Undeception

Take the great 16th century reformer Martin Luther, for instance.  Most would argue that Luther — who argued for “scripture alone” — had a high regard for the Bible.  Yet, he was quite critical of some of it.

For instance, Luther argued …

(1) God’s prophets in the Old Testament were sometimes in error,

(2) the book of Kings is more reliable than the book of Chronicles,

(3) the book of Esther should have probably been left out of the Bible,

(4) not all the Gospels are of equal value,

(5) the writer of Hebrews erred when he said that there is no possibility of a second repentance,

(6) the author of James “mangles scripture” and the whole book should be burned like worthless straw,

(7) the book of Revelation reveals nothing.

From an interesting post on Nazarene theologian Thomas Jay Oord’s blog For The Love of Wisdom and The Wisdom of Love.

This is the second post in the guest series “Who is Satan?” by Arcamaede. An index for all posts in the series is here.

~ Steve

___________________________________________________
Satan’s development in the Old Testament is very hard to harmonize due largely to uncertainty of the dating of the writings of the Old Testament. What we will attempt to do below is speculate using the boundaries we have.

Associations of the serpent in the Garden of Eden with Satan are problematic. Even if we were to view the Garden story as history (which I do not), we are faced with a contextual interpretation issue:  the text of Genesis does not make a connection between Satan and the serpent.  In fact, the story gives us a clear indication that the serpent is just a snake (albeit a talking one and apparently a walking one).

We have to go to a later period of the writing of the Bible to find the identification of the serpent of Genesis 3 with the Satan.  Which indicates that the original audience of Genesis probably did not put the serpent in the role of Cosmic source of all things Evil.

In the Old Testament the word that ends up being Satan in English is הַשָׂטָן (ha-satan, pronounced ha-sah-tahn) which literally means “the accuser”.  The word without its article gets translated adversary, accuser, or opponent: e.g. 1 Samuel 29:4 …

The fireworks continue between BioLogos and the esteemed Joseph Emerson Brown Professor of Christian Theology and President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, God’s chosen Arbiter of Faithful Readings of the Scriptures, and official representative of the spirit of biblical interpretation on earth, Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr. The latter has responded to Karl Giberson’s own response to an unreadably ignorant lecture recently given by The Great Baptist Paraclete.

A lot of the specific furor has been over Mohler’s original charge (it was no bland statement) that Darwin’s important trip aboard the Beagle was undertaken in search for evidence for an already assumed evolution. Giberson’s objection to this mischaracterization of history and Darwin’s motives is duly noted, but I myself am not so sure that Giberson’s stance that Darwin was still consciously nursing his “childhood faith” when he left aboard the Beagle is quite right, either.

Still, to acknowledge that Darwin’s faith was already somewhat cultural and never particularly personal as Mohler is intent to do is not at all to grant the demonstrably and consciously false implication of Mohler (and his fellow rotten teeth in Fundagelicalism) that Darwin was intent to find ways to bolster a rejection of a “literal” reading of Genesis — still less of faith in God’s creative role in general. The Beagle naturalist Darwin was a man who struggled more with problematic tenets of Christianity and organized religion in general, and not until his heart-breaking family crisis much later in life did his doubts orbit the question of the basic existence of God.

For Mohler, though, this would make no difference: the fact that he would even question Mohler’s understanding of “orthodox Christianity” at all would make any compatible beliefs he held highly suspect at best. This is where the best part of Giberson’s latest response picks up:

Let me conclude by responding to your charge that what I “have actually succeeded in doing is to show how much doctrine Christianity has to surrender in order to accommodate itself to evolution.” As a theological layperson, I hesitate to engage a trained theologian on this question, but let me rush in where angels fear to tread and offer that “doctrines” are human constructs, much like “theories” are in science. They are not facts—they are explanations or interpretations of facts.

