On The Fly

I don't have time to put together a post with a round-up of all the interesting posts around the blogosphere today, so I will simply point readers to the sidebar on this blog with posts I've recently read and chose to share.

Someone found their way to this blog today by searching for "why are some churches saying obama is the antichrist and something about a fly". And so I'm confident that whether you are looking for something very specific and unusual, or just interesting blog posts, you'll find them, with or without my help...

From the Archives: Advice for Those Buying a Used Religion

This is a second repost of something I wrote on my old blog about Carl Sagan's The Varieties of Scientific Experience, which are essentially a transcript of his Gifford Lectures. Sagan's approach to religion is so thoughtful, level-headed, and rational that it is tempting to advocate "Saganism", an approach to truth that is open to both the sciences and spirituality, and which acknowledges (as Sagan did) that the spiritual quest and the human effort to understand out place in the universe did not end 1,400 or 2,000 or some other number of years ago. Rather, it continues (pp.x-xi,xv-xvi). His lectures began (p.1) with a quotation from Plutarch: "The truly pious must negotiate a difficult course between the precipice of godlessness and the marsh of supersitition".

One of my favorite analogies in the book is between buying a used car and choosing a religion (pp.144-145). It is not enough, Sagan emphasizes, to know that you really need a car. You seek for evidence, and know that the salesman cannot always be trusted. Yet many people not only do not seek critical investigation of religious claims, they get upset when purported miracles are disproved or at least cast into question (p.138). Thomas Paine made an argument that is as powerful today as ever: "We have never seen, in our time, nature go out of her course. But we have good reason to believe that millions of lies have been told in the same time. It is therefore at least millions to one that the reporter of a miracle tells a lie" (quoted pp.136-137). According to the Bible, God gave great and undoubtable signs - parting seas, fire from heaven, and so on. Yet Sagan asks the pertinent question: "why should God be so clear in the Bible and so obscure in the world?" (p.167). Unless Christians and other religious believers are to abandon reason altogether or compartimentalize the Bible out from the world we live in today, then such questions must be reflected on seriously and not dismissed.

Another key moment in the book is his discussion of nuclear war in relation to American Protestant fundamentalism. Fundamentalists tend to be premillenialists who believe that there is an apocalyptic end of the world in store in the near future. Hal Lindsay famously offered his Cold War interpretation of Revelation, with allusions to a nuclear holocaust. It is not at all difficult to imagine a Christian leader of the nation or the military who either willingly and actively accepts the role of pushing the button and bringing in the apocalypse, or who at the very least decides not to stand in the way of the final unfolding of God's ultimate plan (p.207). If you thought that Islamic fundamentalism is more dangerous to the future of humanity than Christian fundamentalism, think again.

In spite of his (entirely appropriate) skepticism about miracles and the supernatural, Sagan has an appreciation for the positive contribution of religion to human history that critics such as Dawkins and Dennett lack (pp.206-207). For those seeking a reasoned guide on the spiritual quest, one can do far worse than Carl Sagan. Arm yourself with inspired spiritual writings (both scriptural and contemporary), and Sagan's famous baloney-detection kit, and you most likely will not go wrong.

The Insufficiency of Scripture

There have been books about the "sufficiency of Scripture", but yesterday as I was reading the Bible I happened across a verse which testifies to the insufficiency of Scripture. 2 John 12 reads:

I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use paper and ink. Instead, I hope to visit you and talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.

How are we to understand this Scriptural witness to Scripture's own insufficiency in certain respects? Of course, most of us will agree that the author of this letter did not think of himself as writing Scripture. Be that as it may, the church has included this letter in its canon, and some readers would go so far as to ignore the author's voice and claim to hear only the voice of God. For such readers, this verse presumably is to be taken as an expression of God's desire that readers of the Bible not become so focused on it that they fail to realize that personal interaction is better than communication via writing.

For other Christian readers, this presumably serves for us too as a reminder that personal interaction is more important than interacting with writings - even writings in the Bible. There are some things that personal relationships can accomplish that reading often cannot. We find it easy to persuade ourselves that writings (whether the news, a letter from a spouse, or texts in the Bible) mean what we deeply hope they mean, even when their plain sense would not seem to support it. But "as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another" (Proverbs 27:17). Other people who challenge us are often harder to tune out - although that doesn't prevent us from trying.

For those of us who are at times tempted to focus too much attention on the Bible, or to believe that it contains all the answers and solutions to all problems, this verse is a helpful reminder that an author of a letter that is now part of Scripture thought some things were better said face to face - that there were things that could not be accomplished as well or as effectively or simply as joyfully through written words as through personal interaction.

The Reformation sola scriptura notwithstanding, I think most Christians including most of the Protestant Reformers would have agreed that in this important sense, "Scripture alone" is not enough. And yet if there is something that characterizes much contemporary North American Christianity, it is the lone Christian reading the Bible in private.

And so, to my blog readers, I close by saying that I have much to write to you, but I do not want to use pixels and bytes. It would be far better to talk with you face to face, so that our joy may be complete.

From The Archives: What Did Jesus Mean?

I am still wondering about the saying attributed to Jesus in various forms in various Gospels (and in Mark, denied as a false accusation), "I will destroy this temple and in three days rebuild it". That something like this was the earliest form is most probable, and it seems to be authentic.

The big question is what he meant by it. On the one hand, given the other evidence that Jesus expected the kingdom to fully dawn in the very near future, I see no particular reason not to take it literally - with the "I" in this case presumably being God, and Jesus speaking in the prophetic first person. On the other hand, given Jesus' propensity for parables and striking images, I am hesitant to simply assume that the literal meaning is the most likely meaning on the lips of Jesus. Since the Gospel of John dates this saying (and the temple incident) to a period when John the Baptist is also still active, might this not be something Jesus said (and did) while still connected with John the Baptist's movement? In such a setting, a literal meaning is still possible, but so is a figurative one in which the proclamation of repentance and baptism bypasses (and thus 'destroys') the temple, putting in its place a community that is united in repentance and ritual rather than by space and sacrifice.

One final thought. When Josephus says that John's followers seemed ready to do anything for him, so that Herod was concerned, might not Jesus' action in the Temple be in mind? Might not Jesus' action in the Temple have led rather directly to John's imprisonment, to Jesus' withdrawal to Galilee, and thus eventually to his sense that his own fate my parallel John's? Is it also perhaps due to the reaction to this prediction that Jesus was from then on inclined to use the less direct 'son of man' rather than 'I'?

Lost Finales and Continuing Reviews

There is a post on the Doc Artz site with a delayed review of the Lost season 5 finale, and speculations about season 6 and the show's ultimate end, interacting with many of the religious themes. It is definitely worth a look.

Also of interest is Antiquitopia's continuing review of Bauckham's Jesus and the God of Israel. Bob Cornwall continues reviewing Philip Clayton's book. April DeConick continues creating Jesus. David Ker suggests that Jesus exemplifies revolution rather than perfection. Suzanne McCarthy continues reflecting on the pronouns used for Word and Spirit.

From The Archive: WWITTMYLYF?

The title of this post isn't an abbreviation for something rude. It is an abbreviation for a question that I was asked some time ago and which I think it is important to ask, at least as a mental and spiritual exercise, since it can tell us a lot about what we really believe, what is most important to us, and on what basis we believe as we do. What would it take to make you lose your faith?

For me, this question is a different one from "What would it take to make you stop being a Christian?" and many other alternative but important questions one could ask. I am as open as I can be to revising my beliefs in light of new evidence. Those are mere dogmas, metaphors we use to point to the divine, and I am already assuming that they are at best inadequate.

The full version of the question includes a time machine. You can travel back in time, babel fish in your ear so you can understand what is going on, temporal Google on your computer to locate people, places, etc. in time and space. What could you imagine yourself seeing that would radically change your mind about important religious beliefs? What if anything would change your faith altogether?

For me, nothing I might see in the first century would be likely to change my mind radically - unless Jesus turned out to really have walked around talking like he does in John's Gospel, in which case I might become a fundamentalist. The only exception would be if I found the earliest Christians or Jesus himself doing things that were morally reprehensible. But even that would only affect my committment to the Christian tradition. As far as my faith in God more generally, it would be shaken if I could go to the end of time and see that nothing from our universe survived - I don't mean me as an individual, I mean nothing whatsoever survived, not even on some other level or plane of existence. That, I think, would challenge my faith at its core, because it would suggest that nothing of what we do matters in the long run, and that even God does not survive.

Since, however, I am skeptical about whether time travel is possible (although it is certainly possible to get to the future by travelling at close to the speed of light), I will not let this scenario trouble me too much for the time being. It is, however, I think, a useful activity to ask this sort of question and see how one would answer it, being as honest about the matter as you can. I welcome anyone reading this to try it and to post their own answers as comments.

The Angel of YHWH, Christology and Monotheism

Mike Koke has a post on a subject that is not a world away from the subject of my most recent book, and which interacts with a couple of other blogs that have touched on the subject. And so I wanted to highlight it, even though I'm on the move and my blog is currently for the most part on "autopilot"!

From The Archives: Four Questions

Someone on Yahoo! Answers asked the following questions:

1. Why do you believe in God?
2. What's the difference between Naive' and Blind trust and Faith?
3. Is it possible that religion is just a way for people to deal with life
and non of it's really even true?
4. Is there really any such thing as pure and whole truth?

I decided they seemed like interesting and sincere questions, so I answered them. Here's what I wrote back in 2007:

1. I believe in God because that term, as used by the mystics of most traditions, refers to transcendant reality. Because I am persuaded that the hints of transcendence that we perceive - beauty, meaning, interconnectedness - correspond to something real about the universe, that is what it means to be persuaded that God exists.

2. Blind faith is another way of saying gullibility. The Letter to the Hebrews says that faith is the evidence of that which is unseen. It does not say that it is evidence that the things we do see don't really exist! Faith may be willing to stake its life on there being more to a person than a chemical analysis can ascertain, more to life than the humdrum and mundane, but that is about there being more than what is seen. If your 'faith' contradicts what is seen (archaeological evidence, for instance), then it is problematic.

3. Religion is indeed a way that people deal with life. Dostoevsky's parable of the Grand Inquisitor (from The Brothers Karamazov) puts it well - and remember, he was a Christian. But many Christians don't want the responsibility that comes with freedom and choose instead to hand over their freedom to a church, a pastor, a creed, or something else. And that's where organized religion comes in.

4. There is indeed pure truth. The problem is when people in a small corner of history in one solar system in one galaxy in one corner of the universe claim that they know the pure and whole truth. Such claims are not merely lacking humility (which would be bad enough). They are ultimately claims to divinity, and incompatible with the Christian faith (and most others).

I'd be interested to hear comments on my answers, or the answers others would give to these questions.

