and that is no good at all. Paul knew perfectly well that he would have been seen as just another hired gun caught up in the reciprocity cycle, teaching or discoursing for pay whose words whilst interesting, could be seen as rhetorical hyperbole or even entertainment at best. So in Corinth, he eschewed his rights to be remunerated for a specific reason. Like many another group of young Gentile converts, the Corinthians had not yet grasped the concept of giving with no thought of return, or free grace, or true self-sacrifice.

What then should be made of the clear evidence that Paul accepted money and support from congregations which he was not presently visiting? This is clear from both 2 Cor. 11.8-9 and also from Phil. 4.14-16. Firstly, though Paul had accepted regular support from the Philippians, there is no evidence this was the product of a patron-client relationship, like that which was on offer in Corinth, and which Paul refused. Rather Paul characterizes his relationship with the Philippians as a relationship of ‘giving and receiving’, that is a parity relationship (cf. Acts 16.15 to Phil. 4). Paul could receive support at a distance because there was no danger of anyone taking that as a patronage relationship. Temporary hospitality was fine, and Paul did rely on that in various cities (see e.g. Rom. 16 which indicates that Phoebe in Cenchreae had provided such support for Paul, and see Lydia in Philippi in Acts 16).

To fully understand the dynamics here, one must understand as well that Jews in general did not have the same disdain high status Gentiles did when it came to manual labor. Paul saw no shame in being a leatherworker, though various of his higher status converts may have done so. But what is interesting about the discussion in 1 Cor. 9 is that Paul couches his discussion in the terms a high status person would. He is talking about stepping down the social ladder, consenting to be considered more vile by working with his hands and so on. This is the language of a high status person who feels he has the freedom to forego his rights as such a person, indeed forego some of his rights as a well educated Roman citizen. This is exactly what a verse like 1 Cor. 9.9 suggests—Paul submitted to being a slave to all, just as his master had done, thereby deconstructing the social hierarchies in play in the contexts in which he operated. This had to anger or mystify various of his high status converts in Corinth, folks like Erastus the city treasurer mentioned in Rom. 16.

What should we conclude from all this interesting and complex material? Can we conclude that tent-making ministry is some sort of norm that Paul would require of other ministers, including ministers who are not even remotely in the social situation Paul is responding to? Certainly not. Should we conclude that Paul despite protesting that ministers deserve to be paid, in the end takes it all back? Again, certainly not. We already saw how he insisted in other circumstances on the Galatians providing financial support for their local teachers. Should the practice of freely choosing to refuse a salary or support be turned into some sort of norm for modern ministers, or some sort of higher calling for those who really heroically want to follow the example of Paul? Again the answer must be no, because Paul is simply doing this because of the social hindrances created in Corinth by accepting patronage or support. In other circumstances he was perfectly happy to receive support, so long as it did not involve any entangling alliances that hinder the offer of the Gospel freely to all. And this juncture it will be in order to turn to a discussion of what Paul has to say about the love of money, and the things it can buy.



C. FOR THE LOVE OF MONEY AND BLING

There can be little question that Paul had a strong objection to doing ministry for mercenary reasons. The use of godliness for financial gain is something he very clearly warns against repeatedly, and says is a characteristic or the telltale sign that one is dealing with a false teacher. We see this sort of critique of false teachers in 1 Tim. 6.2-5, and it leads to one of the more important discussion about money in the NT found in 1 Tim. 6.6-10. It is important however to bear in mind that the context is a discussion about the traits of false teachers and how to recognize them. With warrant we must look closely at what Paul says in these verses which have been so often emended, distorted, or simply ignored in modern times.
Paul warns in 1 Tim. 6.6 about the dangers of avarice, and he does so by mentioning a principle he has enunciated before in Phil. 4.13—godliness with self-sufficiency is great gain (cf. 1 Tim. 4.8). Thus Paul in a sense agrees—there is great profit in true religion, but not of the sort the false teachers had in mind (cf. Seneca, Epist. 108). A great deal has been made of Paul’s use of autarkeias which is of course a key term in Cynic and Stoic thought and refers to the ideal of being self-sufficient or independent (cf. Epicetetus, Dis. 3.13.7; Marcus Aurelius, To Himself 6.16). Its literal meaning is ‘self-rule’ or ‘self-sufficiency’ (cf. 2 Cor. 12.9 where indeed it means sufficiency; Josephus, Ant. 12.294; 2 Macc. 5.15; 4 Macc. 6.28). Some have therefore sought to translate the word ‘contentment’ here to distinguish what Paul is teaching from Cynic-Stoic teaching, not least because Paul believes in God-sufficiency not self-sufficiency, and this is a possible meaning of the term.

Paul is referring to someone who is content with having the necessities of life and has found their sufficiency in God, according to this line of reasoning, which makes good sense. But one must bear in mind that Paul is engaging in polemics here, and what Paul is polemicizing against is a person being addicted to desires and cravings which in fact run that person’s life. He is talking about a person out of control or not self-controlled. Such a person is dependent on the next ‘fix’ in this case of money or profit to feed that need. Paul contrasts such a person, which Paul indicates is what the false teachers are like, to a person who is not a slave to their cravings, but rather is happy with having their basic needs met. Here we have an enthymeme, a syllogism with a suppressed premise, which can be laid out as follows:

1) People with corrupt minds (addicted to arguing, made sick by controversies) think religion/godliness is a means of financial profit.
2) But in the process they themselves are deprived/robbed of the truth
3) [The end result is the opposite of their aim]
4) For paradoxically it is true that godliness/true religion with self-rule/independence is greatly profitable, though not in the way ‘such people’ have in mind.
5) Because we brought nothing into this world with the result that we can take nothing out of it when we leave.

The mature Christian person is not enslaved to one passion or another, in this case the passion for money or profit. Independence is contrasted with slavery here and more to the point godliness with independence or self-control is contrasted with ungodly desires such as avarice which leads to slavery and a manipulative using of religion to feed that hunger or pining. A truly godly person is free from, or at least not enslaved to such pining or addictions. Paul then is drawing on Hellenistic ideas here, but giving them a Christian spin. He does not agree with the Stoic notion of self-sufficiency, but he does believe that true religion sets a person free from various addictions and cravings.

Independence from needing riches and possessions and luxury is based on the premise that we didn’t bring anything with us into the world and we can’t take any of it with us out of this world. Again a popular maxim is likely being cited, which is not intended to be over-pressed, but to help provide a warrant for the enthymeme here. We note the parallel in Job 1.21 “I came naked from my mother’s womb and naked I shall return” or more closely “the LXX of Eccles. 5.14 “As he came from his mother’s womb he shall go again, naked as he came and shall take nothing from his toil, which he may carry away in his hand” (see also Wis. Sol. 7.6; Seneca, Epist. 102.25). The point is that we don’t really own the things we have in this world, they are not so much possessions as things we hold in trust for the real owner--- God, and things we are to be good stewards of. We should not try to find our sufficiency or worth in things that did not bring us into the world and give us life, and will not in the end make death avoidable or get us to heaven. It would not have been obvious to all pagans that ‘you can’t take it with you’ for many ancient religions, for example Egyptian ones, did believe you could take things with you into the afterlife. Vs. 8 will further emphasize the point by indicating that we shall be content with sustenance and a ‘covering’ which could refer to clothing or to a roof over one’s head (cf. Aristotle, Politics 1336A on the former meaning and Aristotle, Metaphysics 1043A on the latter). This saying too is a maxim (cf. Sir. 29.21; Plutarch, Dinner of Seven Sages 12).

