Undeception

Richard Fellows, author of the blog Paul and co-workers, just put up a fascinating challengeto the near unanimous understanding of the message of the Galatian “agitators”, also adding a twist on how to understand the dynamic between Paul and the “pillars” at the Jerusalem church.

The typical scholarly understanding of the background of Galatians is that the agitators genuinely represented a Jewish faction that still believed in retaining certain Jewish customs as we see in Acts 15. The message these agitators were spreading among the Galatians is usually conceptualized something like this:

“You should be circumcised because scripture and the Jerusalem church leaders require it. Why should you believe Paul when he tells you that you don’t have to be circumcised?”

In other words, they challenged Paul’s apostolic authority, subjugating it to that of the Jerusalem leadership. Richard Fellows, however, thinks that their message was somewhat different:

“You should be circumcised because scripture requires it. Paul knows this, but he taught you the opposite because he was a loyal envoy of the Jerusalem church leaders (who oppose circumcision).”

Eyebrows will most certainly be raised by this proposition, as this is a very different picture of the scenario than is commonly understood!

The description of the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 is often regarded as Luke’s understatement of major differences between Paul and the other “pillars” in the Jerusalem church. There is indeed tension between what the Council decided about Gentiles abstaining from meat offered to idols and Paul’s advice on that same subject in 1 Cor 8, even though Acts presents the decision as so uncontroversial that there was rejoicing in Antioch where the conflict originated (v. 31) despite of it. Still, we needn’t read any further between the lines than we are justified. Acts certainly depicts Peter as independently convinced of the invalidity of at least some of the Jewish customs, including his statement at the Jerusalem Council. This is not to say that the Jerusalem church was painted as wholly gone over to “Christian liberty” from the Jewish customs — clearly they were not — but that it was progressively minimalistic in its fidelity to those customs. Most scholars (except the conservative ones) usually assume that Luke is glossing over conflicts, making things look more harmonious than they actually were; I agree that this is a possibility, but because Luke gives plenty of examples of conflict among Christians in Acts, it doesn’t seem likely that Luke would have thought he could get away with ignoring a conflict of that magnitude, especially given his focus on Paul.

Richard makes some powerful arguments, including the claim that Paul was not defending his authority as equal to the Apostles here as he does in other epistles like 2 Corinthians, but rather he’s making a conscious effort to emphasize his independence from them; Paul wants to emphasize that he is not James’ or Peter’s lackey when he delivers the same message that the Council decided (viz. that Gentiles needn’t be circumcised). This is the motivation for Paul telling the Galatians the story of when he called out Peter for hypocrisy, to the effect that, “I’m even more radical in liberty from Jewish customs than Peter himself!” The implication is that the pillars like Peter were advocates of relative freedom from Jewish custom. Paul makes much more hay by recounting this story in Richard’s version than with the conventional understanding.

This interpretation is not without at least one problem that I’ve identified: if he’s right, Paul missed a wonderful opportunity to prove once and for all that he personally believed that Gentiles shouldn’t be circumcised. If the background for the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15 is given even the slightest credence, I have a hard time conceiving that it wouldn’t have occurred to Paul immediately upon hearing the Galatians question his convictions about Gentile circumcision to say, “You think I believe Gentiles should be circumcised? I was the one (well, me and Barnabas) who brought this matter to the attention of the Jerusalem leaders!”

I didn’t mean to go on so long about it, since I’m not necessarily convinced myself.  Still, it’s an interesting idea I thought I’d highlight here. Go read his post!

Can one be consistent in accepting both the common form of inerrancy as described in the Chicago Statement and universal common descent?

This question is something I struggle with when I observe people try to sell other believers on evolutionary theory without openly acknowledging the ways in which their own rejection of the idea of a single pair of progenitors has resulted in an often subtle yet usually profound modification of how they understand the Bible to work. I, too, have been tempted on numerous occasions to begin the presentation of my case by positing a (purely hypothetical) scenario in which accepting that early Genesis was unhistorical does not result in a revised or nuanced bibliology; if not outright dishonest, I feel that this approach is nonetheless misleading, perhaps even disingenuous, and a setup for problems later.