From The Archives

The next several posts (the titles of which will be prefaced with "From The Archives") will be posts made quite some time ago on this blog. I know there are a lot of new readers since this blog first started, and even since it moved to Blogger a couple of years ago. And so I hope that much of this will be new and interesting rather than old hat for many of you.

Science Fiction and Philosophy: A Review

Science Fiction and Philosophy: From Time Travel to Superintelligence, edited by Susan Schneider (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), is a fantastic book that does not simply relate science fiction and philosophy to one another, but in fact shows that the two are significantly overlapping domains. Philosophy thrives on thought experiments, and has done since antiquity, as the excerpt from Plato's Republic demonstrates. When modern philosophers have written thought experiments, they have often taken the form of what are in essence science fiction short stories (a prime example being Daniel Dennett's classic piece "Where Am I?", also included in this volume). Even the editor's introduction ends with a helpful philosophical sci-fi thought experiment.

Science Fiction and Philosophy represents a collection of essays, almost all of which have been previously published elsewhere. The first section addresses the issue of whether our world could be a computer simulation. It includes Plato's myth of the cave and a short excerpt from Descartes to illustrate earlier philosophical works that inspired, and wrestled with the same problems as, some recent works of science fiction. The remainder of part 1 consists of more recent works that address issues such as whether, if we are indeed in a computer simulation, that means our beliefs about the world are false, or whether this is simply a metaphysical claim about what lies beyond and originates our world, without negating its reality.

Part 2 begins with the Dennett piece already mentioned, which provides a nice segue into this section's theme, which is the nature of persons, including subjects like consciousness and free will. Part 3 follows along once again nicely from the previous part, addressing questions such as whether not merely artificial intelligence but artificial consciousness is possible, as well as the notion of cyborgs. Not only a story by Isaac Asimov but a contribution that addresses the nitty gritty of computing are included, allowing for a sense of the range of disciplines and perspectives that intersect with these issues.

Part 4 once again picks up themes from the previous section and carries them in new directions, focusing in this instance on ethical issues, which includes the moral challenges of artificial intelligence (and the challenged of making moral artificial intelligence), whether Asimov's famous three laws are ethical, and whether the transhumanist hope of downloading thoughts into a machine makes sense. While the whole book is fully of many gems and helpful discussions, this section in particular seemed to contain more than its fair share of insights, many of which could be summed up in pithy and memorable expressions. A good example is from George Annas' chapter (p.240):

We have a tendency simply to let science take us where it will. But science has no will, and human judgment is almost always necessary for any successful exploration of the unknown. Columbus' ships would have turned back but for his human courage and determination. And the first moon landing was almost a disaster because the computer overshot the planned landing site by four miles. Only the expert human piloting of Neil Armstrong was able to avert disaster. The first words from humans on the moon were not Armstrong's "one small step for man," but Buzz Aldrin's "Contact light! Okay, engine stop...descent engine command override off>" It's time for us humans to take command of spaceship Earth and turn on science's engine override command.

Part 5, the final section, focuses most of its attention on time travel and the paradoxes it is prone to create, including perspectives from Ray Bradbury as well as from physicists and philosophers. The final piece looks at the subject of miracles, returning to the question of whether our reality could be a computer simulation, and thus whether one can substitute programmers of our simulated reality for the place of God in traditional religions. By bringing us back to this issue raised at the beginning, it is as though the editor reminds us that all of the science fiction referenced (and much more besides) usually illustrates, tackles, or in some way relates to more than one of the major philosophical questions that humans have pondered: the nature of time, the nature of human personhood, the challenges of ethics, and religious and metaphysical questions.

I highly recommend Schneider's collection, whether for use as a reader in a course on philosophy and science fiction, or simply for those interested in engaging the issues raised in much science fiction at a higher degree of abstraction, in conversation not only with the works of fiction themselves but also the philosophers and physicists who tackle many of the same questions from other angles. Some of the chapters are complete articles, while others are very brief pieces or excerpts which in some cases are as short as a single page. In a way that is rare for such a collection of works, having read them I didn't feel that any piece was superfluous or that any major issue or perspective was omitted (I found the interaction between the philosophy of personhood, artificial intelligence and Buddhism particularly interesting). In short, this collection does a fantastic job of giving the reader a sense of the depth and breadth of points of intersection and overlap between sci-fi and philosophy.

First Impressions of The Only True God

Mike Whitenton has received a copy of The Only True God and promises a review will follow soon. Another blogger also offers some thoughts and impressions.

On related notes, Chris Brady posted on the question of a Targumic background to John's Logos concept, while Joseph Hoffmann has a post on the Godhead brought to you by the number 3, and Michael Bird touched on the Nicene Creed.

John On The Sudarion

I received an e-mail this past week about another subject, this time the reference in John 20:6-7 mentioning the cloth that had been on Jesus' face.

I suspect that one reason (perhaps the main or only reason) for the Gospel mentioning the detail is because it could be argued that, if someone had moved the body, they would either have left the cloth on Jesus' face or, if it had fallen off, would not have bothered to pick it up, fold it carefully and set it aside.

I wrote an article (published way back in 1997!) about apologetic details in the Gospel of John, aimed at countering the accusation that Jesus and/or his disciples had contrived his fulfillment of prophecies, not to mention the resurrection. I didn't mention this verse, but it would fit with that theme quite well, I think

I've heard other suggestions - including one that attempted to relate it to an alleged custom involving what a host at a dinner did with his napkin - but none seems persuasive. Presumably some of the later traditions about the sudarium of Jesus arose in close connection with the reference in John. (In looking for a link for those seeking more information about the sudarium, I discovered that there is a web site for the "Gnostic Liberation Front". Who knew?)

Does anyone else have any thoughts on this?

Evolution in a Christian Context

I had someone e-mail me recently with a question about whether Romans 14, with its teaching about the "strong" and the "weak", provides good guidance for Christian who have come to realize that there are good reasons to accept biological evolution, and are now wondering whether to keep this to themselves or speak out about it in their churches. I thought I'd share what I wrote in reply, since it might be relevant to others.

I suppose the place to begin is by asking what the difference was between the situation in Galatians and in Romans. In the former, he seems to regard issues like food and circumcision as ones on which he will not bend, while in Romans he seems to encourage Christians to tolerate diverse practices. My own view is that in Galatians, circumcision was being demanded of the Gentile Christians as a requirement, whereas in Romans, Paul was encouraging Gentile Christians who were in no danger of having the kosher food laws imposed on them to nonetheless embrace and love those who continued to follow those laws.

Would this provide a good guideline for the approach of Christians who are well-informed about the sciences? Probably. If one is in a context in which young-earth creationism is being imposed as the only acceptable viewpoint, the Galatians approach is probably called for. But in a context in which it is recognized that different views are possible, Christians who accept evolution and modern science more generally should be understanding of those who do not, and recognize that ultimately "in Christ neither evolution nor young-earth creationism matters, but being a new creation".

Of course, you'll know that I do think that the stance Christians take on evolution is important. If nothing else, it affects the impression of Christians that educated people outside the church have. But I also think it is important to recognize that it can take time to work through these issues, and that some will presently find themselves unable to reconcile their faith with science, or live with simply holding the two in tension. If we drive such people from our midst, the chances are that they will simply find a more likeminded group of people to go to church with, and any growth that both we and they might have experienced through our interaction is thereby prevented. And of course, sometimes the "strong" may have a better viewpoint, but may go about promoting it in a way that is obnoxious and/or immature (in such cases, 1 Corinthians will probably provide more useful guidance than either Galatians or Romans), with results that are not to anyone's benefit. It takes a certain level of maturity to "pick one's battles", and to seek to facilitate learning and growth rather than merely win arguments.

In short, I don't think Paul encouraged Gentile Christians to feign circumcision in order to keep the peace - on the contrary! What I think he did encourage Gentile Christians to do is to not simply cook spare ribs for the church picnic and make issues come up unnecessarily. If evolution is an issue on which Christians in a particular church can tolerate diverse viewpoints, and perhaps even have interesting and respectful discussions, that is probably best. Not bringing up the issue unnecessarily might be the equivalent of not bringing baked clams to the pot luck in a first century church context in which Torah-observant Jewish Christians would be present. But (returning to our time) if some seem to be advocating or demanding that everyone accept their own young-earth creationist view, or some other viewpoint that is both scientifically and scripturally dubious, then personally I would probably want to find some respectful way of making my own viewpoint heard, and emphasize that this is an issue on which not all Christians agree, including Christians committed to Biblical authority and a high view of Scripture. Having some books and other resources ready to hand that address the issue from that perspective would will probably help deal with what follows.

Does this seem like good advice? What advice would you give on this matter?

Failing the Fundamentalist Final

For some reason yesterday I found myself imagining fundamentalists overseeing the final judgment, giving a "final exam" to make sure that only the truly saved get into heaven. It would have two questions:

1) Give your testimony of how you asked Jesus into your heart to become your personal Lord and Savior.

2) Construct a story that incorporates all the elements from (a) Matthew 28:10,16-20 and Luke 24:36-53 OR (b) Matthew 2:1-23 and Luke 2:1-40, leaving nothing out and containing no contradictions.

OK, so I'm mostly being facetious. Even if I were serious, I would fully expect fundamentalists to object, pointing out not only that the whole notion of a final exam to get into heaven is anathema to them, but also that they do not think God will evaluate people based on their ability to create a new story that attempts to harmonize seemingly contradictory Biblical stories. But it is important to note that so-called harmonizations are just that: not what the Bible actually says, but an attempt to reconcile various things in the Bible by creatively composing a more extensive narrative or worldview that can reconcile them. And eventually what happens is that "believing the Bible" is equated with believing in the narrative composed to achieve apparent harmonization, even details that are nowhere in the Bible.

I would also point out that it seems even more problematic to suggest that people do not need to devote their time and effort to harmonizing stories in the Bible, and yet at the same time claim that it is important to affirm that such harmonization is possible even without having tried to accomplish it. At this point, conservative Protestants can become remarkably like the Catholics they historically criticized, asking Christians to trust that certain ministers and authors who make certain kinds of affirmations about the Bible are telling the truth, while others (including the vast majority of people who have devoted their lives to studying the Bible, irrespective of their denominational affiliation) are not.

What seems to me more important, however, is that the notion that there will not be a "final exam" (or that Christians are saved or exempted from a final judgment based on what they have done) is itself a product of selective reading of the Bible. The Gospel of John, with its realized eschatology, emphasizes that eternal life begins now, and thus people don't have to await a final judgment: they are already judged on the basis of their belief in or rejection of Jesus. This is something that "the Bible says". But it is not the only thing the Bible says, and the vast majority of New Testament authors depict a final judgment in which one's response to Jesus is not irrelevant, but it is certainly not the only consideration.