“But those desiring/wishing to be rich (notice it does not say they are already rich) fall into a serious temptation and snare, desiring much that is senseless and harmful which harms one now and in the end plunges one into endless ruin and eternal destruction.” Notice the similarity between the phrase ‘wishing to be rich’ and ‘wishing to be teachers of the Law’ (1.7). This rhetorical effect or echo suggests that Paul is referring to the same people with both phrases. We may compare the teaching about the rich man and Lazarus in Lk. 18 here. Such teaching would be unneeded here if there were no high status persons in the congregation who had wealth and might enrich the coffers of the false teachers.

Vs. 10 must not be mistranslated especially since it is the most often quoted and misquoted line from the Pastoral Epistles (cf. e.g the RSV which makes the mistake of putting the definite article before ‘root’). In the Jewish moral tradition it was not uncommon to speak of root vices. For example, Philo speaks of desire, inequality, pride, and falsehood all as vices which spawn other vices (cf. Dec. 5 and 173; Special Laws 1.121; Contemp. 39). Our text says that the love of money (not money itself) is a root, not ‘the root’ of every kind or all sorts of evil (not all evil). It is not being said that greed is the origin of all evils in the world, nor is money itself the problem.

Here we seem to be dealing with a common maxim once more. Bion says “Love of money is the mother-city of all evils” (cited in Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 6.50 cf. on the idea Stobaeus, Eccl. 3; Test. Jud. 19.1; Didorous Siculus 21.1; Philo, Special Laws 4.65). It is noteworthy that there was a frequent critique of Sophists and indeed all sorts of for-hire teachers and rhetors and philosophers that they taught in order to become wealthy (Dio Chrysostom, Oration 54.1). Thus the false teachers are slotted into this category of teacher. It is noteworthy that Jesus also critiqued such teachers when he warns to beware of scribes (theological teachers who are experts in the Law) who bilk wealthy widows (Mk. 12.38-40). One wonders if there is such a connection between the false teachers and the widows, perhaps especially the younger ones in the Pastorals. Once again we have an enthymematic form of syllogism with a suppressed premise as follows:

1) Those wishing to get rich fall into a snare.
2) Such harmful wishes and desires lead to ruin or destruction.
[3) One such desire or craving is greed]
4) For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil.

Here again the maxim serves as the warrant or clincher in the argument which proves the point. Throughout this section it is necessary always to keep in mind the way the rhetoric of wisdom literature works. It provides general principles or ‘truths’ often in colorful or memorable and figurative wording and it presupposes a rather specific religious and social context for it to hold true. Sometimes it deliberately involves rhetorical hyperbole, for instance in the maxim above which could even be translated ‘the love of money is a root of every kind of evil’. If this is the correct translation, and it may well be in view of the emphatic position of the word ‘root’, then it is in order to point out that the rhetorical function of hyperbole is to dramatically emphasis something, drawing attention to it and trying to inculcate a strong positive response in the audience, in this case to urge them to avoid avarice. Such polemical maxims are not meant to be taken absolutely literally.

A good example of how this sort of sapiential rhetoric works (and of its hyperbolic nature) can be seen in Chrysostom’s comment on this very passage:
What evils does it not cause! What fraudulent practices, what robberies! What miseries, enmities, contentions, battles! Does it not stretch forth its hand even to the dead, even to fathers and brothers? Do not they who are possessed by this passion violate the laws of nature and the commandments of God? In short everything? Is it not this which renders our courts of justice necessary? Take away the love of money, and you put an end to war, to battle, to enmity, to strife and contention. (Hom. 17 on 1 Tim.).

It is the attitude towards money that is being critiqued in this verse. For if we love things like money and use people to get them, we have exactly reversed the way God intends for us to operate. Things are not capable of love or carrying on a love relationship with a human being. It is in the end a form of idolatry, and of trying to find our life, support, sufficiency in something other than God. This part of the discourse most resembles the Lukan form of Jesus’ teaching on the foolishness and dangers of the love of money (cf. Lk. 6.20,24; 9.23-25;12.22-34; 14.25-33; 16.13) and one could even see Lk. 12.15,21 as commentary on this discussion: “Take heed and beware of all avarice; for a person’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions…so is he who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

Paul adds that this sort of sick love has led some away from the faith and then in essence, (using a dramatic metaphor) they have become like a creature who has impaled itself on a spit over an open fire causing itself no end of agony. Once again the theme of apostasy surfaces, possibly even with an allusion to Hell here and eternal destruction. It is noteworthy that there is a stress in this section as elsewhere in this letter on the connection between intellectual error and moral deterioration. Paul and Luke will characterize the greedy person as being both mentally and morally unwell. But Paul does not just talk about money, he also talks about the love of luxury and bling.

Certainly one of the most controversial of all Pauline texts is 1 Tim. 2.8-15. For our purposes here we only need deal with the first few verses that are part of a correction of male and female behavior in worship. The passage begins in vs. 8 with a correction of men—they are to lift up hands in prayer without anger or argument. This suggests a situation where we are dealing with men vying for the privilege of praying in the congregation, or there is some sort of honor and shame rivalry situation. We are to see this instruction as a continuation of the previous remarks on offering prayer for all people including rulers. Notice the reference to ‘in every place’ which would seem to refer to in every meeting place or house church, though elsewhere in Paul the phrase can have a wider reference (but cf. 1 Cor. 1.2; 2 Cor. 2.14; 1 Th. 1.8). It is interesting that standing (the normal Jewish prayer posture) and raising hands in prayer is a practice regularly referred to in earlier and contemporary Jewish sources ( Ex. 9.29; Ps. 27.2; Lam. 3.41; 1 Kngs. 8.22,54; Neh. 8.6; Is. 1.15; 2 Macc. 14.34; Philo, Flacc. 121; Virt. 57; Josephus, Ant. 4.40), but we do not find this referred to outside the Pastorals in Paul. What we do find is examples of lifting up hands in Lk. 24.50 (cf. Lk. 18.13). R. Joshua ben Levi taught that a priest that does not lift up hands in prayer is not to raise his hands in blessing either (B.T. Sotah 39a). Open hands were a sign of petition or of reaching out to God in need.