Rather than giving in to this temptation, I have opted to problematize their assumptions about what the Bible should be or should say. After all, this is the main problem, and one that underlies more misconceptions and naïveté than just their beliefs about origins.

Now, the fact is, there are indeed many Christians who accept mainstream evolutionary theory but are otherwise quite conservative theologically, including in their bibliology, although anecdotally I surmise that the number is far fewer of those who accept evolution and maintain an “inerrant” Scripture as taught by most of our evangelical pastors and teachers. Even when they say they accept inerrancy, they have – futilely, in my opinion – taken up the tack of nuancing “inerrant” to mean something quite different from those who take the term at face value; “inerrancy” implies more than a mysterious theological concordism, but scientific and especially historical concordism as well. But for those in the group, however small, that have (for the moment, anyway) caught their foot on their way down the slope, I understand why they can feel free to try to persuade others that they can go on believing essentially the same things that they’ve been taught they should, at least about the nature of the Bible, mutatis mutandis for the Adam/Eve part of course.

But what about the rest of us? My question is this: how legitimate is it to advertise compatibility between science and “that old time religion” while we know good and well that it’s only compatible after precisely the kind of modification to their bibliology that’s held them to their skepticism of science in the first place? Should we instead put more effort into maturing their bibliology on all fronts, and not just Genesis? I vote for emphasizing the latter and minimizing the “cake-and-eat-it-too” sort of accommodationism that misrepresents what most of my fellow theistic evolutionists have begun to conclude. Until they’re ready for a change in their understanding of what our faith rests upon and for an acknowledgment of the limitations of Scripture, I doubt they’ll go particularly far into acceptance of science no matter how cleverly we present it.

Do you agree?

(Many thanks to Richard Beck of Experimental Theology for reminding me of an old friend.)

George MacDonald was a theologian, pastor, and author who lived in Scotland in the nineteenth century. He was raised in a strongly Calvinist environment but instinctively rejected what he considered a harsh view of God in his own tradition, the Church of Scotland. The following is an excerpt of an “unspoken sermon” that is based off of a couple fundamental motifs running through MacDonald’s writings, that of the cherished child and also of the special close relationship between father and child, both of which were markedly countercultural at the time but which he saw modeled in his own relationship with his father.

How terribly, then, have the theologians misrepresented God in the measures of the low and showy, not the lofty and simple humanities! Nearly all of them represent him as a great King on a grand throne, thinking how grand he is, and making it the business of his being and the end of his universe to keep up his glory, wielding the bolts of a Jupiter against them that take his name in vain. They would not allow this, but follow out what they say, and it comes much to this. Brothers, have you found our king ? There he is, kissing little children and saying they are like God. There he is at table with the head of a fisherman lying on his bosom, and somewhat heavy at heart that even he, the beloved disciple, cannot yet understand him well. The simplest peasant who loves his children and his sheep were—no, not a truer, for the other is false, but—a true type of our God beside that monstrosity of a monarch.

The God who is ever uttering himself in the changeful profusions of nature; who takes millions of years to form a soul that shall understand him and be blessed*; who never needs to be, and never is, in haste; who welcomes the simplest thought of truth or beauty as the return for seed he has sown upon the old fallows of eternity; who rejoices in the response of a faltering moment to the age-long cry of his wisdom in the streets; the God of music, of painting, of building, the Lord of Hosts, the God of mountains and oceans; whose laws go forth from one unseen point of wisdom, and thither return without an atom of loss; the God of history working in time unto Christianity; this God is the God of little children, and he alone can be perfectly, abandonedly simple and devoted. The deepest, purest love of a woman has its well-spring in him. Our longing desires can no more exhaust the fulness of the treasures of the Godhead, than our imagination can touch their measure. Of him not a thought, not a joy, not a hope of one of his creatures can pass unseen; and while one of them remains unsatisfied, he is not Lord over all.