You seem to equate your understanding of how the Bible should be read with plain-fact Christian orthodoxy. There we must part ways, and I suspect that at the end of the day, this may be the real point of contention. I do not think that I am showing how much doctrine Christianity has to surrender, but how problematic fundamentalist literalism is for engaging science. [my emphasis]

You’re darned right that this is “the real point of contention”! As Mohler stated categorically, “The theory of evolution is incompatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ even as it is in direct conflict with any faithful reading of the Scriptures.” The poor guy’s fear is explicitly the “costs” of accepting evolution “in terms of theological concessions.” Concessions? Would the decision to consider another piece of (rock solid) evidence in order to help us in our interpretation of Scripture mean that we’d actually have to reevaluate something we had already believed without examining? Might one honestly approaching the scientific evidence in order to help better understand Christianity as it actually exists, which to varying degrees it always does independently of our perceptions of that reality, be forced to “concede” that an earlier perception was incomplete, inadequate, or even just plain wrong?

If that’s so unthinkable, Dr. Al, you’re right: you better run from evolution like the plague.

This is the first post in a guest series by Arcamaede, who has contributed previously. Hope you enjoy it!

~ Steve

___________________________________________________

This is the article that just wouldn’t die.  It has been several months in the making and due to ever increasing materials on the topic, it has been broken into six pieces.  I highly suspect it will evolve even after publication.

This article has been inspired primarily by my own curiosity into the origins, meanings, and application of all things “ancient.”  I don’t see the material herein as conclusive or by any stretch of the imagination complete.  This series is a result of my efforts to learn and grow in both knowledge and understanding.

I need to state my position from the outset that I see God as a reality which human words fail to encompass or describe as He is.  I understand evil arises as a product of social interactions between humans and does not have an existence outside of them.  Satan is a personification embodying those destructive interactions.

Approaching evil with this assumption presents problems.  A large part of the later utilization of the character of Satan will be to mitigate or absolve God from the problem of human suffering.  Because of this, we’ll be segregating “moral” evil from things like floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes.  I’m taking a naturalistic view of these — they are neither good nor evil; they just happen.

I do not want to leave the impression that I’m trying to make evil itself a moot concept.  The goal in this is to understand better the struggle that the communities that produced these ancient writings went through as they themselves struggled with evil and suffering.

The foundational challenge in this study has been untangling later conceptions of Satan from more ancient ones.  There are many cases where untangling becomes difficult and speculative.  We will attempt to untangle the sources of Satan over a series of five articles.

Part 2, Satan in the Old Testament, will introduce us to the “Accuser” and his role in the Divine Council.

Part 3, Co-evolution of pre-Christian Satan, will show how Jewish Scripture collides with outside influences.

Part 4, New Testament Development, will show how the New Testament presents Satan as a full-blown personification of Evil at war with a good God.

Part 5, Post 1st Century Development, demonstrates that modern theology of Satan had quite a bit of help from the early Christian Fathers.

Part 6, Modern Development, will be packed with interesting notes on how Satan became a commercial success despite an increasing doubt in his actual existence.

Hopefully these articles will come out roughly a week apart from one another (or less depending on favorable weather).  Given that I’m not a professional theologian, I’m forced to sprinkle these writings between actual work, family, and other spiritual activities.

Please feel free to comment agreement, disagreement, and hopefully contribution to the development of the ideas in each article.

At the suggestion of a certain rather busy diplomat, I decided to treat this trending ditty as a Theologically Interesting Lyric. It is indeed theologically interesting, because it dovetails into my recent discussions about contrasts in the OT writers’ conceptions of God and those of some of the NT writers.

First the song: “Pray for You” by Jaron and the Long Road to Love. In order to avert the potential spambot activity they would attract I have elected not to reproduce the lyrics here, but here they are in case you don’t want to watch the video:

[Hard link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atBg9zLI2bA]

Potential humor aside, when I first saw this my first thoughts were of just how anti-Christian in spirit such sentiments were. Jesus told us to forgive, turn the other cheek, walk the other mile, etc. My mind searched for a Scripture that would point out how invoking the Lord’s name to do what is evil is condemned and an affront to God.

There may be such verses, but before I got there, my mind rammed into a wall: I remembered the imprecatory Psalms.

Any student of Scripture knows of these psalms in which the psalmist begs God to take revenge on the psalmist’s enemies. These sometimes take the form of simple requests for salvation with the contextual implication that the desired manner of salvation would involve some form of retributive or preemptive violence.

