For some reason, a few of my old posts have decided to republish themselves to my Feedburner feed. I don't know whether the malfunction is occurring in Blogger or Feedburner. There is no new material, and I don't know why the old posts are republishing. Sorry if anyone has been inconvenienced.

I suppose I should also apologize for so little posting recently. Life, being busy, blah blah blah, you know the drill. I did post a rant yesterday, and then thought better of it and took it down. But Peter Lumpkins tagged me, so I'll be posting five things I dig about Jesus... as soon as I get a little time to think of it, what with life, being busy, blah blah blah, you know the drill.

Egalitarianism, Complementarianism, and Ministry

I've been following discussions of women in ministry on such forums as Jesus Creed, and Better Bibles Blog. It's rather a tangential issue for me: my fellowship doesn't prevent women from ministerial licensing or ordination; on the other hand, there are not a lot of women who are in positions of senior leadership in my fellowship either. Having watched this debate in as close to a position of objectivity as is possible, it seems to me that the debate is framed in terms of a significant misunderstanding of one another's positions, and a significant misunderstanding on the part of both sides of what ministry is.

The two primary terms in this debate are complementarianism and egalitarianism. The egalitarian position asserts that it is part of God's overall plan to erase distinctions of status and authority among the people of God. The key verse here would probably be Galatians 3:28: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." The argument here would be that what God has accomplished ontologically, as a spiritual reality, He also would want to make a visible reality in the lives, relationships, and organization of those who compose His Body.

The complementarian position acknowledges that with regard to our status before God, we are indeed equally sinners and equally saved by the mercy of God and the sacrifice of Jesus on our behalf. Nonetheless, complementarians would argue that there remain positions of authority and submission, even within the Godhead, and our human relationships reflect that. There is no one passage that epitomizes this point of view, but a good contender would be 1 Corinthians 11:3: "Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God." Without getting into the thorny issues regarding what headship means in this verse, it seems to imply some sort of relationship other than mere side-by-side equality. Complementarians would argue that the relationship between Jesus and the Father was, among other things, one of authority and submission, and that that same relationship would exist among men and women, or at least among husbands and wives specifically. The central idea is that we do not image God as mere individuals, but in relationship with one another, and the relationships that image God are, once again, not merely those of side-by-side equality.

The reason why I say that the debate is framed largely in terms of a significant misunderstanding of one another's positions is this: egalitarians do not seem to be able to conceive of the complementarian position as describing any relationship other than authoritarian domination and abject submission, and complementarians do not seem to be able to conceive of the egalitarian position as anything other than radical individualism, an insistence that there cannot and must not be any differentiation between any two persons, and that each person has an equal right to any position and any measure of authority. Both views are mischaracterizations.

One thing that the Bible focuses on very strongly is our mutual interdependence. That's precisely what the metaphor of the "body" of Christ is used for. We are not pennies in a roll, equal and undifferentiated; we are various "members" with differing gifts, gifts which make us interdependent, since no one person has them all. That is God's design for His people; quite frankly, He wants to force us to be dependent on one another. The odd thing about that is that it is mostly egalitarians who emphasize this mutual interdependence, even though it implies something of a complementarian position. Because the main point of complementarianism is (or should be) not dominance and subservience, but the fact that we complement one another to form a whole that none of us can fill on our own.

Egalitarians will respond: "We agree that all this is true. What we deny is that God does not give the gifts that imply authority only to one gender." And they may be right. I happen to think that they are right. But they are not necessarily right; that is to say, gifts are gifts, and God can give them to whomever He pleases, for whatever reasons He sees fit. Nobody has a right to a gift; the two terms are mutually exclusive. Egalitarians commonly argue, regarding 1 Timothy 2:12, "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent," that Paul is dealing with a local issue involving women at Ephesus. What this implicitly acknowledges is that under certain circumstances, God may in fact rightly place restrictions on one group that He does not on another. Because after all, they are His gifts to give, His ministries to fill.