At this point, I would expect a conservative Christian to object and say that those depictions of the final judgment in Revelation, Matthew, and even Romans 2:6-11, cannot mean what they appear to, since the Gospel of John clearly indicates that salvation is determined by believing in Jesus, and other passages in Paul's letters speak of salvation by faith alone. But the problem is that this approach simply cannot do justice to the passages depicting a final judgment where what one has done matters. And while one might say "Scripture must be interpreted in light of Scripture", it still remains to be asked why one should start with the typical Evangelical prooftexts in Paul and John, and say that the others must be interpreted in light of them, rather than reversing the procedure and saying that the passages that seem to affirm "judgment" being on the basis of faith alone must mean something else.

My own Liberal Christian position is a result of struggling with these sorts of issues. It doesn't seem to me that there is a single voice in the Bible, and we can simply listen to it and do "what the Bible says". Jesus is depicted at one point as saying "Whoever is not for me is against me" - the meaning of which is choose Jesus or you are his enemy, a saying that fits nicely with the fundamentalist viewpoint that all is "us vs. them", saved vs. unsaved. Yet elsewhere he is depicted as saying that "Whoever is not against us is for us" - not only placing himself as part of a community ("us") but also taking a positive view of those who are merely not opposed to his movement. It is far from obvious that both can be true. And so we are left with the challenge not only to align ourselves with Jesus and follow him, but also the challenge that New Testament texts depict Jesus in different ways and seem to have created communities centered on him that took significantly different shapes. And so whatever it means to be a Christian, it cannot mean "believing the Bible". Because part of the challenge of the Bible itself is that it presents us with conflicting voices, and in doing so forces us away from the easy path of simply picking texts and following them, making us instead recognize that we are part of a 2,000-year-old dialogue that requires us to figure out for ourselves what it means to be a Christian in our own particular time and context.

Let me conclude by asking in relation to this subject a question students often ask their professors: Why focus on something if it won't be on the exam? Perhaps here there is something that Christians who believe in a "final exam", and those who aren't sure, can agree on. If there is a course in which there may or may not be a final, it always makes sense to study as if there will be a final. If it turns out there isn't, you will still have learned a lot. And if there is, you're prepared.

But what continues to separate various sorts of Christians is the question of what "course material" is important: What would be on the final exam if there were to be one? Is our Christian faith to be evaluated on the basis of our willingness to go to great (and at times ridiculous) lengths to harmonize discrepancies and defend the Bible's inerrancy? Or is it to be evaluated in terms of how we live, our love for God and neighbor? Or is it something else? Here more than anywhere else, the plurality of Christianities attested in the New Testament, as well as today, can be disconcerting, because it is hard to prepare for an exam, even one that is only a possibility, if one is getting contradictory signals about what might or might not be on it. And in this instance, doing what I'd recommend my own students to do fails to solve the issue, since it is precisely those who've "asked the Professor" who disagree on this.

My Five Books Meme

Jared Calaway has inflicted/blessed me with a meme that has been making the rounds in recent days. It was started by Ken Brown, and I thought I'd share what he wrote when he did so (since it includes both the rationale and the rules):

As I’ve been preparing to apply for PhD programs, I’ve been thinking about those books and scholars who have most influenced the way I read scripture, and I’m curious which books have done the same for my fellow bibliobloggers. So, since I’ve always wanted to start a meme challenge of my own, here goes:

1. Name the five books (or scholars) that had the most immediate and lasting influence on how you read the Bible. Note that these need not be your five favorite books, or even the five with which you most strongly agree. Instead, I want to know what five books have permenantly changed the way you think.


2. Tag five others.

Here are my five:

1. Jimmy Dunn's Christology in the Making. I had a strong negative initial reaction to Dunn's views when I first confronted them in Bible college, but they had both logic and evidence that were hard to deny. I spent a fair amount of time trying to deny that John's Gospel was as different as Dunn and others made out. Once I admitted what to them was plainly evident, the question for me then became why John was different. I spent three years working on that question, at the University of Durham, under the supervision of Jimmy Dunn, and my first book John's Apologetic Christology was one of the results (and my latest book, The Only True God, shows that I've continued to work on the subject).
   
2. John A. T. Robinson's The Body: A Study in Pauline Theology. I'm sure some would have expected me to choose his Honest to God, and I won't deny the importance of that little volume. But Robinson made his biggest impression on my as a New Testament scholar, not only by offering a plausible case for his interpretation of Paul's body language (if you'll excuse the pun), but more importantly acknowledging that he once held another view, but having studied the evidence and though more about the matter, he changed his mind. That made a profound impression on me, and I've sought to be open to emulating his example in this matter whenever appropriate ever since.
   
3. Rudolf Bultmann's contribution to Kerygma and Myth (which nowadays one can read online). I was as exposed to the Evangelical demonization of Bultmann as anyone else who studied in a conservative Christian context. But Bultmann's writings turn out to be powerful, insightful, and profoundly Christian, assuming one ever actually reads them after so many dismissals and denunciations. He is persuaded that it is possible to be a Christian in the present, persuaded that the Gospel is powerful. He is also convinced (and rightly so) that it is impossible (and thus cannot be necessary) for a modern person to accept a first-century worldview in its entirety. Yet the Gospel as expressed in the Bible is inextricably bound up with and expressed in terms of a first-century worldview. And so he devoted himself to the question of how to translate the message for his time. When it comes to his exegesis, the details of his source criticism, his views on the Mandaean background of the Gospel of John, and much else, I remain unpersuaded by a great many of his views and arguments. But theologically and hermeneutically I believe he hit the nail on the head and identified the most crucial issue for mediating Christian faith into any new historical epoch.
   
4. Keith Ward's What the Bible Really Teaches provided me with just what I needed at the time that I read it. Conservative Christian rhetoric of "believing the whole Bible" and "taking it literally" is remarkably effective at making those of us feel guilty who, precisely because we've become more familiar with the Bible, find such notions and such rhetoric problematic. But often we are cowed into a stance of apologizing, of saying in a whiny voice "Well, I'm a Christian too, even though I don't believe everything a fundamentalist does". Ward helped set me free, confronting me simultaneously with the dishonesty of claims to believe everything the Bible says, and a rich history and theology of Christianity that doesn't follow that conservative approach. It helped me to be unapologetic about being a Christian, and instead of apologizing for not being conservative, instead to make a strong case for a very different approach being at least as Christian, every bit as Biblical (and unbiblical), but most importantly, far more honest about its relationship to the Bible.
   
5. Like Jared, whenever I am down to my last slot, I suddenly seem to have trouble choosing one more book (or piece of music, or recipe, or whatever) to list as the final of my favorites. I'm tempted to go into Hebrews mode and say "Time will not permit us to mention Ken Miller's Finding Darwin's God, or Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow and Children of God, or Geza Vermes' Jesus the Jew, or Bruce Malina's Windows on the World of Jesus or Kenneth Bailey's Poet and Peasant & Through Peasant Eyes or Juergen Moltmann's God in Creation or Geert Hofsteede's Software of the Mind..." But I think I'll give this final slot to: The Pimsleur language courses. They've made learning the basics of Russian, Modern Hebrew, Eastern Arabic, and even a bit of Chinese so unbelievably straightforward that it is unbelievable. The experience of living and studying in another culture (and eventually experiencing more than one), of interacting with Christians whom I expected to think much as I did and consider the same issues important and yet who did not, of discovering that the same sorts of issues that confront modern cross-cultural communication also affect us as we seek to make sense of the Bible: such insights and experiences have shaped my thinking. Not merely interacting with others, but being immersed in a culture other than your own, teaches you things that few and perhaps no other experiences can. Language learning often stands as a hurdle to those who might otherwise have such experiences, and so I give the last slot to Pimsleur (and others, like the Teach Yourself and Colloquial series) that make jumping the hurdle so much easier. The link may not seem obvious to some, but those who have had culture shock will hopefully appreciate how the experience of living in another culture, and communicating through another language, changes our perspective on the Bible in ways that no book or course ever could.

Knowing whom to tag is almost as hard as filling the last slot. But I'll tag Eric Reitan, Doug Mangum, Gabriel McKee, Mike Leaptrott, and Terri. If you've already been tagged, you can decide whether to simply list ten books, or pass the tag on to someone else, or just post your own five and leave it at that.

Inigo Montoya Addresses Fundamentalists

Christian Nation Irony

It seems unlikely that at any point in the past the vast majority of inhabitants of the United States were devout Christians with a personal faith, as opposed to nominal Christians for whom their Christianity consisted largely of a "tribal identity" including churchgoing and assenting to some doctrinal beliefs and moral precepts.

Does it not seem ironic, then, that the notion of American having once been a "Christian nation", and nostalgia for that bygone golden age, is found largely among Evangelicals, those very Christians who emphasize the need for a personal faith, and the inadequacy of a Christianity that consists merely of church attendance, denominational affiliation, or even moral living?

Am I missing something? Why would the very Christians who deny the adequacy of such nominal Christianity today, depict its heyday as a sort of golden age for American Christianity?

Lull: A Good Time To Subscribe

I won't predict a hiatus, but there is going to be, at the very least, a lull in my blogging in the near future. I have a conference in July in Oxford on the Mandaeans, and some preparations for that and other writing projects that I hope to work on before then.

I may try to use that time to re-post some posts from quite some time ago. If I decide to do that, then there may not even be a noticeable "lull" per se, just a lull in new posts.

I noticed another blog having a "subscription drive". I don't know exactly what to make of that idea - is that something I ought to do here from time to time? I suspect that most of the regular readers and commenters already subscribe to this blog's RSS feed and read it in Google Reader or some other RSS reading page or program. But if you don't already subscribe, why not do so now? Add the blog to Google Reader or whatever feed reader you use. Or get content via e-mail, using the subscription feature recently added to the sidebar.

And if you already subscribe, then why not recommend the blog to someone to read/subscribe to?

If nothing else, in view of the coming lull, you won't have to guess when normal blogging resumes if you're subscribed. And if I manage to blog during my travels or at the conference, you'll be up to date. You don't really want to risk missing being among the first to hear about the ARAM conference on the Mandaeans, do you?

Bedtime Stories and the Bible: Myths and Miracles

Yesterday I saw the movie Bedtime Stories. It is a delightful tale that provides helpful insight into the value of stories, of myths and fables. If you haven't seen it, you may want to do so before reading this post - there won't be any spoilers per se, but in offering some suggestions about the movie's message and significance, I may give things away that are better discovered in the course of watching.

The movie's message, in my opinion, is that classic stories and ones made up on the spot can be valuable, not because they tell us that there will inevitably be happy endings, but because, through our identification with the characters in the story, they give us clues on how to bring about happy endings. Throughout the movie, Adam Sandler's character finds himself in situations unnervingly similar to ones in the stories he has told to (and with contributions from) his niece and nephew. But while the correspondences in the movie are at times surreal, the point is not: having stories as a guide helps us spot opportunities to act, contribute, be a hero, succeed, and do many other things - opportunities we might simply have overlooked if we were not "keyed in" to their potential to allow us to reenact mythic or other classic story elements.