Therefore, with angels and with archangels, with the spirits of the just made perfect, with the little children of the kingdom, yea, with the Lord himself, and for all them that know him not, we praise and magnify and laud his name in itself, saying Our Father. We do not draw back for that we are unworthy, nor even for that we are hard-hearted and care not for the good. For it is his childlikeness that makes him our God and Father. The perfection of his relation to us swallows up all our imperfections, all our defects, all our evils; for our childhood is born of his fatherhood. That man is perfect in faith who can come to God in the utter dearth of his feelings and his desires, without a glow or an aspiration, with the weight of low thoughts, failures, neglects, and wandering forgetfulness, and say to him, “Thou art my refuge, because thou art my home.”

from “The Child in the Midst“

* Please note that this was published in 1867. Strikingly, it appears that MacDonald had recognized and embraced the theological beauty of evolutionary theory within ten years of Origin of the Species.

Ok, this is the beginning of a series I’ve been meaning to start up for quite some time.

My mission: I’m going to post a lyric that attempts to make theological/philosophical observations I find interesting. I may or may not choose to highlight my own specific thoughts on the subject (but you’ll probably be able to get some idea from looking at the post tags).

Your mission: Tell us what you think of the message of the lyric. For instance, tell what you think the lyricist(s) observations were, what you think of those observations, or how well they performed lyrical artistry in this song. Don’t concentrate so much on why you do or don’t like the artist/musical genre, etc.

Electric Train

written by Larry Tagg, recorded by Bourgeois Tagg on Bourgeois Tagg

In the beginning…I had nothing to do
I was all alone in a big empty room
So I decided to build myself an electric train
It took six days’ time, things were never the same

Monday I built the track
It looked straight but it came right back
‘Cause it curved so slow if you leave from here
You go far as you can go and you’ll be back in a year

Monday, Tuesday, line the railway
Wednesday, Thursday, make it straight
Friday, Saturday, watch out that day
Saturday could be a big mistake

Chorus:

Monday, Tuesday, line the railway
Wednesday, Thursday, make it straight
Friday, Saturday, watch out for Saturday
That day could be a big mistake

Friday I took my train
I shined it, I greased it, I shined it again
I set the groove of the wheels on the rail
But it only moved when I pushed it myself

So by Saturday evening I wasn’t alone
‘Cause I took it and gave it a mind of its own
It’d grease its own wheels, it’d make its own way
I said to myself, “This train is gonna run ’til judgment day.”

Monday, Tuesday, line the railway
Wednesday, Thursday, make it straight
Friday, Saturday, watch out that day
Saturday could be a big mistake

Monday, Tuesday, line the railway
Wednesday, Thursday, make it straight
Friday, Saturday, watch out for Saturday
That day could be a big mistake

Sunday was my day of rest
I sat back and watched it go
It went backwards and forwards, it went too fast
It heated up the track ’til it started to glow
And pretty soon the rails were fried
My electric train jumped the track
And there it was, it lay on its side
All twisted and burnt black

Monday, Tuesday, line the railway
Wednesday, Thursday, you gotta make it straight
Friday, Saturday, next time no Saturday
That day was a big mistake

I’ll make it again, work out the kinks
You can’t win with a train that thinks

How did Jesus understand his own mission? I have been reading through the Gospel of Mark to see how the earliest portrait of Jesus answers that question. Mark is virtually unanimously recognized to have been the first Gospel written and the one upon which two other canonized Gospels were based. The author put a lot of artistry into painting a picture of what would it have been like to live in Palestine in Jesus’ time, hearing rumors about the intriguing Nazarene going from place to place.

To spill the beans up front, I’d like to submit a subtitle for at least the first portion of the Gospel of Mark: A Funny Thing Happened on My Way through Palestine Proclaiming the Advent of the Kingdom of God. A little long, perhaps, but I think it really captures Mark’s portrayal of Jesus and how he goes about his ministry.

Here are my observations as I read through the first chapter of Mark with this question in mind.

* The curtain opens on John the Baptist, who “appeared in the desert” near Jerusalem in fulfillment of the prophecies of “Isaiah” (actually Malachi and Isaiah), preaching “a baptism of repentance for forgiveness.”

* John informs everyone that someone “more powerful” is coming who will baptize with the Holy Spirit rather than water.