And this is where I think that both sides misunderstand what ministry is. Ministry isn't about authority; it's about service--that's what the word means. And it's not about the right to self-expression on the part of the one ministering; it's about meeting the needs of those who are being ministered to. As someone who has been in and out of a few different types of formal ministry, I hardly know what those who are agitating for their "right" to minister are after. The best medicine might well be for them to get what they want. The slings and arrows of ministry--the second-guessing, the opposition, the pettiness, the politics--fall on anyone who ministers.

I find it an odd little contradiction that those in the emerging movement tend both toward affirming women in formalized positions of ministry and being skeptical of formal ministry itself. Perhaps we need to stop focusing on formal ministry and simply focus on service. Serve however we can, wherever we can, whatever our individual circumstances. I know that this doesn't answer all the questions people have, and they're worthwhile questions to explore. But it seems to me that whether Junia was an apostle or what exactly head coverings meant might be less important than asking myself the question, "What can I do, here and now, today, to represent Jesus to my world?"

Come to think of it, Jesus never had a position of formal ministry. And He managed to accomplish a few things.

Technorati Tags: Egalitarianism, Complementarianism, Egalitarian, Complementarian, Women in Ministry

N. T. Wright on Faith and Works

N.T. Wright has an interesting piece on the relationship between faith and works in salvation, as well as a discussion of what "salvation" really means. We tend to think of "salvation" as ourselves being rescued out of an evil world; but our salvation is merely one part of God redeeming the entire creation into the "new heavens and new earth" promised in Revelation 21. He also tantalizingly hints at problems involved in our understanding of salvation deriving from the relationship between Paul's battles with the Judaizers, the Reformers' battles with the medieval Catholic church, the Romantic division between "inward" and "outward" spirituality, and the existentialist idea of "authenticity." Good stuff.

Tags: N. T. Wright, salvation, faith, works, faith and works, Christianity

Dating My Wife

I recently had the pleasure of taking my wife out on a very nice date.

It began a few months ago, when I saw a billboard offering tickets to the Detroit Symphony Orchestra at a very reduced rate. I checked it out online, hoping for some orchestral jazz (Branford Marsalis is one of the featured artists this season), but due to scheduling issues, ended up choosing a night when the featured performer was piano virtuoso Yefim Bronfmann playing Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3. Then, I simply told my wife, "Don't make plans for May 25. We're going out, and you'll need to dress up."

There is enormous power in the anticipation of the unknown.

As the date approached, some other things providentially came together. I emailed some close friends of ours, mainly just to let them know that this deal was going on, and told them if they happened to want to go to the same event we were going to, this was the date and here were our seats. They emailed me back: "We're two rows behind you." I was also recognized for going a bit over and above at work, and my boss gave me a gift card to a local restaurant. And Cecile's sister graciously offered to stay with our boys at our house, so we wouldn't have to worry about picking them up from somewhere else and we wouldn't have to worry about how late we were staying out. So now I had the prospect of a nice dinner and then an evening at Orchestra Hall with dear friends, and surprising my wife with all of it.

As we got closer to the date, the anticipation grew. Cecile got me to tell some mutual friends where we were going, so that those friends could tell her what kind of "dressy" she should go with. She ended up choosing something eminently suitable, and the day finally came. I took her out for the first leg, and I highly recommend the prime rib at Marinelli's. It was a nice time of just relaxing and talking. She still didn't know where the evening would end up. Finally, we went down to Orchestra Hall. I got my directions a bit mixed up and ended up driving into the Wayne State University campus. Eventually I figured out where it was, and when we got to a place to park, we saw our friends already parking in the very next space. Again, providential.

The music was gorgeous. Seeing the orchestra was amazing; intricate bowing and plucking techniques were performed by thirty or forty string players who sounded exactly like one. Bronfmann was amazing on the piano. The sound in Orchestra Hall was superb. Cecile was thrilled, and my friend Bob knew some things about the musical history involved. We went out for dessert afterward, and then home. It was a lovely night.