The hands are characterized as holy hands, and presumably this is seen as the opposite of the anger and argument mentioned. This phrase is not uncommon. For example in Josephus we find the phrase ‘uplifting pure hands’ (War 5.380), or in Sencea “to raise pure hands to heaven” (Nat. Ques. 3 , Preface 14 cf. Athenagoras, Leg. 13.2 cf. 1 Clement 29.1). Holiness excludes such contentious behavior, especially in worship. We may suppose, since there are false teachers in this social context, that there were some divisive forces at work in these house churches, and Paul is trying to mend that situation. Notice how in Tit. 1.7 the overseer is expected to be a person who is not quick to get angry. We may compare texts like 1 Pet. 3.7 and Jam. 1.19-20 which indicates that anger gets in the way of righteousness, and would be one of the factors inhibiting or interfering with one’s prayers. The contentious situation reflected in this verse should likely be related to the problems of the false teachers (cf. 1 Tim. 1.3; 4.7; 6.3-4, 20; 2 Tim. 2.16-17, 23), some of whom may well have been women or at least had influenced some high status women, hence the correction in the following verses.

We must take seriously the word hosautos which begins vs. 9, and means ‘likewise’. This suggests that Paul is envisioning women praying as well, and he wishes them to do it with the same decorum or holiness as the men must. Notice that gunaikas is without the definite article here which implies women in general not just wives. The word katasole refers to demeanor in both its inward and outward sense (cf. Josephus, War 2.8.4). Women are to be clothed outwardly in modest and non-distracting clothing and inwardly by self-respect and modesty. The phrase meta aidous means ‘with (self) respect’ normally, although there are texts where it can have the sense of with religious awe (Josephus, Ant. 6.262; Philo, Gaius 352). Philo tells us that this was a virtue expected to be typical of women (Vit. Mos. 2.234; Contemp. 33; Flaccus 89). Modesty, self-control, piety, and self-respect are virtues regularly touted and attributed to women in this era in this culture.
If we do not read vs. 9 as a continuation of the instructions about prayer in vs. 8, then the reference to women’s adornment seems to be an unmotivated digression. Chrysostom in fact concluded, in my judgment rightly, that we must insert the main verb again so that the text reads in essence ‘likewise [I desire] women also to pray being adorned in modesty and holy fashion’ Chrysostom puts it this way: “Equally with men, women are called to approach God without wrath or doubting, lifting up holy hands…Paul however requires something more of women, that they adorn themselves ‘in modest apparel, with self respect and sobriety’” (Hom. 8 on 1 Tim.). This conclusion has important implications for how we are to read 1 Tim. 3.11 where once again we have the phrase gunaikes hosautos where the conversation is surely about deaconesses, not the wives of deacons. This is where we note that our passage says nothing about women being completely silent, and indeed if we are right about the connection of vss. 8-9 they are expected to speak, at least during the prayer time.

The issue seems to be some kind of teaching in worship in the verses that follow.
Vs. 9 of course goes on to speak of dress and jewelry, and there is good reason to think Paul has something particular in mind. J.B. Hurley puts it this way: “He refers…to the elaborate hair-styles which were fashionable among the wealthy, and [perhaps] also to the styles worn by courtesans. The sculpture and the literature of the period make it clear that women often wore their hair in enormously elaborate arrangements with braids and curls interwoven or piled high like towers and decorated with gems and/or gold and/or pearls. The courtesans wore their hair in numerous small pendant braids with gold droplets or pearls or gems every inch or so, making a shimmery screen of their locks.” One needs to envision the scene in an evening Christian worship meeting in a relatively small space with many lamps lit. In this situation hairstyles with reflective items in it such as gold or pearls would be a regular distraction from the proper focus of worship.

Paul then is not just arguing here for modest apparel but he is arguing against ostentatious, flashy and distracting apparel. This goes against the rules of modesty, discretion, propriety or sobriety which were to apply to everyone in worship, especially when meeting in close quarters. To some degree this critique of women’s apparel is like the critique we find in Juvenal Satire 6 or Plutarch, Moralia 141E, but we could also point to T. Reub. 5.5—“accordingly order your wives and daughters not to adorn their heads and their appearances so as to deceive men’s sound minds.” It is right to note, that only women who had slaves or hairdressers to help them, which is to say more high status women, could have the sort of elaborate hairdos Paul is referring to here. Once more we have the stress on sophrosyne. This Greek term suggests prudence, temperance, discretion, soundness of judgment, and self-control, the Greek ideal of behavior (see e.g. Aristotle, Niceomachean Ethics 3.10-12).

Women are called at the end of this verse to do what is fitting for women who profess to worship God through good works. Fitting deportment in worship was crucial for both men and women not only because other Christians would be watching but also since this was the main time when they might invite non-Christian friends to come and be a part of the Christian meeting (see e.g. 1 Cor. 14.23).

AND SO?

What have we learned from our all too cursory treatment of the relevant Pauline material for our discussion. Firstly, we have learned that Paul deliberately inculcated an approach to Christian life which did not involve conspicuous consumption, ostentatious dress, and a lavish lifestyle. Rather he inculcated a lifestyle of godliness with contentment. The ‘lifestyles of the rich and famous’ are seen as a positive hindrance to Christian moral integrity, not to mention a taking of food and clothing from the poor. Greed, the love of money, is seen as a root of all kinds of evil and it is to be avoided at all costs by the Christian, especially by the Christian minister, for Paul is addressing his co-worker Timothy particularly in 1 Tim. 6. Equally to be avoided is a mercenary motive for doing ministry.

On the issue of work, Paul believes in hard work whole-heartedly, indeed he frequently brags about his work regimen (see e.g. 2 Cor. 11). He disagrees with other high status persons who look down their noses at manual labor. And Paul has nothing but correction for the idle who refuse to work, saying that if that is their posture Christians should shun them, they should not get to partake of the fellowship meals indeed as a rule—let those who will not work, not eat! Free grace does not mean a free ride for freeloaders. Here Paul particularly has in mind those who are likely candidates to be clients of well known patrons.

It is clear that one cannot really understand what Paul has to say about ministry and remuneration unless one understands the tricky situation in a patronage and reciprocity culture that Paul found himself in. In general Paul believes a congregation has an obligation to pay its teachers or ministers, but the minister may exercise his right or freedom to refuse pay for various reasons. This however does not get the church off the hook when it comes to their obligation to offer remuneration for ministerial work. Paul in fact believes that Jesus commanded that ministers should be paid for the proclamation of the Gospel. But entangling alliances and compromising social relationships must be avoided, and the Gospel must not be seen to be an example of flattery or mere rhetoric offered by a for-hire sophist.

Paul is not an advocate of what modern persons call tent-making ministry, if by that one means that church planters or missionaries should expect to have to work on the side or raise their own support whilst doing ministry. They may do so, as Paul does in Corinth and apparently in Thessalonike, but 1 Cor. 9 rules out the view that they necessarily should or must do so. If they choose to go this root, it needs to be for the right reasons, not because it assumed that the NT suggests we should not have paid ministers. To the contrary, argues Paul, churches should expect to pay their ministers. What is interesting and ironic about all this is that the very document which is assumed to most argue against paid ministers (1 Corinthians) is the very document which provides the clearest rationale for why congregations should expect to pay a Paul or a Peter or a Timothy or Titus, or whoever their local teachers (see Gal. 6) might be. In our next chapter we will examine the Johannine critique of the Roman economy and its relationship to the powers that be, including Mr. 666.