After watching it, I found myself reflecting on how the Bible can function in a similar way for Christians. Most people of devout faith can share stories of experiences that have seemed to them miraculous. This is not the first time that I've wondered whether Christians often have such experiences simply because expecting God to "come through in the end" leads to a tenacity, a persistence, and a patience that allows more room for the situation to work itself out in a more positive outcome. I'm not suggesting that all stories about "miracles" (however one defines that term) reflect precisely that sort of experience. But it seems to me that in a similar way to the classic stories that fall under the umbrella of the fairy tale, cowboy, knight in shining armor, space explorer, insert favorite genre here, so too fitting one's experience into David vs. Goliath, Joshua at the walls of Jericho, Nehemiah rebuilding Jerusalem, Peter finding forgiveness, these classic stories raise our expectations that our own stories will have positive outcomes, as we identify (even if only subconsciously) with the characters in them.

And whether you attribute those outcomes to divine interventions or not, the power of stories themselves to shape our lives in positive ways, and to guide us into paths that lead us onward instead of giving up in despair, probably deserves to be called "miraculous".

Bedtime Stories is an enjoyable, humorous, family-friendly movie, and I recommend it.

The Price of The Only True God

The number of blog posts with double meanings involving the title of my latest book seems to be without end. Be that as it may, I noticed that the price of the book has come back down on Amazon.com to the range it was in when they had a pre-order discount. So if that's what you've been waiting for, you need wait no longer!

Gratitude Mingled with Theological Concern

I am grateful to Jared Calaway that he is going to be reviewing my book, and that he has already posted a first impression of the layout and contents. I nonetheless feel I must object on theological grounds to what the title of his post seems to be suggesting...

A Tale Of Two Bible Readers

Two men read the Bible, each in their own place.

The first paid lip service to the whole thing. He praised the Bible, and extolled the importance of believing it all and doing it all. He spoke against homosexuality. He married the woman he raped. He put a great many of the Bible's details into practice.

The other read the Bible, and felt lost. He had lots of questions. Don't sow a field with two different kinds of seeds? What is that about? Not permitting a woman to teach? How is that fair? And so he set the Bible aside, and went out and sought to live compassionately.

Which of the two did what the Bible demands?

What Makes Good Good? A Case For Compassion

Those who have subscribed to the comments or keep an eye on the recent comments sidebar will know that the discussion started by my post "What Is Good?" It seems that we have two views colliding that stop at key points. One says that goodness simply is doing to others what you would want done to you: that's goodness, it has its own rationale and its own reward. The other says that goodness simply is what God wills or commands, and without such a grounding, morality is not "objective".

To stimulate further discussion (and, as always, stir things up a little), let me offer for consideration #27 of the 40 hadith of An-Nawawi:

I came to the messenger of Allah and he said: "You have come to ask about righteousness ?" . I said:" Yes." He said: "Consult your heart. Righteousness is that about which the soul feels tranquil and the heart feels tranquil, and wrongdoing is that which wavers in the soul and moves to and from in the breast even though people again and again have given you their legal opinion [in its favor]."

It seems to me that Christians too have often appealed to conscience as a guide. Indeed, the Baptists historically (although not so much recently) have emphasized this.

This is not to say that conscience gives us some objective standpoint from which to evaluate good and evil. Our moral sensibilities are shaped by culture and upbringing, and can develop as we mature. But that is not necessarily a problem. One can take kindness as a basic principle and still acknowledge that its application in different cultural and situational settings may differ. But it seems to me that, if there is no basis in conscience and reason for morality, then even if one had a sacred text that told us inerrantly and objectively what is good, we'd be in any way helped or benefitted by it.

I'm not sure whether, in practice, there is that much difference between a view that says that there may not simply be an absolutely "right" and "wrong" thing to do in every single situation, and one that says that there is but that we as human beings may not always know what it is.

But I do find troubling any view of morality that claims to be Christian and yet seems to have nothing in practice to do with either the fundamental principle of the Golden Rule, or with the actual suffering of victims. Could it be that Christian morality is less about specific deeds, and more about compassion, even though we may still be left debating what the appropriate expression of our compassion might be in this or that situation?

One of the participants in the recent discussion seems to always reply to such arguments by asking "But what makes being compassionate good?" I don't see that compassion being by definition good is any less coherent than saying "Whatever God wills is good by definition". Indeed, the latter viewpoint seems problematic because it either leaves us with a God that "just happens" to command and will that which seems morally good to us as humans, or with a God who can command anything and thus make it good. It doesn't seem to me that the attempt to define away the Euthyphro dilemma by saying "God's will always corresponds to the good" actually solves the philosophical problem in any obvious or meaningful way, or offers something that is genuinely a third option.

E-mailing Our Matrix

By popular demand (OK, in response to a single person's request) I've added to the sidebar a widget that allows you to subscribe to this blog's feed via e-mail. I thought I'd mention it, in case there is a second person out there who might find this feature useful.

Ken Schenck on The Chicago Declaration on Biblical Inerrancy

I was simply going to give a quote of the day from Ken: "When push comes to shove, those of the Chicago Statement approach consistently trump the most obvious meaning of the Bible with evangelical tradition, in my opinion." But I really think the whole post and his series as a whole is worth a look, for those readers of this blog (you know who you are) who are interested in the subject of Biblical inerrancy.

The fuller context of the aforementioned quote provides a powerful insight, and so I thought I'd provide it in full:

2. Scriptures are supreme. The authority of the Church is subordinate. Creeds, councils, declarations are of lesser authority.

Given the assumptions of the authors, I agree. I think the "Church" here is understood in a political sense--the political bodies of church history, not least the "Catholic church." I certainly do not think any political church holds such authority, and the creeds and councils are still political statements. In my opinion, however, when these authors say "Scriptures," they really mean the Bible read Christianly, the Bible read as Christian Scripture. They would disagree that they meant this, but in my opinion they cannot see their own glasses and how those glasses color their perspective.

From my point of view, these sorts of statements involve such subtle but significant misunderstandings of language that I almost don't know what to say. It poses as contradictory options things that, on deeper examination, I believe are virtually the same. I'll agree to it in the same way I agree when my son says something like, "So it's better to score a touchdown than strike out, right Dad?" What I'm thinking, though, is that he's a little confused.

In my opinion, so many of the meanings these signatories themselves found so authoritative in the text of Scripture were themselves products of their own Christian tradition. The signatories would deny that this is the case, but they do not properly see themselves, in my opinion.

The NIV is a wonderful example of the "say one thing, do another" dynamic I see necessary for this hermeneutic to sustain itself.

Say: We are listening to the Bible. Our interpretations come from the plain sense of the text. We are under the authority of the text and not letting the Church have a higher authority.

Do: Let's translate "form of God" as "very nature God" so the full divinity of Christ is not in question (Phil. 2:6)--is "shape" really the same as "very nature"?! Let's translate "firstborn of creation" with "firstborn over creation" (Col. 1:15) so there is no question of whether Jesus is created or not. Let's add a word out of nowhere to "did not give" so it reads "did not just give" (Jer. 7:22), even though there is no such word in the Hebrew--we don't want to leave any question about whether Leviticus was written at the time of the exodus. Let's add another word out of the blue so that "to the dead" reads "to those now dead" so there is no room for the dead being saved (1 Pet. 4:6)--Protestants don't believe such Catholic ideas. Again, let's add another word that isn't there in the original so that "is not concerned" reads "is not just concerned" so we give no room for allegorical interpretation in 1 Cor 9:9-10.

Most of these moves have no clear basis in the text and seems in each case to be motivated overwhelmingly to maintain the perspective of the neo-evangelical tradition, thus deconstructing the fundamental claims of this hermeneutic. When push comes to shove, those of the Chicago Statement approach consistently trump the most obvious meaning of the Bible with evangelical tradition, in my opinion.

This will also be relevant to readers who have an interest in Bible translation.

You know you want to - pay Ken's blog a visit.

Lost and Philosophy: Parts 1-2

I've been reading Lost and Philosophy: The Island Has Its Reasons, edited by Sharon M. Kaye (Malden: Blackwell, 2008). It helps ease the pain of no LOST until 2010.

The book has four main sections, organized around the letters LOST.

Part I is called "L is for Love", a heading that does not correspond in any obvious sort of way to a unifying thread running through the section (this section is primarily about ethics, which doesn't fit easily into the LOST anagram). The first chapter in Part I, by Michael Austin, focuses on the question of what, if anything, adult children owe to their parents. Austin uses characters from the show to illustrate important aspects of the question, and for the most part Lost simply provides the "case studies" for an introductory treatment of this topic. There is, however, a particularly insightful moment, when the island itself is recognized as becoming a surrogate father to Locke (p.16), as he struggles to please and to know it. In chapter 2, Rebecca Vartabedian offers a similarly introductory treatment of key ethical theories, using Walt's actions aimed at saving Walt to illustrate how each theory might view things. Chapter 3 is co-authored by Robert Arp and Patricia Brace, and focuses on the objectification of human beings, using the show to illustrate Kantian and utilitarian perspectives. Chapter 4, by Deborah Barnbaum, uses what she understands about the Dharma Initiative to ask important questions about research ethics and matters such as informed consent. Unfortunately, like several other contributors, she seems to have written without having seen the finale of season 3, and she thus has as a working assumption that the Dharma Initiative is conducting tests on unwilling subjects who are made to do irrational things like "enter a meaningless sequence of numbers on a computer at regular intervals" (p.44). Fortunately, other chapters make up for the serious shortcomings of this one. Chapter 5, by George Wrisley, on ethical subjectivism and relativism, is a good example. Although his treatment of Islam as though it were a monolithic culture is problematic, to say the least (p.51), Wrisley presents a key issue that the show seems intended to raise: "In contrast to a number of movies and other TV shows where good and evil are clearly and unrealistically demarcated, Lost shows the ethical complexities of individuals and the situations in which they find themselves" (p.49). The chapter, like the show itself, raises the important questions without providing answers, but merely providing the reader (like the viewer) the opportunity to reflect and engage in serious thought about serious topics.

Part II is called "O is for Origin". Chapter 6, by Sander Lee, is the first in this section. Although its title ("Meaning and Freedom on the Island") is rather vague, the content represents one of the first sustained attempts to engage the substance of the show as something more than merely an illustration of a topic. Lee writes, "Lost raises philosophical questions that place it above most televisions shows and connect it with themes found in the works of a number of philosophers" (p.63). Lee's discussion sheds light both on philosophical matters individuals have pondered and continued to ponder, but also on the show itself, allowing knowledge of key thinkers to shed light on plot details, character names, and religious symbolism. Particularly helpful are the parallels to the Odyssey that are highlighted (pp.72-73). Lee insightfully notes a paradox that has subsequently come into sharper focus on Lost: Mrs. Hawking claimed that the universe course-corrected, and yet also told Desmond that if he didn't go through with his destiny, everyone would die (p.75). Chapter 6 relates Lost to philosophy and literature in such a way that both sides of the interaction are illuminated in the process.