The point of all this is, how many of us seriously put the effort into dating our spouses that we did when we were trying to win them? It's not easy, when you're living together and sharing a bank account, to truly surprise someone. And outside-the-box opportunities like this don't happen every day. But if we take our spouses for granted, we shouldn't be surprised when they begin acting like they're being taken for granted. I'm not trying to take undue credit; this fell into my lap, and I just took advantage of opportunities. Maybe a night with the orchestra isn't your type of thing, but find something, some way to bless that person that God put into your life. It'll be well worth it. I guarantee it.


For more on marriage, check out my book, Marriage, Family, and the Image of God .

Gilmore Girls, RIP

The best-written show in a very long time has passed, not with a bang, but with a sigh. Gilmore Girls never got great ratings, and was probably dismissed by most men as a “chick show,” scheduled as it was against the testosterone-driven 24. Nonetheless, the quick wit, fast-paced dialogue, avalanches of pop-cultural references, and heart of the show should have appealed to men and women alike.

The basic story was about a mother and daughter who are best friends, Lorelai and Rory Gilmore. Having given birth to Rory at the age of sixteen, Lorelai had run away from her upper-crust parents' home to make a life for herself and her daughter in the small, quirky town of Stars Hollow. As the show began, Rory was now fifteen and obviously an intellectual prodigy with ambitions of becoming a journalist. Lorelai knows that for Rory to realize her ambitions and potential, she needs to go to the best schools, so she reluctantly crawls back to her parents to borrow the money for Rory's tuition to Chilton, an exclusive private school. The parents, Richard and Emily Gilmore, agree to loan her the money, on condition that Lorelai and Rory begin having Friday night dinners with them--they want to reestablish a relationship with their granddaughter, and be able to exert some "influence" (read "control") over her future.

So there's tension in the relationship between Lorelai and her parents, tension between the down-to-earth Rory and her new prep school environment (and her continuing relationship with friends from Stars Hollow), and tension caused by both Lorelai and Rory dipping their toes into the dating waters at the same time. Lorelai had a few different relationships, including one with Christopher, Rory's charming but undependable father, all the while avoiding her real attraction to the local diner owner, Luke. Rory falls for a nice guy, Dean, but then leaves him for Luke's much more edgy nephew Jess. Description doesn't do the show justice; it was the sharp-edged wit that made it work. That and Lorelai's character, played inimitably by Lauren Graham: having been thrust into adult responsibilities at an early age, Lorelai is emotionally the peer, or even the junior, of her own daughter. A charming veneer of clever verbal repartee covered a heart of pain and fear--primarily, the fear that she may have missed the chance for a lasting romantic relationship forever.

Eventually, the show changed. During Rory's final year at Chilton, she gave up her lifelong dream to go to Harvard in order to attend Richard's alma mater, Yale, doubtless to keep her in closer proximity to the other principals in the show. It didn't really work; the show about a mother-daughter best-friendship struggled with trying to put its two principals on the same set at the same time. It became two parallel stories, not a single complex intertwined one. Plotlines were invented to accommodate the exit of supporting cast members. Other plotlines worked better in anticipation than in execution: for instance, Rory's friend Lane was originally an extremely hip music afficionado whose ambition was to be in a band; once the dream was achieved, though, the band was just silly, sporting a thirtysomething (fortysomething?) front man who looked like a David Lee Roth wannabee, and touring Seventh-Day Adventist churches under the direction of Lane's mother, the stereotypical religious zealot whom Lane has been trying to get out from under all her life. And Rory, heretofore driven by ambition and a love for learning, dropped out of college for no particular reason other than getting involved with a slacker rich kid boyfriend, evidently because college life didn't provide any interesting plot lines to develop. Even when she returned, the focus was more on her out-of-nowhere promotion to editor of the Yale Daily News; evidently Yale doesn't require the taking of any actual classes.