Then there are more sadistic cases in which the psalmist expresses his hope for vengeance that seems to exceed the ill will in our song selection:

O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction,

Happy is he who repays you

For what you have done to us-

He who seizes your infants

And dashes them against the rocks.

Psalm 137.8-9

In his Reflections on the Psalms, C. S. Lewis famously referred to such “cursing Psalms” as expressing “contemptible”, “devilish” sentiments. Ironically, these judgments of Lewis are themselves deprecated similarly by many inerrantists.

Lewis’s point is that we can’t necessarily assume that every attitude expressed by even the godly men in Scripture is prescriptive for us or indicative of how we ourselves should respond or believe. We should not just uniformly accept every teaching of Scripture as equally authoritative, not treating the whole thing “as an encyclopedia or an encyclical” but rather “steeping ourselves in its tone and temper and so learning its overall message.”

Too often, evangelicals with “higher” views of Scripture disagree and try to redeem these statements as justifiable, if perhaps hyperbolic, appeals to God for justice rather than personal revenge. But the problem is the definition of “justice” underlying this: the psalmist believes that justice is served by retributive revenge, and apparently the more dramatic the better: if the simple downfall of a foreign nation is a sign of God’s intervening hand, surely the skulls of the infidels being crushed against the rocks is a sign that God’s people are especially vindicated! This is something the psalmist may have believed, but it’s certainly not something we should follow him in.

How can I say this?

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Matt. 5.43-48

Sometimes it is believed that we should hold our peace, turn the other cheek, etc. because “‘Vengeance is Mine,’ says the Lord. ‘I will repay.’” Just let ‘em be, I have heard countless times, because God’s got something nasty in store for those wicked folks that He might just spare them from if you dare usurp His privilege of enacting vengeance.

But notice the subtle twist in the last sentence of the above passage from the Sermon on the Mount that is seldom duly noted: loving one’s enemies is to be undertaken not in deference to God’s priority for wrath but in imitation of God’s perfection exemplified in self-sacrificial love of one’s enemies! It is when we forgive and show grace that we are acting as our Father in heaven.

Again we see that a faithful reading of Scripture does not automatically deify the thoughts of the authors and contort them so that they appear to be in full concord with one another. As people who self-identify as Christians, surely it is no scandal that we should insist upon reading all Scripture through Christ, judging all Scripture through Christ.

I foresee that many of my evangelical friends will not have a problem with recognizing the circumstantial angst of the psalmist and understand that his emotions may have gotten the better of him. To these I say, you and I are not as far apart as you might think. I simply extend consideration of the limitation of humans in their circumstances in more of the Bible than the imprecatory Psalms.

My good friend Cliff Martin describes the experience of people like myself who have followed the truth even when it took us outside the borders of the evangelical reservation and found that its gate-keepers enforce stringent import restrictions on items we acquire outside its borders  – of course, he does so using the perhaps more apt biblical analogy of the shibboleth.

Speaking from experience, Cliff writes:

As I take a few steps back from the accepted traditional theology of the evangelical church to which I belong, that very church keeps nudging me to step further away. I am asked to keep my concerns to myself. When I try to warn my friends that the edifice of Christianity is supported by pillars of styrofoam, I am told things would go better for me if I would just keep it to myself. I am told that the personal rejection I endure on so many fronts is my own fault. I come on “too strong”, they tell me.

Let me interrupt here. Knowing as I do how tactfully and respectfully Cliff engages in conversation with those he disagrees with (read the comments on his blog posts!), I find it hard to imagine the label “too strong” being applied to him in any bad way, at very least in any way that wouldn’t also apply to the very evangelical polemicists he is talking to. More likely the label these people are reaching for is “too credible and unnervingly likable”, but regardless, he is passionate because he believes that these conversations are important. As he continues:

The fact is, I haven’t found any polite way to tell people that the survival of evangelical faith will require the shedding of many cherished shibboleths.

I agree completely. God knows that I don’t opine on subject after subject out of some perverse love for sacred cow tipping (I do consider that to be perverse), or to show off as a free-thinker. But some of evangelicalism’s sine qua non‘s, which almost all go back to hopeless dependence on the false, extra-biblical doctrine of inerrancy, are in desperate need of being expelled.