* Jesus makes his first appearance, coming down from Nazareth of Galilee to where John is baptizing, and is himself baptized. As if for Jesus’ own assurance, ”he saw the heavens torn apart” and heard his sonship affirmed by a voice from heaven as the Spirit visibly descends on him.

John the Baptist had predicted that Jesus will baptize not with water but with the Holy Spirit; this authority is given him after Jesus is baptized with water and the Holy Spirit baptizes him.

* The same Spirit “drives” or “casts” him out into the desert to be put on trial by Satan for forty days.

Interestingly, no mention is made either of the specific “temptations” we find in Matthew and Luke (“double tradition” material) or of fasting during his stay in the desert; the fasting aspect seems unlikely to underlie Mark’s version given that the angels are said to “wait on him” (v.13). Might we infer that his diet could parallel that of his desert-dwelling predecessor? Would we be justified to read peirasmoi in its more generic meaning as “trials” or “tests” given the absence of examples of specific “temptations” supplied by Matthew/Luke?

* Once John is arrested, Jesus reemerges back in his home country of Galilee, now on mission “proclaiming the good news of God”.

From the beginning, Jesus’ ministry is as preacher/prophet. And what is the message of this desert preacher, the successor to a desert preacher?

“The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.”

Like John, Jesus preaches repentance: but whereas John pointed to a coming order higher than his, personified in Jesus, Jesus pointed to the Kingdom of God now drawn near. “The time is fulfilled.” This message is so strikingly simple and therefore mysterious to anyone not acquainted with this language by prior familiarity with Jesus’ other teachings, or perhaps with an earlier tradition which this teaching may be drawing upon. But what exactly is the Kingdom of God? Is its presence the “good news” itself?

* On his way through Galilee to Capernaum, Jesus calls his first disciples who drop their occupations to learn how to “fish for people”, which they were known by most of this book’s original readers to have fulfilled with their evangelistic role as apostles.

* Next, we see why he’s going to Capernaum: to teach in the synagogue.

Again, he’s shown to be primarily a teacher/preacher. Notice that even before seeing a single miracle, the people there were astounded by his teaching, “for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” Jesus is in his element; this is his métier.

* Yet his mission is interrupted by a man with an unclean spirit, and he is forced to work his first miracle in order to continue his mission.

The man with the unclean spirit commits two grave offenses. Not only does he disrupt Jesus’ teaching but he also lets out a secret that, if believed, would explain the “authority” apparent to those who heard it: “You are the Holy One of God!”

Jesus’ wonder-working is often considered to be one of the main characteristics or even a goal of his mission, but here in its first instance and in many cases following, the author shows us that it is but a practical means to accomplish his greater mission; Jesus’ miracles are painted as incidental.

Instead of merely casting out the demons who outed him as “the Holy One of God,” he silences them and then exorcises the man, revealing an important aspect of the nature of his authority: it’s a secret. In this story we first see that there is tension between his wonder-working and the secret of his authority, a tension that introduces drama throughout the entire Gospel. We can’t help but notice that this has the tendency to both support one and subvert another of his goals: in this demonstration of power, the credibility of his teaching is bolstered but this in turn causes his fame to go abroad against his will.

* Next, he goes to Simon and Andrew’s house for lodging, and found Simon’s mother-in-law sick. Naturally, he heals her.

This miracle happens almost by accident: were you a healer and were your hostess sick, would you not heal her? This is yet another incidental miracle Jesus performs “on the way”. This a pattern of behavior we’ll see over and over.

* The next batch of healings occur when people bring “many who were sick with various diseases” and who had demons to the house where he was staying.

Here it explicitly states that he doesn’t let the demons speak “because they knew him” and could let slip the secret of his identity. But note most especially that they found Jesus and brought him their sick and that he did not go set up a tent and begin a healing crusade. This is a trend that will continue.

* The next morning, after his disciples chase him down, he announces,

“Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.“

This is a remarkable statement. The author is again telling us what he thought Jesus’ mission was: to go from place to place to “proclaim the message”, or literally to “proclaim” (Gk. κηρύσσω) the advent of the Kingdom of God. That’s twice in this first small portion of the Gospel — surely that’s significant!