Honey I Blew up the Church-- Let's Hit the Beach

O.K., I did not see this story coming. It seems that in a desperate attempt to capture the Italian beach going public in August, nuns and priests are now transporting an inflatable 'convent', which blows up to 98 feet in length (now that's a lot of hot holy air) to the beach where persons can come and make confession whilst Christian musicians are luring them in with Christian tunes (I'm thinking they are singing in Italiano "I was sinking deep in sin, far from peaceful shore....").


The link is http:www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26057763/?GT1=43001

I'm trying to imagine the confessions-- "Forgive me Father for I have sinned, I just looked at a nearly naked woman on the beach, oops, I just looked at another nearly naked woman on the beach right next to the door of the inflatable church... oops......"

Accordingly to the article there will be 'night time activities in the inflatable convent from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. NOT INCLUDING MASS'. O.K..... besides singing and confessions what might be going on in the blown up church? Inquiring minds want to know. Well it seems they will be saying the rosary (see below).

It seems that people were blown away by the first attempt at this on Sardinia a couple of weeks back--- well actually the church had to abort itself as strong winds blew away the blow up church! Back to the drawing board.

Undaunted various nuns are excited about their new beach ministry. Here is a small quote from the Reuters article:

"On the Mediterranean coast, nuns from a convent near the southern Italian city of Naples have relocated to beach cabins to join holidaymakers saying the rosary. An adjoining altar was set up under two tents. [sounds like an in-tents ministry effort to me]

"The concept of a beach-convent is something that is appreciated by vacationers and the nuns themselves," priest Antonio Rungi, who helped spearheaded the initiative, told Italian news agency ANSA."

---

O.K. so now I am thinking what about an inflatable seminary at Myrtle Beach. We could do classes in recreational theology, beach ministry, practice being angels by para-sailing and could sing multiple choruses of "Michael row the boat ashore..." Anyone ready to enroll?

The Voices in Rock n' Roll Heaven

It’s a sad truth, but nonetheless a truth, that the rock and roll era is mostly over, after a half a century of changing the landscape of popular music. I was fortunate enough to be along for the full ride, doing a lot of work in record stores, and going to a ton of great concerts. I have often been asked who were the greatest rock and roll vocalists. Before I give my Top Twelve list, I want to make clear from the outset that I am not considering the many wonderful folk singers of the period, nor the blues singers, nor the straight soul singers, nor the purely pop singers. I am talking about real rock and roll voices here. So with those caveats, here’s my short list in no particular order. Enjoy.

1) Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin
2) Roger Daltrey of the Who
3) Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones
4) Freddie Mercury of Queen
5) Steve Perry of Journey
6) Sting of the Police
7) Janis Joplin of Big Brother and the Holding Company
8) Nancy Wilson of Heart
9) Lou Gramm of Foreigner
10) Daryl Hall of Hall and Oates
11) Gino Vanelli
12) Lennon and McCartney of the Beatles
13) Bono of U2--- Bonus Artist!

Almost all of these artists I heard in person, and up close. And in their prime they were unbelievable, and sustained it for a considerable period of time. Some of them, are still very good. If the issue was just who has the very best voice and range and power honestly it would be hard to pick but probably would be Gino Vanelli, whether or not one liked his style of music If we were to add the folk rockers and the art rockers to this list and not just limit it to the hard rockers one would need to add the following:

1) Crosby, Stills and Nash
2) James Taylor
3) Dan Fogelberg
4) Richic Furay of both Buffalo Springfield and Poco
5) Don Henley of the Eagles
6) Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues
7) Joan Baez
8) Joni Mitchell
9) Shawn Colvin
10) Annie Haslim of Rennaisance

There are of course others who deserve honorable mention, persons who had great voices but never with bands that had more than one good album. I am thinking of people like Paul Rodgers (Free, Band Company), or Paul Carrack (Mike and the Mechanics, etc) or Burton Cummings of the Guess Who. The issue in this post is great voices, not great bands. Who would you add to or subtract from the list? In any case--- rock on dudes.

Lost and Found-- a Student critique of Ehrman's 'Lost Christianities'

The following is a seminar paper presented by one of my doctoral students which I thought was a useful critique of Bart Ehrman's popular work on 'Lost Christianities.
BW3


ALTERNATIVE VIEWS OF CANON AND CULTURE:
AN ANALYSIS OF EHRMAN’S LOST CHRISTIANITIES


SUBMITTED TO DRS. WARREN SMITH AND BEN WITHERINGTON
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF
NT805—THE EARLY CHURCH FATHERS
AND THE FORMATION OF THE CANON








BY
BRAD JOHNSON
JULY 26, 2008

Had Jesus of Nazareth left an autobiographical account of his life, teachings, and ministry, there would be perhaps no need for the Gospel accounts and other writings of the NT as we have them today. In the absence thereof stands instead an ongoing debate over the authenticity and accuracy of alternative (and oftentimes competing) accounts of the Jesus Event. This begs a foundational question: are all accounts valid? Further, what constitutes the basis for such determinations? An initial foray into the arena of canon formation and criteria reveals a lack of precise consensus not only on what the criteria for canonization were and are, but also as to the method of preserving the history of that canon.
In Lost Christianities, Bart Ehrman sets out to examine the NT documents themselves, and more specifically, to bring to light some of the various documents that failed to reach canonical status. Suggesting that there may in fact be value in resurrecting these ancient writings, he embarks on a journey that examines the trail of remains of written sources from—along with the extinct manifestations of—early Christianity in an effort to demonstrate their role in preserving the Christian heritage and its diverse history of theology and practice. He argues that the ongoing commitment to a closed NT canon of twenty-seven documents is in reality not only a product of the hegemony of the orthodox tradition emerging from the fourth century, but perhaps also an incomplete and inadequate account of early Christianity and the diversity of forms representing it. Recent discoveries (such as the Nag Hammadi documents) create opportunities, he maintains, for understanding ancient and contemporary Christianity in new ways.
Ehrman’s approach is built around the following methodology. The first part examines a number of pseudepigraphical writings which “tell us about the various forms of Christian faith and practice in the second and third centuries” (ix). By appealing to a broader range of writings, argues Ehrman, a richer and more diverse composite sketch of early Christianity can be discerned. The second part looks at a number of rival social groups standing in contrast to a particular form of Christianity that eventually carried the day. These groups represent various points on a theological spectrum, and generate the tensions Christianity experienced with Judaism on one hand, and pagan philosophy on the other. The third part addresses the conflicts that ensued between the various groups and belief sets, illustrating “how one early Christian group established itself as dominant in the religion, determining for ages to come what Christians would believe, practice, and read as sacred Scripture” (ix). The conclusion of the book offers Ehrman’s reflections on the status quo of the NT canon alongside non-canonical documents.
Embedded in his methodology is a three-fold argument advanced along the following lines. First, he makes a literary argument addressing pseudonymity and its role in canon formation. Second, he develops an historical argument that indicates how one particular form of Christianity emerged as dominant. Third, he packages his overall presentation within an ethical argument, addressing the need for religious tolerance amid diversity. The flow of these arguments is to a large degree linear: the literary argument is a subset within the historical argument, which in turn is a subset of the ethical argument. The aim of this paper is to assess and analyze these arguments as they impinge upon alternative views of Christianity, their sacred texts, and the cultures created by those texts.
1: The Literary Argument. Ehrman begins his discussion by highlighting the significance of alternative early Christian communities and documents, noting the impact of recent textual discoveries like those from Nag Hammadi. He highlights several texts, but none is featured as prominently as the Coptic Gospel of Thomas. About this particular text Ehrman says:
[It is a] remarkable document, an ancient forgery condemned as heretical by early proto-orthodox Christians and lost or destroyed, until the remarkable discovery of the Gnostic library in Upper Egypt, near Nag Hammadi, preserved now for us as the secret sayings of Jesus, which, if rightly understood, can bring eternal life. (65)