But the major cause of plot gridlock in the show's later years was the unwillingness of the show's creators and writers, primarily Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband Daniel Palladino, to allow Lorelai to move forward in her emotional and relational development. In the fifth season, the relationship that everyone was waiting for between Lorelai and Luke finally materialized and culminated in a proposal of marriage; however, in the sixth season, the writers invented a long-lost daughter for Luke, eventually spoiling the wedding plans and ending in a breakoff of their engagement. Wanting to avoid the mistakes of Moonlighting and Cheers, the writers didn't want to lose the romantic tension by putting the principals together; they didn't notice that the romantic tension had already dissipated because of the increasingly artificial plot devices to keep them apart.

In the final season, the Palladinos left the show over contract disputes and their heir apparent, David Rosenthal, became the primary writer and showrunner. Rosenthal developed the relationship between Lorelai and Rory's father Christopher, culminating in a quickie marriage in Paris which Lorelai immediately regretted. Fans faulted Rosenthal for losing the pace of the Palladino-led show; in reality, much of that had already been lost in the angst-ridden sixth season. Rosenthal obviously wanted to explore what a marriage to Christopher would have meant (something the show had hinted at throughout its run), while reestablishing Lorelai and Luke's relationship. Unfortunately, this meant rendering Lorelai and Christopher's marriage vows meaningless. I had always wanted to see Lorelai and Luke end up married, but once married to Christopher, that should have meant something.

Anyway, the final episode was charming and fitting. Rory, who had (incomprehensibly) been moping around about What To Do After College, regained her lifelong ambition to pursue journalism and got an opportunity to cover Barak Obama's campaign. The town, led by Luke, engineered a surprise party as a send-off (overruling objections by Taylor, the heavy-handed mayor of Stars Hollow). Lorelai is busy being supportive while covering her grief at her daughter moving into full adulthood without her--a characteristic "roller coaster tour" that Lorelai and Rory were planning during the summer after her graduation will have to be put off, and we understand that it's never going to happen. Richard Gilmore finally acknowledges that Lorelai has done a good job with her daughter, and comes perilously close to asking forgiveness for the rigid disapproval that had pushed Lorelai into having to do it on her own in the first place. Meanwhile, Emily is busily plotting subterfuges to keep a relationship with Lorelai alive, now that all obligation regarding Rory is discharged; Lorelai graciously offers to keep the Friday night dinner tradition going. And, Christopher having disappeared several episodes earlier, Lorelai kisses Luke, suggesting that their relationship will be reestablished. But the show ends just as the pilot episode had ended, with Lorelai and Rory sitting in Luke's diner, mother and daughter and dear, dear friends. It was a fitting end.


Technorati Tags: Gilmore Girls, Amy Sherman-Palladino, David Rosenthal, Lauren Graham, television, TV

“The next day, after work, we just went to the beach, far away from anything, everything, just Christopher and me. Far away from buses and noise and the constant disappointment in my ten gallon head, myself. Because when I was young and I'd get an A on a history test, whatever, I'd get this good feeling about all the things that I could be. And then I never became any of them.”

--The Pursuit of Happyness

The Ghettoization of American Evangelicalism

Just adding collapsible post functionality and a pull quote. No new content. First line is a pull quote.
We've identified the gospel with a political and social perspective that few people can identify with who haven't been raised in it. Scot McKnight passes on a letter he's received in his most recent Letters to Emerging Christians segment. The complaint of the letter-writer essentially involves the fact that being an "evangelical" has become too identified with a particular brand of conservative American politics. A few quotes:

• Conservative Christians [frequently] conflate Christianity with American patriotism and/or the Republican party. One commentator says Jim Wallis can’t call himself an Evangelical because he’s a “left- leaning socialist” who made a speech on the Democrats’ weekly radio address!
• Dobson & company, attacking a member of the NAE for daring to suggest that global warming might actually be a problem.
• I read the quote from D. James Kennedy, a pastor and seminary leader in Florida: “The publication and promulgation of the 1599 Geneva Bible will help restore America’s rich Christian heritage and reclaim the culture for Christ.” What!? A 1599 Bible which, incidentally, comes with a middle-English glossary to help you understand what the heck they were saying, is the answer that will reclaim the culture for Christ???