* He goes “throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and “casting out demons” who are probably, like the other demons mentioned so far, intent to let the cat out of the bag.

* Once again he is found by someone seeking a miracle and he is persuaded by compassion to fulfill the leper’s wish. As usual, he requests secrecy, which is just as usually ignored.

* His fame has become so cumbersome that by the end of chapter one, he is forced to limit his public appearances for a while.

Here are some themes I found and expect to find recurring throughout this, the earliest Gospel portrait of Jesus and his mission:

1. Jesus’ mission was to preach in as many places as possible that the “time is fulfilled”, that the Kingdom of God had come. We’re told that this was good news to his audience, but we’re not explicitly told how (at least to begin with).
2. Jesus kept getting put in places in which it was difficult for him not to display his power.
3. A dichotomous parallel seems to be erected between the “Holy Spirit” of which Jesus is an agent and the “unclean spirits” who fear him. For instance, subsequent to his own being cast out (ἐκβάλλω) into the desert by “the Spirit”, Jesus is said to himself “cast out” (ἐκβάλλω) the unclean spirits.
4. Jesus is a man on mission, on the go from here to there, an itinerant preacher who has a message to convey.
5. Jesus’ miracles are incidental, usually occurring while he is on his way. It is hard for him to resist working miracles as he sees needs arise, perhaps because he is aware that in so doing he complicates his own mission.

According to Mark, Jesus’ main mission was to proclaim repentance because of the Kingdom of God’s drawing nigh. Mark’s use of sensational material is characteristic of his fast-paced, pulp fiction narrative. There are unclean spirits, mass healings, and resurrections. This has been taken as normative for the Christian experience in today’s world by the charismatic movement. But the thing that stands out when you read Mark especially with the Messianic Secret in mind is that Jesus’ miracles are more often than not portrayed as responses to incidental occasions in which he is seemingly unwillingly put on the spot; they are certainly not his main mission.

Now does my proposed subtitle make a little more sense? Let me know what you think!

Polycarp at The Church of Jesus Christ and I seem to be travelling the same paths lately (does this indicate that I’m finally a part of the Church of Jesus Christ? The U.S. branch, anyway?). He recently wrote a series of posts, some in depth and some quite short, regarding hell and universalism in Scripture and in the ECF, appropriately leaving the question open-ended.

Now he’s gone and dredged up another topic left conveniently buried by most modern Protestants who champion orthodoxy and good theology (so long as it comports with their already composed beliefs): baptism.

I was thinking yesterday during Sunday School that I should write a post on “unapproved” answers to Evangelism Explosion question number 2, in which God asks the recently departed who appear on His doorstep, “Why should I let you in to my heaven?”

The correct answer, according to EE and other Protestants everywhere, is something along the lines of, “I stand on Christ’s finished work.” I got to thinking that even saying “I believed the story in the Gospels” would ostensibly not quite cut it, because “even the demons believe, and tremble.” Rather, one must have faith that transforms, a conversion experience. And even that’s not quite enough: it is conceivable that one who believes with all his heart and experiences remorse for his guilt and acknowledges it before God who is nonetheless not one of the Elect would still be sent packing away from the Pearly Gates.

Yet all of the below are scriptural answers, sometimes given to people in the NT without the benefit of any of the above qualifiers (e.g. #2 below). And all of them would be considered somehow deficient by most of those who would endorse the Evangelism Explosion method of proselytization.

1. I repented and was baptized. (Acts 2.38, 3.19) (EE response: “GASP! ‘Baptism’ is a work — do you think you could by human effort contribute to your salvation?”)
2. My father believed and our whole household was baptized. (Acts 16.31) (EE response: “GASP! Doesn’t matter what your father did — did you believe?”)
3. I always thought that Jesus was God somehow, and even said so when asked. I mean, why else would God have raised him from the dead? (Romans 10.1) (EE response: “But did you ever bother to consult God on the matter? Did you even really mean it? Did the Holy Spirit come in and begin to work on you from the inside out?”)
4. Well, You oughta know, Lord – You’re the One who wrote down my name before the world began. (various Calvinist prooftexts) (EE response: “Even the Elect shouldn’t be so impudent!”)