Chapter 7, co-authored by Charles Taliaferro and Dan Kastrul, also brings the Odyssey into the discussion, comparing and contrasting that story of a hero stuck on an island with Defoe's other famous exploration of that scenario, and relating both to Lost. They note how Lost seems closer to Homer's world of competing deities, not all of which are good, than Defoe's Crusoe, whose experiences lead to faith in a single God and God's providence (p.85). This chapter likewise offers more substantive interaction with the details of the show, focusing attention on the important point that our morality is not about what we do all the time, but what we do in certain circumstances. Chapter 8, co-authored by Charles Girard and David Meulemans, focuses on free will, and the question of how the past does or does not determine our identity, and the ways in which a radical change of setting (such as island castaways are perhaps uniquely able to experience) may or may not allow for a "fresh start". Not only philosophical but psychological aspects of the question are discussed.

Jessica Engelking's chapter 9 engages specific literary references on the show, in particular to The Third Policeman, which was seen on the show and identified by one of the writers of Lost as shedding light on it (p.102). The notion of guerilla ontology is introduced, as is Kuhn's work on paradigm shifts, and it is suggested that Lost confronts us with incongruent details precisely to challenge us to think in new and unconventional ways. This chapter's extensive use of online discussions and resources, including the information provided via The Lost Experience, more than makes up for those few contributors whose fandom (and thus their knowledge or understanding of the show) must be called into question. The final chapter in this section, by Tom Grimwood, focuses on codes, hermeneutics and deconstruction. Although the explicit raising of the question of how meaning is conveyed in various communications (such as a TV show, or a book about that TV show and philosophy) is helpful, there isn't enough room to really clarify Derrida's standpoint on such matters, much less to apply deconstructionism to the show in detail. But perhaps that's appropriate - the chapter emphasizes the notion of incompleteness, that Lost involves an arc that we assume to be aiming for a goal, but it has not arrived there yet, and that in itself illustrates nicely many of the issues of communication and meaning raised in this chapter.

Some of the book's authors wrote their contributions, it would seem, even before the completion of season 3 - either that, or they did not see all the episodes. The book was completed before seasons 4-5 had aired, which means that viewers now have a lot more information to go on. And so, to the extent that the book's authors reflect on the show's mysteries, some of their speculations are now obsolete, although many perspectives and suggestions remain possible, and rarely are the philosophical issues explored invalidated by what has happened on the show since the book was writte.

I noticed, as I looked up information about the contributors, that a high proportion were graduate students rather than established scholars. As a result, I wondered whether this might be at least a partial explanation of why some of the chapters in this book did not have the same feel of "pioneering into new ground" that other recent books on philosophy and popular culture have had, at least to a more consistent degree. As it turned out, one's progress in academia did not automatically correlate with a more profound insight into the show and the philosophical subjects that intersect with it. To some extent, this aspect of many of the book's chapters may have more to do with the delightfully frustrating character of the show itself, which leaves even those who seek to analyse it with academic rigor scratching our heads. I also suspect that it may simply be the varying extent of contributors' knowledge of the show's details that accounts for some chapters engaging the show in more substantive and insightful ways. But it may merely be the case that simpler, more introductory perspectives were placed first to facilitate the book's use in the classroom.

Whatever the case may be, there is enough that is insightful, and enough that sheds new light on the show (even for a major fan like myself) to make the book worth reading. And if you aren't a Lost fan, hopefully the book will illustrate some ways that the show can be useful as a starting point for intelligent discussion of important subjects, whether in a philosophy classroom or elsewhere.

I will return to the other two sections of the book on another occasion.

Evolution and Faith in the Blogosphere

I'll leave it up to each reader to decide whether the title refers to "evolution and faith in the blogosphere" or "evolution and faith in the blogosphere".

The latest issue of the Metanexus magazine The Global Spiral has a piece by Nancey Murphy on non-reductive physicalism. It meshes nicely with the recent discussions here about topics like emergence and reductionism.

The National Center for Science Education web page has added resources on creationism and law.

I've been having an interesting discussion over at Sandwalk, in a post that was part of the whole discussion of "accomodationism" that seems to still be going on.

Also, Wiley-Blackwell sent me some of their most recent books on philosophy and science fiction, and I'll be blogging about them in the coming days.

Quote of the Day (Sean Winter)

"Paul...is most interesting when you use him to think with, rather than as an excuse not to do any thinking of your own".

--Sean Winter, "Conference Report: Paul and Contemporary Philosophy"

What Is Good?

In a recent discussion in the comments section of another post, the issue of morality and God came up. The argument was made that, unless there is a God who defines right and wrong, and unless God has made those standards known in his inerrantly-inspired word, then we can have no reason for judging one action as preferable to another. Without God, all is relative.

I am a Christian, and might be expected to agree with the aforementioned reasoning. Yet I don't, and it seemed it might be interesting to devote a separate post to explaining why.

First, it seems to me that the existence of a personal God doesn't get one from "is" to "ought". If morality is defined as that which God considers right, are we not still dealing with an "is" scenario? Right and wrong have not been made objective, but are, as it were, matters of 'divine opinion'. We might choose to follow divine commands so as to avoid punishment, but that isn't usually what is meant by 'being good' except in the case of young children. (Of course, it may be that the approach to moral reasoning this standpoint adopts to be is in fact an immature one, but we'll set that issue aside for now).

It was also suggested that without God, anything goes. Potentially the reverse can also be said. If God wills Joshua and his armies to kill men, women and children - or kill the men but keep the women for themselves - then that is 'good'. If you are commanded by God to sacrifice your child, it is good to do so - however much you may hope an angel will stop you, you cannot presume that God would never demand something like that from you, because whatever God commands is good.

Moreover, this identification of morality with "whatever God commands" seems to empty terms words like good of their normal meaning. Goodness in everyday parlance doesn't involve a child being tied up and threatened with a knife by his father. Most would say that avoiding war and unnecessary bloodshed when possible is inherently good. But on the divine command logic that isn't the case. If God wills bloodshed in a particular instance, then avoiding it becomes evil.

If the aforementioned approach doesn't solve the conundrum of what "good" is, what alternatives are there? For one thing, morality seems to require persons. This is true of 'natural evil': an earthquake on an uninhabited planet is merely a geological phenomenon; an earthquake in an inhabited region of our planet is potentially a tragedy. Likewise, human actions seem to take on moral value based on our intentions and on the effect(s) they have on human persons.

Perhaps morality only exists when persons exist that are capable of choosing between options, choosing to follow their instincts or not, choosing to treat others as they would themselves wanted to be treated, or not (cp. Job 35:4-8). If one views God as incapable of acting otherwise than God does, then God's actions might in fact be beyond any sort of morality. Morality might be something restricted to the domain of personal agents of the sort that human beings are. And so then the key question would become whether God is more like a human person, or more like a "force of nature" that is "beyond good and evil" - while perhaps inevitably being beyond either sort of language. But if God is in fact personal, or tripersonal, or in some way analogous to human beings (or if, to not put the cart before the horse, if human personal existence is analogous to the divine), then wouldn't God's own morality itself have to follow the precept so many have concluded that God expects of us: "Do unto others what you would have them do unto you"? Is there any alternative to either suggesting that God is not ultimately like a human personal agent in fundamental ways, or concluding that a personal God, in order to be moral, must follow the same precepts he is thought to have revealed to (and perhaps imposed upon) other persons made in the divine image?

LOST Timelines

Matthew Fox (who plays Jack Shepherd on LOST - as if you didn't already know that) has shared some "spoilers" about LOST season 6. They aren't so much spoilers as tantalizing hints that could be understood in more than one way. So, if you don't want sort of spoilers, you should probably sort of stop reading now.

One of the things Fox mentioned is that we'll see the timelines come together and so there won't be flashbacks and flashforwards, just "linear time on the island". That they'll be on the island is significant, as it suggests that whatever the bomb did, it didn't just send them back to their everyday lives with the plane crash never having happened. I suspect that what he means is that the separated survivors will all be back in the same time.

Fox also mentions Locke and Jack coming "head to head", which could of course mean the original John Locke or Esau impersonating him (some fans have apparently taken to calling him Darth Locke, for some reason). And so there is no spoiler as to whether the actions of Daniel, Jack and perhaps most importantly Juliet managed to close the "loophole".

The reference to "timelines" could, of course, also mean different versions of human history that have been split or changed. I've wondered for a while whether that sort of scenario might be involved. The whispers heard on the island have been analysed by fans, and were found to be composed by overlaying slightly different sentences on one another. Are they the sound of two timelines colliding?

Monotheism and Me

University of Illinois Press has posted a short entry on their blog by me, on the subject of monotheism, in connection with my new book The Only True God.

The Anti-Creed

There was a humorous moment in Sunday school this week when, in a discussion of the Baptist principle of "soul freedom", someone read from the American Baptist identity statement. In this statement which, when printed out runs about 3 pages, and is clearly longer than the Nicene Creed, we encountered the phrase "We accept no humanly devised confession or creed as binding." And that seemed to cover the "creed" that was being read from - a creed that negates the authority of creeds!

Of course, the irony is only apparent. The American Baptist statement is an attempt to give expression to points of faith, doctrine and practice that most American Baptists share. But it isn't a creed in the sense of an authoritative document that is imposed hierarchically from the top down.

Nevertheless, the apparent tension was striking. It is perhaps matched only by the experience of reading one of Paul's letters in English and getting to the point where he says that the letter kills...

Britons and the Resurrection

New Humanist draws attention to a poll in the British newspaper the Daily Telegraph indicating that Jesus was the top dead person that those surveyed would like to meet if they had the chance, chosen by 1/3 of those polled.

No one seems to have noticed that, for conservative Christians at the very least, and for many moderate to liberal Christians as well, Jesus is not considered a dead person!

I find myself wondering how many of those who answered the poll in this way would also be among those complaining if their priest or bishop denied the resurrection...

Good vs. Evil, Indignation vs. Indigestion

Imagine three situations that come up in real life:

1) You are made aware in the local news that lives were lost in a fire that could have been prevented if a recent safety inspection had been as thorough as it ought to have been.

2) You read on a blog about human trafficking in Thailand.

3) Someone serves you a salad with dressing on top. The dressing needs to be stirred, and yet the salad fills the bowl, so that if you attempt to stir it, lettuce and other vegetables will inevitably fall out of the bowl.

Let's be honest. Of these three, which is most likely to cause our blood to boil? I suspect that most of us would answer three. Our degree of aggrivation about something like this, or the slightly slow driver in front of us, tends to be far greater than in the case of serious injustices or genuine tragedies. We get upset about minor things that affect us directly, more than about major things that affect others in ways we can scarcely imagine.