In so saying, Ehrman displays a sympathetic affinity for the document, especially as it sits in the shadow of the larger orthodox structure. Calling Thomas a “forgery,” Ehrman is really highlighting the pseudepigraphical character of the work, which, by so doing, heightens the interest of and rapport with his primary audience: the non-academic community.
Clearly acknowledging the pseudonymity of the document, Ehrman delivers a pre-emptive strike to his detractors by candidly accepting the chief criticism lodged against the Gospel of Thomas: namely, that it is not Thomas’ writing. Nevertheless, he counters, such should not be a reason for overlooking this document given the apparent “forgeries” currently located within the NT canon. Specifically, he states that the “author of 2 Peter [for example] explicitly claims to be Simon Peter, the disciple of Jesus, who beheld the transfiguration (1:16-18)” (11). In the following sentence, he then adds, “But critical scholars are virtually unanimous that it was not written by him.” Thus, he insists, “forgery” (as a literary judgment) “by rights should cover some of the New Testament books as well, including the letter of 2 Peter” (11).
It should be noted that Ehrman does not use the term “forgery” in the typical pejorative sense to which his readership may be accustomed, but invokes it as a means of avoiding the technical complexity and nuance of “pseudepigrapha,” which, he maintains, “is typically taken to refer only to the noncanonical books that claimed, and sometimes received, scriptural standing...” (11, emphasis his). He does, however, differentiate between acceptable and non-acceptable uses of the literary tactic. Decidedly unaccepted usages of “forgery” would be those which,
are as artificial as one can imagine and are useful chiefly in revealing the gullibility even of modern readers. They tend to be the stuff of supermarket tabloids and are valuable in showing that there are still forgers in our midst who have no qualms about fabricating complete lies, even about their own religion, or order to make a splash and possibly get across their point of view. Or, at least, to earn some royalties. (68)

The question then becomes: if some of the NT documents are “forgeries,” why is the Gospel of Thomas not afforded the same authority as, say, 2 Peter? The answer, he says, lies in an altered perspective on history.
2: The Historical Argument. The establishment of the NT in the fourth century as an exclusive canon of twenty-seven books, he argues, is a result of the hegemony of the prevailing and dominant Christian culture (which he brands as both “orthodoxy” and the “winners”). Further, Christianity was a richly diverse phenomenon up through the second and third centuries (2), more diverse than even the various extant forms of Christianity observable today (1). As a result of the establishment of orthodoxy, certain texts—and their cultures—were rejected (“lost”) in favor of a more unified presentation of the Jesus Event. The “winners” then justified their position by re-writing history:
[T]his victorious party rewrote the history of the controversy, making it appear that there had not been much of a conflict at all, claiming that its own views had always been those of the majority of Christians at all times, back to the time of Jesus and his apostles, that its perspective, in effect, had always been ‘orthodox’…and that its opponents in the conflict, with their other scriptural texts, had always represented small splinter groups invested in deceiving people into ‘heresy’. (4)

As a result, the prevailing culture effectively neutralized diverse perspectives and their sacred texts.
In characterizing this history-revising enterprise, Ehrman adopts the Religionsgeshichte previously developed by Walter Bauer in Orthodoxy and Heresy (172-76). Arguing from a novel position against the traditional view of the history of early Christianity, Bauer proposed that the prevailing majority opinion of scholarship accepting the Eusebian account of church history was in error. Rather than assume that all heresies were variations or corruptions of an original and singularly orthodox view (as it was promulgated by a cadre of highly unified apostolic witnesses), Bauer asserted that early Christianity was instead constituted of a number of diverse perspectives on the Jesus Event, and that it was as a result of the Romanization of Christianity in the fourth century that one form of Christianity gained dominance. Thus, two different perspectives on the history of the canon are offered: that of Eusebius (Figure 2, p. 15 of this paper), and that of Bauer (Figure 3, p. 15).
Although his assessment of the advent of orthodox belief nearly replicates that of Bauer, Ehrman does diverge from Bauer in two important respects. First, he is far less explicit about the effect of Romanization on the development of orthodoxy than is Bauer. Whereas Bauer points to defining moments such as Constantine’s conversion, the adoption of Christianity as the imperial religion, and the Councils of Nicaea and Constantinople, for example, Ehrman tends to focus primarily on texts. One of those texts is Eusebius’ Church History, about which Ehrman says,
Writing a century and a half after the Muratorian canon…, Eusebius shows how debates over canon were still very much alive. At one point of his ten-volume work, Eusebius states his intention is “to summarize the writings of the New Testament” (Church History 3.25.1). To do so, he sets forth four categories of books. The first he calls “acknowledged” books, meaning those books accepted by all sides within the orthodox tradition…. His second category involves books that are “disputed,” meaning writings that may well be considered canonical but whose status is debated…. [He] then names books he considers “spurious”…. Finally, Eusebius provides a list of books that are heretical. (244)

Another text is “the famous Athanasian letter of 367 CE” in which Athanasius “came up with a definitive list of books to be included in the canon that matched our list today” (245). Ehrman goes on to say that,
[A] significant moment occurred in the history of the formation of the new Testament canon in the late fourth century. It was in the year 367 CE that the powerful bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, wrote a letter to the churches throughout Egypt under his jurisdiction, in which he laid out in strict terms the contours of the canon of Scripture. This was the first time anyone of record had indicated that the twenty-seven books that we now have in our New Testament canon, and only those twenty-seven books, should be considered as Scripture. Moreover, Athanasius insisted that other ‘heretical’ books not be read. (54)