People are leaving the faith because they receive only condemnation when they voice their honest doubts about the “official” pronunciation of the secret code word. Outsiders are recognizing the too-real threat of quixotic Christian culture warriors heroically stabbing at scarecrows, leaving the crows to ravage their fields, while all the time real world needs that we all recognize are not being met.

I’m truly sorry, my conservative friends, but Cliff, I, and the like-minded cannot and will not just shut up and go away. Christianity is our home, you are our family, and we’re not just going to watch the termites gnaw away until there’s nothing left except for useless but perfectly “orthodox” ruins.

We intend to tread lightly, be judicious in our challenges, and speak lovingly to you whom we embrace as family but who view us as dangerous outsiders. We will try to be patient, because we can’t blame you for protecting what you are convinced is precious.

But the deck is stacked against us. What can be done?

Meanwhile, we black sheep are just going to keep bleating “sibboleth”.

You’re afraid your faith has flown. As someone whose faith has undergone quite a transformation since I began my biblical studies, I understand the sting of feeling misled and finding that many things once trusted implicitly have proved illusory.

There are undoubtedly whole swaths of my faith that remain unexplored as a result of its being something that was handed down to me and that I grew up believing unquestioningly. The examined part of my faith, which has nowadays grown to encompass a large part of it, is based upon what I know of the man Jesus. I make no claims to have found the “historical Jesus”, but what we know of his impact is enough to entice me to follow as much as possible. For me as a student of history, and ancient history especially, I have no illusions that the Gospel accounts should present a uniform and flawless picture; I expect discrepancies and other incongruities. So while I certainly don’t deny or devalue the necessity of doubt, recognizing the Gospels as fully human testimonies and interpretations of the teachings and life of one Jesus of Nazareth doesn’t itself strike me particularly as an exercise in doubt, but rather as a calculated first step in trying to discover how a particular man impacted the people of the first century.

Sometimes seeking knowledge of Christian origins is reminiscent of searching for your ancestors through obituaries or property records in old courthouses, more than one of which is likely to have perished along with its records in a fire; but you know those people existed, even where they lived, and especially their impact in bringing about your own existence. You pursue knowledge of them to learn nuances about your heritage, but the important features of your heritage are already ingrained in you, are responsible for producing you, even without your recognizing it. What I keep coming back to is this: something happened in Palestine in the first century, and the man from Nazareth has changed the world — has shaped my world, and I daresay yours, too.

My inability to make sense of the universe under the belief that my dear wife, my precious children, and all the physical world are merely purposeless, loveless, uncreated atoms bouncing around randomly results in a faith in something that gives it all a meaning transcendent of myself and my chemically determined desires. We not only live with our faith but by our faith, and so we will naturally want to examine it. Unfortunately, when we do so we often end up treating the object of our faith as Psyche did Cupid, who after being subjected to her illicit scrutiny could not endure the injustice of not being embraced merely for the undeniable affection he had shown her. Now, I certainly don’t mean that we should not examine the details of our faith (it’s the very purpose of this blog!): we shouldn’t confuse the specific instantiations of faith, which should be studied and analyzed, for the value and object of our faith which we know already. The proof is in the pudding, and most believers have enjoyed the pudding in spite of occasional dismay in finding out that it was composed of different ingredients than they had assumed or that it was made by a different process than they supposed (perhaps still suppose) should have been used. As a music lover who later studied music theory, I well know the temptation to become so distracted by pulling apart an old favorite song of mine, critiquing and pointing out its “failures”, that I forget how I once loved the song.

Frankly, I cannot conceive of a world absent that Meaning which has in the obviously fallible Christian community nevertheless created the clearest human embodiments of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control that I know. I would remain a Christian even if I didn’t believe Jesus of Nazareth was someone divinely significant. The various sources, traditions, and interpretations of Jesus that are responsible for New Testament Christianity, characteristically human though they be, are themselves sufficient to give me a model worth trying to live up to.

In the end, even the unbeliever who grounds his life in the undeniably good and lovely is doing something akin to worshiping God from afar off. Look around and see all the good things that you prize in your life, the values that motivate your identification of things as “evil”: they are the rays of a nearby star, “the Father of Lights,” that I am convinced you are orbiting still.