Christianity historically spoke aout the fallenness of human nature. Rabbinic Judaism spoke of good and evil impulses. In light of the best scientific understanding of human beings available, it is better to talk about our evolutionary heritage and our instincts. It is not clear that any other beings on this planet can reflect in the way humans can about those instincts, and can decide that some instincts should not be followed for moral reasons. For us humans, however, it is possible to reflect on our instincts, and in this case to identify an underlying selfishness behind our reactions to different scenarios. And even if we cannot eliminate the instinct (indeed, as Rabbinic Judaism maintained, the "evil impulse" was necessary for life, and was only evil when it wasn't kept in check), we can decide to reject the instinctual response and adopt a different one.

In demythologized or updated form, the religious perspective offers something important, I believe. It draws to our attention that there are instincts that will lead us to certain ends if we follow them, and it further emphasizes that humans who have chosen to cultivate a morality that at times overrides those instincts have found the resulting approach to life far more rewarding, satisfying and fulfilling than the alternative.

That doesn't give us moral absolutes. As I've posted before, even positing the existence of God doesn't seem to help. It gives us an eternally-existing person (or three persons in one substance, perhaps) with moral views. It may provide for punishment of those who do not submit to the deity's morals. But is there any sense in which that allows one to demonstrate that what God wills is good? Perhaps morality is like taste: It is not something one can prove, but it is something one can cultivate by exposure to diverse cultures and experiences. And in the process we can find principles on which we feel we must stand firm, even if they cannot be proven, while also realizing that others who seem to likewise be pursuing goodness may disagree with us on how to best achieve it.

This is, at any rate, an important issue. Absolutist claims often lead to troubling actions and seem ready to make that which seems evil to us into good and vice versa with a simple "God wills it". Relativism seems to provide no basis for standing up to injustice - or dealing with the salad issue, for that matter, since the chef's moral judgment may have been that the bowl-salad proportions were exactly right. And so in particular for those of us who wish to reclaim the outlook of being liberal with conviction, of finding a middle way between the extremes, figuring out what it means to evaluate moral matters from our fallible human standpoint is a crucially important issue.

LOST Entangled

Two blogs today revisited the television show LOST, including mention of some of its religious themes and overtones. Since I have (as always) been pondering its mysteries, I thought I would join in the conversation.

The show has, from the very first episode, been gearing up to explore a mythology in which two sides are playing a game. In the finale of last season, we finally got to meet the players, and their clothing symbolized what we were led to anticipate in the introduction of backgammon in the pilot episode. Black and white, light and dark.

Jacob and Esau do not (at least so far) resemble the polar opposites of good and evil as one might expect if Zoroastrianism were in the background. They are more like the light and dark of Taoism, the Yin and Yang. They also resemble God's two powers in ancient Jewish literature - love and justice in tension. Of course, they have only just been introduced, and so very little is certain about them at this stage. But there is certainly room for an exploration of two sides that reflect two opposing but complementary forces, rather than a battle of "good vs. evil". In Taoism, it is not that yin or yang is evil - what is evil is when the balance between the two is lost.

Some have suggested that the smoke monster is Esau (or whatever we wish to call Jacob's nemesis). This is possible, but if it is correct, then Esau has clearly not been trapped in the cabin, since we've seen the smoke monster around the island. Was Jacob, perhaps, trapped in the cabin at some point? Or is there a third player in this game? There are systems, such as Vedic thought, in which balance has to be kept between more than two forces, and if that spoils the simplicity of the backgammon symbolism, it wouldn't be the first time that John Locke has been wrong. But note too that the smoke monster lives beneath the temple that the Others frequent. And this suggests that the Others are not simply "on Jacob's side". Like all good polytheists, they seem to have a connection to more than one powerful figure. Alternatively, has the smoke monster been Jacob the whole time? And if we actually see Esau appear as smoke, will the smoke be white?

There are many unanswered mysteries, and while the show has done many brilliant and intriguing things this far, there are still a lot of incongruities that might leave nit-pickers seriously unsatisfied. As for what happens next, it seems that everything that has been orchestrated thus far by Jacob may have one main objective: if setting off the bomb prevented Oceanic Flight 815 from crashing, then John Locke never crashed on the island, and Esau's loophole has presumably been closed. But where that leaves the plot of the show is hard to say.

One other possibility that deserves thought is whether Jacob and Esau might not be Adam and Eve. Presumably a smoke monster that can appear as the deceased Alex is neither male nor female. And Jacob inhabits a statue of Tawaret, a female deity. Might it be that both will die before the final season is over? And if so, will that be the end of their game? Or will new players take their place?

Beholding His Glory (John 1:1-18): A Sermon

Beholding His Glory
A sermon by James F. McGrath
Preached at Crooked Creek Baptist Church, Indianapolis
June 7th 2009

The Gospel of John has been compared to a magic pool in which small children can wade up to their ankles, while at the same time large elephants can dive right into it. Its language is plain and familiar: light and darkness, love, world, Word – and of course glory, which will be a focus in today’s sermon. Yet if we dig beneath the surface, to see if anything lies beneath that first appearance of simplicity, we find the 'rabbit hole' winds down, with paths stretching out of sight. The first 18 verses of John's Gospel are usually referred to as its prologue. They provide both a summary of the Gospel's main themes and emphases, and the lens through which we are expected to read all that follows.

Before we turn our attention to John 1:1-18, let’s begin (as we’ve become accustomed to) with a story. When I think of the ways in which there can be different views of what is valuable, of what “glory” is, of how one person's trash is another person's treasure, I find myself thinking about a true story about the discovery of one of our oldest manuscripts of the New Testament. In the 19th century, there was a German New Testament scholar named Lobegott Friedrich Constantine von Tischendorf. His career aim was, by carefully studying and comparing manuscripts, to recover the original form of the New Testament. On a journey to Egypt, he came across a manuscript that would come to be known as Codex Sinaiticus, a fourth century edition of scripture that represents one of the earliest complete copies of the Greek Bible in existence. Tischendorf describes his discovery as follows:

"It was on the foot of Mount Sinai, in the Convent of St Catherine, that I discovered the pearl of all my researches. In visiting the monastery in the month of May 1844, I perceived in the middle of the great hall a large and wide basket full of old parchments; and the librarian who was a man of information told me that two heaps of papers like these, moldered by time, had been already committed to the flames. What was my surprise to find amid this heap of papers a considerable number of sheets of a copy of the Old Testament in Greek, which seemed to me to be one of the most ancient that I had ever seen. The authorities of the monastery allowed me to possess myself of a third of the parchments, or about forty three sheets, all the more readily as they were designated for the fire. But I could not get them to yield up possession of the remainder. The too lively satisfaction which I had displayed aroused their suspicions as to the value of the manuscript. I transcribed a page of the text of Isaiah and Jeremiah, and enjoined on the monks to take religious care of all such remains that might fall their way."[1]

Tischendorf did eventually obtain the manuscript, though 15 years would pass before he managed to. What is most striking (and, particularly to someone like me who works in the field of New Testament, most horrifying) is that this particularly important manuscript of the New Testament was almost used to light fires and lost to us. For Tischendorf, as for other New Testament scholars, finding the earliest possible manuscripts was a key step in figuring out what the New Testament originally looked like. We don’t have the originals, and so the earlier copies we can find, the closer we get to the originals. If some of you have read the King James version, and then read a more recent translation, and noticed that there are differences in places, with words or even whole phrases added or omitted, this is the reason: because earlier manuscripts have been found since the time when the King James translation was made. But the thinking of many in Tischendorf’s time was that copies should follow the official version that had been approved by the Emperor Constantine a millennium and a half earlier. And so there was no value in keeping old, deteriorating manuscripts – especially ones that differed from the approved version - when the monks themselves had made plenty of newer ones that were in better shape. But what to some was merely old and deteriorating material that would be useful for kindling, to others was valuable evidence about the early forms of the New Testament and the history of its copying. Today when you read the Gospel of John, the translators have taken into account the evidence of this important manuscript.

I share this story with you, because it illustrates so clearly how, as the saying goes, one person’s trash is another person’s treasure. The TV show Antique Roadshow exists precisely because people find items at yard sales and are astounded to find they are valuable, while others preserve family heirlooms that turn out to be worth very little – in monetary terms, at least; they often have sentimental value. And thinking about this is relevant to the prologue or introduction to the Gospel of John, because we read, soon after the mention of the incarnation, when “the Word became flesh”, that “we beheld his glory”. But what is this glory? Does it consist of the sorts of things that human beings are generally inclined to consider glorious? Or does seeing God’s glory in the life of Jesus require us to rethink what glory is? Is God’s treasure our trash, and vice versa?

But let us not jump ahead. The Gospel of John begins "in the beginning" with an echo of Genesis 1. It then immediately introduces a concept familiar in the time when this Gospel was written, but which cries out for explanation for today's readers. Why call that which John is referring to here the "Word"? Why not use some other term? How can the Word be both God and "with God"? Perhaps most importantly, why doesn't the Gospel of John ask, much less answer, such questions? If we can figure that out, it will help us to understand better what it means to say that "the Word became flesh" - and what the significance is from our perspective that "the flesh has become words", that we encounter the Word become flesh through written words, like those we are reading and thinking about together today.

The English word "Word" doesn't precisely correspond to the Greek word used here in John's Gospel. The Greek word in question is logos (from which we get not only the English word 'logic' but also the '-logy' in words like theology and biology). It meant not only the spoken or written word, but also the word as thought, as reason, existing in the mind. The Greek philosophical school known as the Stoics used the term to denote the 'world soul', the underlying principle that was thought to account for the order in the universe. From them, the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, a contemporary of Jesus', borrowed the term in order to explain how a God who is perfect, transcendent and ultimately beyond human knowledge and comprehension, could nonetheless have become known and revealed to the creation. This was a term that already had a long history of use and a rich depth of meaning. And so, when the Gospel of John said that the Word became flesh in and as the human life of Jesus, it meant what the Gospel's author and his contemporaries would have understood: Jesus is the expression in a human life of the meaning of existence, and of God's own revelation.

Something similar occurs when God's Word becomes flesh, and when Jesus' flesh becomes words, reaching us through the medium of the stories and teachings in the Gospels. God does not simply speak his own language, as it were. God does not bring God’s pure essence before humanity and say "Understand if you can" – as though we ever could. God reaches out to creation through creation. This 'incarnational principle' becomes a guiding force of Christianity, as the early Christians focused not on preserving the very words Jesus spoke in his own native language (Aramaic), but focused on translating the message into other languages so that more people could understand (and hence the New Testament documents were written in Greek, and translated quite early into other languages such as Latin and Syriac – and much later into English). Any time you translate, meaning is lost and new meaning is created. Yet Christianity never claims that there is a divine language that people must learn if they wish to hear what God is saying. Rather it claims that God can and indeed must be encountered in a human life, and through human words.