Even with the mention of these two texts, however, Ehrman is less than clear on what constitutes the defining moment for the triumph of orthodoxy over what would become the noncanonical texts.
A second difference between Bauer’s view of history and Ehrman’s is academic. Whereas Bauer characterizes his approach as being objectively historical, Ehrman demonstrates a multi-disciplinary approach that varies from literary to theological to ethical. It is with respect to the latter that his final argument comes into view.
3: The Ethical Argument. Traditional views of the criteria for NT canonization reflect a certain degree of variance, but in large measure maintain consistency. For example, the criteria according to J.T. Barrera involve “apostolic origin of the writing in questions, its traditional use [“catholicity”] in the liturgy from time immemorial and the orthodox nature of the doctrine expounded.” L.M. McDonald agrees with the foregoing formulation, but adds to it “antiquity” (meaning, “those [books] that came from the apostolic era”). F.F. Bruce follows McDonald’s core formulation, as does D.A. DeSilva.
Ehrman offers a different perspective, one which can actually be viewed in two ways. It is here that his argument becomes an ethical enterprise as he distinguishes between his view of the actual process of canonization (a descriptive undertaking), and what he proposes as a preferable set of criteria (a prescriptive undertaking). Concerning the actual formation of the NT canon, he avoids endorsing the traditional view of canon criteria, suggesting instead that Eusebius, Athanasius and others among the camp of the “winners” gained their victory (marked by the formation of the canon) through the following: a claim to ancient roots of Judaism; a rejection of contemporary Jewish practices; the primacy of a church hierarchy; and, a well-established network of communication (179-80). These, then, became the circumstantial factors for the canonization of the NT, as opposed to the more traditional theological factors.
Ehrman, if read closely, actually suggests an alternative method for evaluating texts with respect to their canonical status. The centerpiece to that method would seem to be motive. Ehrman argues on behalf of preserving alternative forms of Christianity, citing the need to be “tolerant” of diverse perspectives. However, he himself is quick to discredit certain texts:
Strange Gospels appear regularly, if you know where to look for them. Often these record incidents from the ‘lost years’ of Jesus, for example, accounts of Jesus as a child or a young man prior to his public ministry, a genre that goes all the way back to the second century. These accounts sometimes describe Jesus’ trips to India to learn the wisdom of the Brahmins (how else would he be so wise?) or his exploits in the wilderness, joining up with Jewish monks to learn the ways of holiness. (68, emphasis his)

For Ehrman, it would seem that the invalidity of these “strange Gospels” is self-evident. What remains to be seen, however, is what constitutes his normative device in differentiating the “strange” from the acceptable. It would appear to be an issue of motive:
Those captivated with this fascination [with alternative understandings of Christianity from the past] commonly feel a sense of loss upon realizing just how many perspectives once endorsed by well-meaning, intelligent, and sincere believers came to be abandoned, destroyed, and forgotten—as were the texts that these believers produced, read, and revered.” (257, emphasis mine)

Ehrman thus rejects “strange Gospels” on the basis of motive: they are designed to deceive or to exploit. If one reads him correctly, then, it would appear that an acceptable, or canon-worthy, text would be one which evinces an authorial intent characterized as being “well-meaning, intelligent, and sincere.” Leaving aside the issue of authorial intent as a potentially enormous issue for explication, Ehrman’s test of canonicity, when properly recognized, may be rather problematic.
Responses. At a number of points, Ehrman’s discussion generates questions. Some of these, within the space remaining, will be addressed according to the order of his presentation. First, with regard to his literary argument, Ehrman’s claim that 2 Peter is a “forgery” may be rather overstated. Consider the following observations by Ben Witherington,
[It] is rather amazing that many contemporary scholars just assume that pseudepigrapha was an accepted literary genre and practice that raised no ethical concerns for ancient Christians. This is not so. But it is equally surprising that many scholars today do not seem to realize there are other options besides declaring this document to be a pseudepigraphon or a letter composed by Peter himself. I attribute this to the fact that most New Testament scholars do not know sapiential literature as well as they should, and they especially seem unaware of the scribal practices found in early Judaism and early Christianity, where scribes would not merely copy but also edit together collections of valuable sacred traditions, just as we see happening in 2 Peter. These are not exercises in pure creativity or in pseudonymity. They are ways of preserving sources and traditions from the past and applying them in later situations, with the editors neither claiming authorship nor trying to deceive anyone about he sort or identity of their sources.

2 Peter becomes understood in this sense as a composite document, not a “forgery”.
With regard to his historical argument, several things can be said. First, Ehrman assigns the culpability for the loss of various early Christianities to the orthodox tradition. However, and at the same time, he recognizes that some of these movements failed on their own merit. For example, he cites the Montanists as being a “lost” Christianity, but acknowledges their failure to enlist popular support due to their miscalculations of the eschaton. About this group he says, “There is nothing like a radical disconfirmaton to make your group a laughing stock” (150). And about the Ebionites he notes that their tenacious commitment to preserve Jewish customs, especially that of circumcision, lacked popular appeal. He compares early responses to Ebionite and Marcionite Christianity: “[P]otential converts from among the pagans were not flocking to the Ebionite form of religion, which involved restricting activities on Saturday, giving up pork and other popular foods, and, for the men, undergoing surgery to remove the foreskin of their penises” (103). It can rather clearly be seen, then, that the disappearance of certain strains of Christianity was more a result of internal weaknesses than external pressures.
Second, Ehrman’s terminology is ambiguous. In his invocation of terms such as orthodoxy, proto-orthodoxy, and heresy, it is often unclear whether he is using the terms from his own perspective or for that perspective claimed by the participating parties. Further, he often vacillates between describing these terms in relation to individuals, to groups, and to beliefs. The net result is a presentation that lacks focus and precision, and as a result, fails to advance his argument to the degree that he might have. An example is his treatment of Tertullian, who—being referenced by Ehrman perhaps more so than any other patristic figure—is shown as being both “proto-orthodox” and heretical. The sheer volume of citations of Tertullian indicates that Ehrman is setting Tertullian up as an exemplar for proto-orthodoxy. How, then, can Ehrman reconcile his identification of Tertullian as a precursor to orthodoxy when Tertullian was actually branded by the dominant orthodox group as a heretic? This begs the question: when dealing with Tertullian, are we to understand him as an individual, as a member of a body of believers, or as a figurehead espousing a certain set of beliefs? The same issue can be observed, in fact, with respect to the term Christianity. Is [a] “lost” Christianity really [a] Christianity at all?
Third, contemporary Christianity, given its global manifestations and using the same refractive prism that Ehrman uses in describing early Christianity, can hardly be said to be less diverse than that of the earliest centuries of the church. His is an assertion devoid of any data. When the multitude of variables are considered in the present context, it can hardly be accepted that Christianity—now firmly established on six of the seven continents, after nearly two millennia—is in any way more homogenous than that of the first three centuries. In addition, and pursuant to his historical construct in which all competing forms of Christianity were neutralized by the prevailing orthodox party, he claims that “virtually all forms of modern Christianity, whether they acknowledge it or not, go back to one form of Christianity that emerged as victorious from the conflicts of the second and third centuries” (4, emphasis his). This is a surprising statement for two reasons. On one hand, it seems inconsistent with the premise of his primary argument that he would be able to claim this about modern forms of Christianity contra members of those forms themselves. The reader might note the implications of Ehrman’s verbiage: “whether they acknowledge it or not”.
On the other hand, he fails to recognize movements such as those that led to the Armenian Christian church: a community of ancient Christians who, thanks to their geographic separation from the Mediterranean and a steady northeasterly expansion along the Silk Road, remained beyond the Roman imperial embrace of Christianity. Further, one wonders where Ehrman assigns other groups along the spectrum of orthodox Christianity. Can the Mormon Church claim early Christian origins in light of Joseph Smith’s textual discovery? Where might Ehrman place the Jehovah’s Witnesses on this spectrum? Does the ongoing presence of Messianic-Jewish movements not indicate an ongoing persistence of Ebionite Christianity? And in the same vein, might not modern the New Age movement simply be yet another embodiment of Gnostic beliefs, beliefs which, contrary to his historical analysis, continue to thrive?
With respect to his ethical argument, and perhaps most significantly, Ehrman champions the cause of tolerance and diversity with respect to texts and communities, yet he overlooks the embracing and inclusive features of the NT canon itself. The very structure of the NT reflects a desire to draw into communion a very diverse constituency: the champions of pro-Semitic, Ebionite Christianity (and its texts reflecting an ongoing commitment to the Jewish underpinnings of Christianity, such as the Gospels, James, Hebrews, etc.), and advocates of a distinctively Marcionic, “New Testament” Christianity (primarily committed to the Pauline corpus). F.F. Bruce observes that,
The gospel collection was authoritative because it preserved the words of Jesus, than whom the church knew no higher authority. The Pauline collection was authoritative because it preserved the teaching of one whose authority as the apostle of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles as acknowledged (except by those who refused to recognize his commission) as second only to the Lord’s. The bringing together of these two collections into something approximating the New testament as we know it was facilitated by another document which linked the one to the other. This document was the Acts of the Apostles, which had been severed from its natural companion, the Gospel of Luke, when that gospel was incorporated in the fourfold collection. Acts had thereafter to play a part of its own, and an important part it proved to be. ‘A canon which comprised only the four gospels and the Pauline epistles’, said Harnack, ‘would have been at best an edifice of two wings without the central structure, and therefore incomplete and uninhabitable.’