Ok, the last one was somewhat facetious. But do you get my point? Most of the dogmatic “saved by faith alone” persuasion would be horrified with the first two answers at least. The third was an attempt to depict someone in a satured Christian culture (as in my own south-eastern U.S.) who hadn’t really thought about it that much before, but assumed it was true and yet never had a conscious conversion experience.

Now, I don’t want to put words in Multifish’s mouth (Lord knows he has enough in there already), but his posts on baptism certainly suggest (as I have stated before) that in this area, Protestants who look askance at baptismal regeneration are forced both to twist Scripture and ignore early Church tradition in order to do so.

Scripture is anything but perspicuous. And it’s not even particularly coherent: there is no natural way to tie together the answers given in the scriptural references of 1 through 4 above, but all of the answers I gave were in some sense undeniably “scriptural”, nonetheless. This is at the heart of my antipathy toward systematic theologies: they always leave out or skew some data from the historical witness of the early Christians. And as Manyvehiclep pointed out in this well researched post, “Paul was not speaking about written documents when he spoke of Tradition; he was speaking about teachings handed down,” and these teachings kept circulating alongside Paul’s writings and are present in the writings of the Early Church Fathers. Yet they uniformly taught that instead of simply being a symbol of life renewed or a covenant initiation rite, “baptism is dying out to sin,” the outward act necessary to turn to God, just as the confession with the mouth is the act by which Paul says we are saved (Rom 10.10). To these early believers, outward acts aren’t merely signs, but the acts by which things are actually accomplished.

I’m not personally arguing for baptismal regeneration. I’m merely putting on display more of the many necessary assumptions that go into our modern sanitized, preapproved Protestantism. In the end, the majority evangelical view may indeed be correct, but until we receive more, or more authoritative, revelation than what’s contained in Scripture and the ECF, we have no right to be arrogantly dismissive of other Christian traditions that disagree with us, even when it’s in the important area of soteriology. You are free to continue to assume that what you’ve always been taught is correct and that baptismal regeneration is incorrect, but you are constrained by Christian humility to acknowledge that it is an assumption and that other believers who don’t share that assumption can do so in good conscience.

Daniel Kirk at Storied Theology has a great post up in which he’s critical of an article in the current Christianity Today theme this month by J. I. Packer and Gary A. Parrett in praise of catechism.

Now I must say, since we’re attending a Presbyterian church now (I’m actually serious), my kids have recently been learning the children’s version of the Westminster Shorter Catechism for Sunday School. While I’ll certainly need to start shaking loose some of the stuff I have problems with in the WCF before it hardens permanently in their minds, it’s both a good exercise for their brains and a way of learning historical Protestant theology. What I’m just saying is that although I certainly have a problem with overly and artificially systematized theology, I’m not really necessarily anti-catechism.

But I also must say, the following remarks from Daniel Kirk are spot on:

I could not disagree more with the claims being asserted [in the article by Packer and Parrett]: that the real thing we need is theology, and all those stories in the Bible (you know, the actual Bible God, in God’s wisdom, decided to give to the church) are second-rate tools the learning of which makes us less competent Christians.

This is the classic inversion of sola scriptura: no longer do we really want you to do what the Reformers did (read your Bible), we want you instead to read and memorize what they said after they had read their Bibles.

Wow. That last sentence was a home run, with bases loaded. What do you think the Hebrews did before they had a Calvin or a Beza?  Do we really want to take the ancient Jewish commentaries as seriously as we’re to take, e.g., the Westminster Confession of Faith? Why the heck would the Bible come loaded with stories of people encountering God, often coming away with differing ideas about what they learned about Him, and very little that even resembles systematic theology? Couldn’t God have provided an inspired, inerrant commentary or hermeneutic key if He really wanted to?

Certainly we should teach our kids our beliefs about what the authors of the Bible believed; it can even take the form of a catechism. But whatever we do, we don’t want to give them the impression that we are teaching them unquestionable Approved and Authorized Theology^®. We should be instructing and encouraging them that good theology isn’t learned by rote, but painstakingly cultivated.