The famous Christian author on missions, Leslie Newbiggin, once wrote: “The idea that one can or could at any time separate out by some process of distillation a pure gospel unadulterated by any cultural accretions is an illusion. It is, in fact, an abandonment of the gospel, for the gospel is about the word made flesh…. Yet the gospel, which is from the beginning to end embodied in culturally conditioned forms, calls into question all cultures, including the one in which it was originally embodied” (Foolishness to the Greeks, p.4).

And so any form of Christianity that seems focused solely and exclusively on preserving past meaning, on conserving old forms, is missing the incarnational and translational impetus that has not only been the driving force behind the Christian mission, and the rationale behind the composition of the Gospels in Greek and their translation into still other languages like English, but is also central to the understanding of Jesus found in this Gospel.

There is a great deal more - perhaps infinitely more - that we could say about this passage in John's Gospel, than we'll have time to get into today. Indeed, at the other end of the Gospel, its author will acknowledge that one could potentially fill all the books of the world with words about Jesus. This tells us something else important about God's self-revelation as this Gospel presents it. There is infinitely more to God than can be expressed in the years of Jesus' life, just as there is more to the life of Jesus than can be expressed in this book, or the other three written about him that were included in the New Testament, or the countless more written since. John's Gospel acknowledges this twice here in the prologue. We are told that the Word gives light to every human being. We also have the Word depicted as coming repeatedly into the world - even prior to the incarnation, which is only brought into the picture in verse 14. When the Gospel’s author spoke of the Word being in the world and yet being rejected, he had in mind the activity of the Word throughout human history, and not just in Jesus. For the author of this Gospel, as for Christians more generally, we see in Jesus the ultimate revelation of God, but by no means the only revelation of God. Ironically, the fact that some Christians fail to understand this point simply illustrates the risk God takes, the risk the Gospel authors take, the risk inherent in the attempt to communicate with others. The gospel message does not remain in its first century context and language, where such a misunderstanding was less likely, where the author's willingness to draw on terminology developed within other traditions of thought in order to articulate his own faith was plain to see.

These considerations bring us to the heart of the matter, in the heart of John's prologue: what does it mean to 'behold his glory'? Some readers, under the influence of their understanding of the prologue, have gotten the impression that Jesus as depicted in this Gospel is scarcely human, striding an inch above the ground, emitting a glowing halo like in so many paintings.

Yet sometimes what is not said is as important as what is said. There is one story, included in the other three Gospels, in which Jesus is depicted on a mountain like (and with!) Moses, glowing and visibly transfigured. But the Gospel of John includes no such story. This would seem surprising, if John meant to say that he "beheld his glory" in the sense of seeing Jesus literally shine.

Towards the end of the Gospel of John, the purpose of its writing is expressed in terms of believing that Jesus is the Christ. As in the case of the Logos or Word, so too there was an already-existing idea of what the glory of the Messiah, God's anointed one, ought to look like. Anointing with oil was used to symbolize the setting apart of the nation's king or high priest for their role of leadership. When Jews spoke of a single anointed one, they usually had the king in mind. The expectation that God would restore a descendant of David to the throne was not merely a religious hope. If we take the closest parallel in our own context, most people don't hope a particular candidate will be elected president merely so that their chosen person or party wins. They expect their president to lead them into economic prosperity and, when appropriate, military victory. The glory of the expected Messiah had to be all that and more.

It is only by making such comparisons, however inadequate, that we can get a sense of just how bizarre the early Christians' talk of Jesus as Messiah would have seemed to people in that time. Imagine a group who claimed that the president was not the person elected in the most recent election, but rather a person who had recently been executed as a criminal. That isn't what we usually think of when we speak of "glory". And so, while much that John said of the Word up until this point could have been said by various philosophers of that time, his association of the glory of the Word with flesh in v.14 was startling. Flesh, both in Judaism and various strands of Greek thought, had connotations of weakness, of something distant from divine perfection. And when we know that he had in mind the flesh of a crucified man, the shocking character of what John wrote becomes clearer still.

We may recall at this point the words of another New Testament author. The apostle Paul talks about God's treasure being placed in earthen vessels (2 Cor. 4:7) - in clay pots - and of God's strength being made perfect in weakness. When Paul talks about the Christian life in these terms, it is closely connected with the centrality of Jesus as the paradoxical crucified Messiah. But is this true even of the Gospel of John, in which we hear so much about glory, about light, about exaltation?

Yes, and the latter instance is yet another example of the paradoxical and counterintuitive character of glory in the Gospel of John. Three times in this Gospel we are told that "the Son of Man must be lifted up", and being lifted up can mean being exalted. But in Aramaic, the same word could also be used in reference to crucifixion - to being physically lifted up, like being hoisted up on the gallows. And so, while most early Christians spoke of Jesus' crucifixion and his subsequent exaltation, the Gospel of John finds a way of combining the two in a single phrase. This serves to highlight the paradox of Jesus' glorification by means of the cross.
Why is it important for us to understand that Jesus' glory of which this Gospel speaks was not a visible halo that surrounded him, or a reference to his clear success? Because unless we understand this, we have never truly been confronted with the challenge of the cross, with the scandal of a suffering Messiah.

The challenge is not something limited to our time, to those viewing Jesus from our distant standpoint in history. Sometimes we may be tempted to think that, if we had a time machine, and could go back to the first century and watch Jesus' ministry for ourselves, then we would never have any doubts any longer. All our questions would be answered, all our uncertainties would disappear.

But to think this way ignores the fact that there were people who themselves saw Jesus' public (and in some cases private) actions with their own eyes, heard him speak with their own ears, and did not believe. As is so often the case, those who knew him best (at least on one level), those who knew him when he was growing up, did not see the glory. The folk in his home town scoffed, and his family even thought he had gone out of his mind. Seeing Jesus' glory is something very different than just seeing Jesus. And it seems that seeing his glory did not mean being overwhelmed by miracles, being confronted with events and realities so inexplicable that there was no choice but to believe. Whatever Jesus' childhood was like, it wasn't as depicted in some of the stories that were written in the era after the New Testament, to fill in the so-called "missing years" from Jesus' childhood with accounts of increasing numbers of increasingly-astounding miracles. It was Jesus' ordinariness in so many respects that made it hard for some to see in him that which was truly extraordinary.

There is a Michael Card song that talks about this aspect of Jesus' life and how it confronts us when we are challenged to follow him. The song is called "God's Own Fool". Here are some of the lyrics:

Seems I've imagined Him all of my life
As the wisest of all of mankind
But if God's Holy wisdom is foolish to men
He must have seemed out of His mind

For even His family said He was mad
And the priests said a demon's to blame
But God in the form of this angry young man
Could not have seemed perfectly sane

Chorus
When we in our foolishness thought we were wise
He played the fool and He opened our eyes
When we in our weakness believed we were strong
He became helpless to show we were wrong

And so we follow God's own fool
For only the foolish can tell-
Believe the unbelievable
And come be a fool as well

If we travelled back to the first century, to see with our own eyes, we would see a human being. We might find as we listened to him that he speaks the words of eternal life. But there would be no unearthly glow singling him out from the crowd, no visible halo about his head.

And so the challenging question is this: if I beheld him in the flesh, would I have perceived glory, or not? Would I have been among those who demanded a sign, or would I have said, like Peter, even though I didn't really grasp what Jesus was saying, that I have nowhere better to go, recognizing that he has the words of eternal life?

The biggest hurdle to perceiving his glory is the fact that what we as human beings regard as glorious is not necessarily what God's glory is like. As Paul wrote, God's foolishness is wiser than our wisdom. So also God's shame, as it were, God's abasement, God’s humility is more splendid than our glory. But it is different from our glory, not merely further along the same spectrum. And so, if we are not to undermine the Gospel message and its challenge, we must make sure we do not try to make Jesus, or the Christian message, more glorious, more impressive, by human standards. It is good to remember that those things we expect to be praised for, those things we consider our greatest accomplishments, may not be viewed that way from a heavenly perspective, as it were.[2]

The prologue of John’s Gospel is focused on the Word made flesh as Jesus. In Paul’s letters, we read of the same Spirit that was in Christ dwelling in us, and of ourselves being knit together and indwelt as the body of Christ. And so the challenge of John’s Gospel does not only relate to our understanding of who Jesus is, but who God is, and what we ought to expect God to be doing in and through us. For the need continues for people to behold his glory, in what little glimpses of it they may see in your life and mine. And the temptation we continue to face is to try to be spectacular and impressive in ways that the world will appreciate, so that they might come to believe. But truly believing in Jesus and following him is not about being impressed by his worldly success, as though he did all the things that people expected the Messiah to do, but choosing to follow one whom the world rejected, and to see God’s glory revealed precisely there. This understanding should shape our understanding of Jesus, of our mission, and of ourselves.

The challenge of allowing God’s glory to be seen in our lives is the same challenge of seeing it in Jesus. It is not a challenge to somehow step out of our human weakness, outside of our own limitations, and to be truly impressive. It is to allow God to be revealed precisely in and through our weakness, in and through our flesh. When we do that, amazing things can happen, as people behold his glory present and working in and through us.[3]


[1] From http://todayinchurchhistory.blogspot.com/2006/05/may-24-1844-codex-sinaiticus.html quoting Bart Ehrman’s book, Misquoting Jesus.
[2] For a story illustrating this point, see http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/2009/05/great-theologian-parable-based-on-true.html
[3] As one theologian recently put it, “It is the Spirit’s work to draw what might otherwise be a cacophonic disunity into symphony. The Spirit worked to transcribe God’s music for playing on the human instrument of Jesus of Nazareth; the Spirit now works to orchestrate that theme for an ensemble of billions” (Mike Higton, Christian Doctrine, (SCM 2008), 161).

Joseph of Arimathea

Neil Godfrey, on his blog Vridar, has engaged some of what I've written about Joseph of Arimathea in The Burial of Jesus. I may try to continue the interaction at some point (particularly having just discussed a book that challenges the classic criteria of authenticity), but for the moment, I just wanted to draw attention to his post and invite readers to pay a visit over there!

Lost Untangled Musical Finale

The long-awaited humorous recap of the season finale of LOST is now available. Enjoy!

lost untangled finale season5
by lyly_ford

The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus

Dale Allison's recent book The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus is simply fantastic. It refuses to separate unnecessarily matters of history and faith, yet neither does it run them together in ways that are inappropriate. It refuses to simply take for granted the assumptions of either conservatives or liberals, challenging many of our basic assumptions about history and historical methodology as well. I highly recommend it.

Allison begins by reviewing the history of Christian thinkers' awareness of discrepancies and other historical problems (see too pp.34-35 on a rabbinic discussion of Job as parable, and Gregory of Nyssa's rejection of a story's historical factuality on moral grounds). There may be a long history of ignoring problems and of allowing theological assumptions to trump what the text actually says, but recognition of certain historical issues go back very early into the church's history. His statement of purpose and of his own perspective (p.5) is succinct, eloquent and highly quotable, as is much else in the book.