Thus, the NT canon represents a body of literature strategically developed and arranged so as to accommodate the widest readership.
Conclusion. In summary, it can be observed that: 1) Ehrman’s employment of the term “forgery” to describe pseudepigraphical NT works perhaps strikes more of an affective chord than a literary one; 2) his conclusions with respect to the history of the formation of the canon seem somewhat lacking with regard to concrete historical events and realities; and, 3) his primary ethical aim of advancing “tolerance” as a means of preserving “diversity” is contradictory, both in light of his own positions with respect to various movements and positions, and also in terms of his lack of acknowledgement of the inclusive and diverse materials of the NT itself.


Bibliography

Barker, Glenn W., William L. Lane and J. Ramsay Michaels. The New Testament Speaks. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1969.

Barrera, Julio Trebolle. The Jewish Bible and the Christian Bible: An Introduction to the History of the Bible, trans. Wilfred G.E. Watson. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1998.

Bauer, Walter. Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, Robert A. Kraft and Gerhard Krodel, eds. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971.

Bruce, F.F. The Canon of Scripture. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1988.

DeSilva, David A. An Introduction to the New Testament: Contexts, Methods, and Ministry Formation. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004.

Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Irvin, Dale T. and Scott W. Sunquist. History of the World Christian Movement, Volume I: Earliest Christianity to 1453. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2001.

Johnson, Luke Timothy. The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation, rev. ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999.

McDonald, Lee Martin. The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995.

Witherington III, Ben. , Letters and Homilies for Hellenized Christians, Vol. II: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on 1-2 Peter. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2008.

Yates, Timothy. The Expansion of Christianity. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2004.

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P.S. In an earlier draft of this paper, Johnson also rightly made the point that Ehrman defines the term Christian far too broadly, in fact so broadly that the NT writers would surely have repudiated the definition almost immediately. When you define Christian as "someone who claims to be a follower of Christ", you do not reckon with the various definitions implicit and explicit in the NT documents themselves where we hear things like "a Christian is a person who confesses that the crucified Jesus is the risen Lord" (Paul), or "no one who denies Christ come in the flesh" can claim to be his follower (1 John), or even one who denies there will be a second coming is a true follower of Christ (Jude and 2 Peter). In other words, there was a standard of Christological orthodoxy already in the first century A.D. and none of the Gnostic groups or the author of the Gospel of Thomas or Marcion would have been identified as Christians by the apostles and their co-workers. This being the case, Ehrman's book should have been entitled 'Seven Little Heresies and how They Grew' not 'Lost Christianities'.

A Pastoral Yogi-ism of the Day

Though I am a diehard member of the Red Sox nation, I must confess I have always had a soft spot in my heart for that master of the malaprop-- Yogi Berra. And so, in an 'ecumenical' gesture I offer the following Yogi-ism for today:

"Always go to other peoples funerals, because you will want them to come to yours as well, later."

A Pair of Sailors Para-Sailing at Myrtle Beach

For our son David's 26th birthday we decided to treat him to para-sailing at our favorite beach-- North Myrtle Beach. So as the Styx song says "come sail away, come sail away, come sail away with us...."

'Watchmen'--Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

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For some time my son has been urging me to read the graphic novel 'Watchmen'. After going and seeing a 'graphic novel' of Frank Miller's on the big screen (i.e. 300), I was intrigued. Dave kept telling me I would find this an exercise in fertility rather than futility. And then we he showed me the teaser preview of the movie Watchmen which will be out next year, I figured it was time to do this. Then I discovered that though this 'novel' came out in April 1995, as a compilation of a bunch of DC comics put together in one convenient package, yet this thing is still No. 6 on Amazon, and has been called by a reviewer in Time Magazine one of the 100 most important novels since 1923, I figured I needed to figure out what all the fuss was about. 'Watchmen' is the brainchild of Alan Moore (graphic novel writer) and Dave Gibbons (illustrator), both Brits.

Let me offer two caveats from the outset. First of all, there is a certain resemblance between the 'Watchmen' in this story to the 'Watchers' in much earlier comic stories in Marvel Comics, more specifically in the Fantastic Four stories, among others. But the resemblance is mostly superficial for these 'Watchmen' do not simply watch, they act, getting involved in the murky mess of human squabbles. Secondly, I must admit that the psychological depth of characterization in this particular 'graphic novel' is light years beyond the somewhat pathos inducing tragic characteristics we see for example in Spiderman or the Thing. And furthermore, this ain't your DC Comics of my childhood that gave us Mr. Clean (aka Superman).

The graphic novel is just that--- graphic. It is an adult comic fiction, and definitely not to be foisted on some unexpecting children-- unless you want them to go into counseling quickly thereafter. I would call 'Watchmen' an apocalyptic and psychological thriller of sorts, only it is human super-heroes (even if warped and mutated and psychotic), not a divine messiah or God in person that both produces and helps humankind survive beyond Armageddon. This story will not soon be on Saturday morning cartoons. As a graphic novel it pulls no punches--- we do not have PC dialogue, we see human beings and even super-human beings with all their foibles and flaws. Even the super-heroes are amoral or sexually immoral, but their remains something of a passion for justice. And therein lies the twist in the tale, for as the Latin quote (see above) from Juvenal's Satires inquires-- if the Watchmen are the world policemen trying to save humanity from its own worst instinct, "who is watching the Watchmen"? The answer does not turn out to be God, nor even a harmless Wizard of Oz figure behind Door Number 3. There is no 'divine' intervention in this tale, sooner or later. And so the Watchmen are left to their own devices.

Let's talk for a moment about the way the plotting of the story works. It is much like watching an episode of "Lost" on TV, indeed one wonders if "Lost" found some of its inspiration in this very novel at least in terms of the way things are structured. We have both flash backs, and flash forwards in this novel though there is a linear and chronological thread pursued from episode to episode in the novel. We also have chapters based on extended tellings of the background of this or that super-hero, some of the previous generation of 'Minutemen', some of the current generation of 'Crimebusters'. The stories are skillfully woven together, and each chapter has an addendum of sorts with some pertinent extra info--- excerpts from a book or journal article written by one of the major figures in the story, for example. I imagine the original readers of this in seriatim comicbook form could hardly wait for the next issue to emerge. I much prefer reading it all at once, rather like the way I preferred watching all of Season 4 of Lost all at once. And think of this--- one could readily compare Jack and John of Lost, to Adrian and Jon of 'Watchmen', but I digress.

One of the things that did most intrigue me was not so much the plot and its resolution, which has been so often commented on at Amazon by multitudinous reviewers that it needs no rehearsing here. It does have interesting twists and turns, not the least of which is its revisionist history--- we've got Nixon as President well into the 80s--- Who Knew?

I was more intrigued by 2-3 of the more complex of the characters-- Walter Joseph Kovacs (aka Rorschach), and that exile from the Blue Men group-- Jon Osterman, and there are a couple of other real hummers as well. Osterman, whose name means 'Easterman' is a person who reassembles himself atomically speaking after falling into a radiation experiment of sorts. It give him incredible powers, such as teleportation. Rorschach is, like the test he is named after, a psychologically damaged litmus figure with a strong passion for justice, righting wrongs, especially the sort he endured as a child, which messed him up. Freud would have a field day with this graphic novel, to say the least.

Osterman is interesting because he is either a predestinarian, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, and he stands in contrast to Adrian Veidt who fancies himself as a sort of Alexander the Great or even a Ramses II sort of world dominator, and like most over-reachers of this sort, he believes in the power of himself.

Listen for example to what he says in a telling interview towards the end of the novel (Chap. XI pp. 8-9 of the addendum): "My mother left me a lot of money when she died, but I gave it to charity when I was seventeen. I wanted to prove that I could accomplish anything I wanted starting from absolutely nothing. Also I wanted to free myself of concern for money. Consequently, its never been a problem for me. To answer your question, you get to be a superhero by believing in the hero within you and summoning him or her forth by an act of will. Believing in yourself and your own potential is the first step to realizing that potential. Alternately, you could do as Jon did: Fall into a nuclear reactor and hope for the best. On the whole I think I prefer to stick to my own methods." The reporter then responds saying "You'll forgive me for saying so, but isn't that philosophy a little Norman Vincent Peale? That self-realization stuff? How exactly do you exploit that potential to the degree that you obviously have?" Veidt responds "The disciplines of physical exercise, meditation, and study aren't terribly esoteric. The means to attain a capability far beyond that of the so-called ordinary person are within reach of everyone if their desire and their will are strong enough. I have studied science, art, religion, and a hundred different philosophies. Anyone could do as much. By applying what you learn and ordering your thoughts in an intelligent manner it is possible to accomplish almost anything. Possible for the 'ordinary' person'. There's a notion I'd like to see buried: the ordinary person. Ridculous. There is no ordinary person."

This sounds rather familiarly like various sorts of self-help new age philosophies or post-modern philosophies which are interested in godless self-help spirituality. They stand at the opposite end of the spectrum from the determinism of Jon Osterman. What Moore has skillfully done here is unearthed the psychological pendulum swing when a culture is in an apocalyptic mood or situation. Rejected, at least on the surface is Nietzsche's 'Uber-Mensch' concept, or Ayn Rand's 'Few Brilliant persons held down by the hoi polloi' concept, and yet ironically the person who is expounding this 'every-man' philosophy is in fact Adrian Veidt-- the world's smartest and most successful human!! This is not then a tale of 'the little engine that could' or how 'underdog' became 'overcomer'. But it certainly does have the American self-help and pull yourself up by your bootstraps ethos and flavor.

What is most disturbing about this novel from a Christian point of view is not merely its penchant for violence vividly depicted or amorality and immorality, but in fact the despair that undergirds the story in an assumed godless world. You have apocalypse without new earth, Armageddon without New Jerusalem, super-human powers devised by humans without an ability at all to deal with the roots of the problem of human falleness. This may be a novel about a post-Armageddon brave world, but there is nothing 'new' about it, and if anything it just punctuates the inanity of violence, and humankind's inability to save itself, even with super-heroes-- "let us save the world and create a lasting peace through destroying a few million people" is the 'final solution' offered.

But wait, at the beginning of this novel we were reminded about Hiroshima-- haven't we already gone down that path before, and resolved never to go there again? And did dropping the bomb resolve the human dilemma? NOT SO MUCH. Well perhaps this novel serves as a talisman reminding us that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. And perhaps as well it reminds us that even our heroes have feet of clay.


Long ago, Daniel had a vision not unlike some aspects of this novel. He foresaw a series of beastly apocalyptic empires each of which rose and fell, and were finally succeeded by one established by 'one like a son of man' who came down from heaven, established justice and the kingdom of God on earth. Daniel was telling his audience-- the only final solution is indeed divine intervention. As it turns out, it will not be a Jon Osterman who saves the world by self-regeneration. It will be a Jesus Easterman, who will return to judge the quick and the dead and bring in the new heaven and new earth.

What did Golgotha and the Tomb look like?

Here are two interesting recreations of Golgotha and the tomb of Jesus which are worth pondering. Thanks to Justin Taylor for sending them along.

http://theologica.blogspot.com/2008/07/what-did-calvary-look-like-interview.html



http://theologica.blogspot.com/2008/07/what-did-jesus-tomb-look-like-interview.html