Allison acknowledges honestly that the "assured results" of critical scholarship do not last very long (pp.10-11). Of course, the same has historically been true in the sciences, but as increasing amounts of data have been amassed, it has become increasingly unlikely that certain key conclusions will have to be revised completely. But the natural sciences are very different from the humanities. The data of the world is perpetually accessible, while increasing amounts of historical data are not always forthcoming. At any rate, Allison also notes (pp.13-14) that theologians inevitably have to lag behind historians (he notes how one might often find a theologian citing Cullmann on matters of New Testament).

The way sayings can be misattributed is illustrated (although Allison himself doesn't make anything of it) when George Tyrrell's famous remark about Adolf Harnack is quoted, about him having seen in the historical Jesus his own "Liberal Protestant face, seen at the bottom of a deep well" (quoted p.15). The saying is, of course, often wrongly attributed to Albert Schweitzer.

Allison speaks with a refreshing honesty. A great example is when he writes on the subject of N. T. Wright's treatment of the risen saints from Matthew 27:51-53, "These lame words lack all historical sense. They are pure apologetics, a product of the will to believe, and a prize illustration of theological predispositions moving an intelligent man to render an unintelligent verdict" (p.21).

Allison emphasizes that hindsight is not to be excluded from historical study, as though anything written about a figure like Abraham Lincoln after his death would be less insightful and accurate than things written while he was alive (p.24). He then goes on to explain why, even in narratives that may provide no factual historical data, we may still be dealing in a very real sense with memory about Jesus. "The temptation narrative may not be history as it really was, yet it is full of memory...Memory and legend are not easily disentangled, so when we try to weed out the fictions, will we not be uprooting much else besides?" (pp.25-26). Allison also provides some interesting discussion of religious experience and what would technically be categorized as altered states of consciousness, and warns against assuming that material that describes unusual visions or apparent miracles must be late. There are plenty of eyewitness accounts of such phenomena even today, and while that doesn't do anything to solve the issue of their veracity, it does show that even eyewitnesses can be the source of such material.

Perhaps the most important discussion with respect to historical methods is Allison's conclusion that the criteria of authenticity cannot provide the sort of certainty that they were intended to, and that even when they can, most of the material remains of uncertain authenticity. Moreover, if the New Testament texts are as wrong or deceptive about Jesus as some have maintained, it is folly to think that we could use them to get back to a historical Jesus about whom we could know things with confidence. "Because our criteria are not strong enough to resist our wills, we almost inevitably make them do what we want them to do: we, with our expectations and preconceptions, bend them more than they bend us" (p.58). Specific illustrations, including self-critical personal ones about his own historical research, are provided.

Allison provides a helpful treatment about how things that are probably true about the historical Jesus are problematic to both conservative and liberal theologies. On the one hand, the Jesus of the New Testament (never mind the Jesus of history) has regularly been a problem for the view of him as divine (pp.82-85). On the other hand, a Jesus who thought himself to be central to God's eschatological plan has often seemed less sane and less theologically useful to those on the other end of the theological spectrum. As Allison puts it at one point, Most Christians cannot abide an errant Jesus" (p.96). Allison's own solution is helpful, and not at all surprising for Liberal Christians: treat the Gospels as we treat Genesis, recognize that the Parousia is a parable. Yet for all that, he affirms that we still need eschatology, because of the problem of evil (pp.108-112).

Allison's book attempts to bring historical study into conversation with theology. Whatever one may think of this or that conclusion, his honesty about his own assumptions and perspectives, and his fair criticisms of problems across the spectrum of theological views and motivations, makes his contribution a valuable one.

See also the reviews by Greg Carey, Scot McKnight and Craig Blomberg.

Quote of the Day (Robert Lawrence Kuhn)

"The primary questions people pose—Why the universe? Does God exist?—are important, sure, but they are not bedrock fundamental. “Why anything at all?” is the ultimate question."

-- Robert Lawrence Kuhn, "Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?"

Religion and Science Today

Evolution and Liberal Christianity

As a Liberal Christian who has been a vocal opponent of young-earth creationists, cdesign proponentsists and other pseudoscientific movements both on my blog and in the classroom, I can only respond to Jason Rosenhouse's recent post on the incompatibility of science and religion as follows: "Huh?!"

The point of emphasizing the compatibility of religious beliefs and science doesn't have anything to do with Liberal Christians, except to the extent that Liberal Christians are usually people who already embrace the findings of the natural sciences. We are well aware that there is a lot of traditional Christian theology that has to be revised in light of our contemporary scientific understanding, and that there are things that must simply be discarded. That's what being a Liberal Christian is about. We completely accept the point that modern science makes some religious views untenable, and if we do not consistently follow through in abandoning outmoded ways of thinking, it is because of our human shortcomings and not because we are not committed to doing so.

What concerns Christians like me when the rhetoric of incompatibility is used is the effect it has on those who are not (yet) committed to a form of faith that will allow them to embrace science and reject theological ideas incompatible with the current state of human knowledge. Such people frequently accept of reject things on the basis of an emotional reaction and core moral values rather than evidence (as do we all, at times, for better or worse). Those who use language that suggests "Evolution shows that our existence is meaningless and everything is random, humans are bundles of chemicals and all our apparent choices and artistic creation is determined by the laws of physics" (a caricature, to be sure, but a recognizable one) are giving the impression to Christians who are not Liberal that they must choose between valuing human beings and leading meaningful lives on the one hand, or the acceptance of modern scientific findings on the other. Who can be surprised that they choose the former? But they choose the former instead of science because they have been led to believe that they must choose between science and value, between science and love, between science and meaning, and a key emphasis of Liberal Christianity, as well as those scientists who aren't religious believers but nonetheless agree with us on this point, is that this is a false antithesis: this isn't a choice one has to make.

I don't see how Ken Miller and others are doing what Rosenhouse accuses them of. Does Miller mention God in his articles in biology journals? Of course not. He is not imposing his religious views or forcing anyone in the realm of biology to accept them. His role is an apologist for science and an educator. And he's learned (as have many educators) that learning is a process. Those who suggest that revising one's theology has to happen from the outset, rather than after many years of first coming to grips with the relevant scientific (not to mention theological) arguments and evidence, are making a claim that seems to be not only false, but poor pedagogy.

Clearly their religious beliefs are not preventing Ken Miller, Francisco Ayala, Francis Collins and many others from doing top notch scientific work. And so why is there so much objection to their self-identification as Christians? I can only conclude that the reason for this opposition to those who emphasize the compatibility of religious beliefs (of a certain sort, it goes without saying) and the natural sciences is the following: there are atheist scientists who love the simplicity of the position that "science disproves God" every bit as much as their fundamentalist counterparts on the other end of the spectrum love to claim that "science proves God". Neither of these extremes wants to have to muddle through the difficult and uncertain waters of theology, philosophy and metaphysics. And so both find the views in the middle threatening, because they provide evidence that such simplistic answers are inadequate.

Islam, in Sunday School, in the News

Ethics Daily picked up some of my blogging about what we've done recently in my Sunday school class, looking into the subject of Islam. Do pay them a visit if you have a few moments!

When Did The Word Become Flesh?

I will be preaching this coming Sunday at my church, and the text I've chosen is John 1:1-18. I've devoted quite a bit of scholarly attention to that familiar and well-worn passage (two chapters in John's Apologetic Christology, for instance), but in the past I've avoided preaching on it, perhaps out of a concern that I might not be able to resist going into more detail than anyone in the congregation was likely to find interesting.

One subject related to the prologue that I've looked at before, but probably won't bring up in the sermon, is the question of when the author of this Gospel believed the incarnation had taken place. Scholars as different as Reginald Fuller, Charles Talbert and Frances Watson have all suggested that, whereas the classic canonical reading understands the decisive moment to be Jesus' conception, in the context of the Gospel of John, it is more natural to understand the decisive moment to have been at Jesus' baptism.

This was a common interpretation among early Christians (although rejected by developing orthodoxy, it was maintained in the Jewish-Christian Pseudo-Clementine literature, which regularly uses Johannine language in reference to Jesus). But more importantly than that, in the context of Jewish and developing Christian thought in the time when this Gospel was written, concepts like Word, Wisdom and Spirit were not clearly distinguished, and so many readers would have found "the Word became flesh" (John 1:14) a natural equivalent to what we are told slightly later, namely that the Spirit descended and remained on him (John 1:32).

Also relevant is the first of the Johannine epistles, which says that Christ came not "by water" only but "by water and blood" (1 John 5:6). Some claimed that the pre-existent one descended upon Jesus at his baptism and left him before suffering on the cross. If the statement in 1 John is a response to such views, it denies the latter while affirming the former.

Obviously one can object to this reading on the basis of later creeds and Christological affirmations. But setting aside such anachronistic concerns, is there anything else within the Johannine literature itself or its historical setting that seems to strongly favor or discount this understanding of Johannine Christology?

Biblical Studies Carnival 42

Jim Getz has posted Biblical Studies Carnival 42. Don't panic, it is mostly harmless...

Sinful Certainty

I just had a brief conversation with another church member (he also teaches Sunday school) which managed in a very short time to touch on evolution, the dome in Genesis 1, JEPD and Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and the perfection and knowledge of Jesus. The individual in question suggested that, if Jesus was mistaken about evolution, then that meant Jesus sinned.

A couple of preliminary points before my main one. First, I have no interest in defending Jesus' sinlessness, although I decided that raising that point in the conversation I mentioned would probably make the discussion take considerably longer, and so I refrained from doing so. Second, there is no inevitable conflict between evolutionary biology and the statement attributed to Jesus in the Gospels that "in the beginning God made them male and female", since (contrary to one bizarre creationist misunderstanding of evolution), evolution does not hold that there were originally asexual or androgynous humans. Indeed, the latter is a view that some interpreters of the Bible have come up with.

But the main point for me was this: being wrong should not be considered the same as being sinful. Being mistaken is not only not evil, it is something inherent to the human condition. And to claim that Jesus would always be right about things, and particularly things that no human in his time knew, is to deny his humanity.

The solution to this is simple. Certainty should be defined as a divine attribute (or perhaps it should not even be attributed to God, but I'll let anyone interested in that philosophical discussion pursue it if they are interested). It should be considered sinful hubris rather than praiseworthy when a human being lays claim to certainty.

"Jesus was uncertain. Jesus didn't know a great many things. Jesus was wrong about some things." Such statements should be viewed as part and parcel of affirming Jesus' humanity, whereas attributing certainty to Jesus makes him out to be full of sinful hubris.

Perhaps if we emphasize that claiming Jesus was always right, always certain, means either denying his humanity or attributing sin to him, then we can persuade more of his followers to abandon their own sinful claims of certainty.

I almost wrote of their sinful quest for certainty. But it is not necessarily the quest for certainty itself that is the problem. It is the belief that one has attained the goal.