Now, I've long been conservative in terms of my politics, although I am beginning to wonder... But regardless of one's political stripe, it should be deeply troubling that the Christian faith is so identified with a particular political position, especially on issues regarding which the Bible either doesn't speak or quite arguably speaks in the opposite direction. It should be disturbing that the mandate of the Church seems not to be to make disciples of all nations, but rather to "restore America’s rich Christian heritage."

And then I read Dan Kimball's excellent post, "Hope, depression, hope." He cites a sociologist and student of church growth and leadership:

He shared that the reason church statistics regarding attendance may be staying around the same level is because those in the churches are living longer. There are now a ton of old churches with elderly folks living longer which keeps that statistic up. He also shared how the already Christians in churches who have babies also keeps the percentage leveled out.

What isn't happening however, is the growth of the church from people outside the church coming in. We aren't keeping up on the population growth at large. I was reading that the church has leveled out in attendance over the past 15 years but at the same time our national population has grown by around 50 million people. So we can celebrate that churches are remaining relatively the same attendance-wise, but now there are more than 50 million people who aren't part of the church.

I don't think it's a great leap of logic to see these two issues as being related. We've identified the gospel with a political and social perspective that few people can identify with who haven't been raised in it. We've essentially said, "You can't join our club unless you're willing to subscribe to all twenty-six points of our worldview." And then we wonder why our churches stagnate, growing, if at all, through transfers from other churches. We are relevant only to one another. Welcome to the Christian ghetto.

Can't we see the wisdom of the Apostle Paul, who "resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Cor. 2:2)? Paul wasn't a "culture warrior" in the modern sense. His aim was not to "take a stand" and then have his already-convinced buddies pat him on the back for not backing down. His aim was to reach as many people as possible with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Period.

The tension between the standards of the already-converted and the imperative of reaching the larger culture is nothing new. Jesus was accused of being "a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and 'sinners'" (Luke 7:34; cf. Matt. 11:19). Peter became the first to take the gospel to a Gentile audience. What was the response from the Christian community? "So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him and said, 'You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them'" (Acts 11:2-3). Peter himself compromised his own principles and broke off fellowship with Gentile believers in order to satisfy "the circumcision group"; he had to be publicly rebuked by Paul because his "hypocrisy" had infected even Barnabas (Gal. 2:12-13). The pressure to conform to so-called "higher standards"--even at the cost of ostracizing some for whom Christ died--is intense.

Kimball continues with words that should be of particular interest to some who regularly read this blog, "It will be horribly sad if in 30 years or 40 years the church of America is a tiny thing, and we are still fighting each other about whether one is a Calvinist or Arminian or whether you preach verse by verse or preach topically etc." Obviously, I think divine election is a worthwhile thing to discuss, but it must be kept in its proper place. There's a lost and dying world out there. We have answers, but we're fading into irrelevance. We're squabbling with one another instead of trying to reach that world. We're telling people that they must oppose abortion and homosexuality, that they must support Israel and capitalism and lower taxes, that we must win the War on Terror and support our president, oppose the environmentalist wackos, and stand up for God and Country. Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that these are all noble and worthy goals. I just have one question.

Where did the gospel go?



If you like this post, you may be interested in my book, What's Wrong with Outreach?

Brian LePort on Pentecostalism as a Middle Way

Brian LePort offers a nice summary of arguments against both cessationism and Word-Faith theology. His arguments are cogent and sound, although I would offer a bit of a different view of "that which is perfect," along the lines of those that Rich Tatum suggests in his comment on the post. I also think the question, "Why don't we see miracles like those that happened in Biblical times?" is a loaded question. The miracles that people experienced were written down precisely because they were unusual. Most people who lived at that time had never seen one. Hence the popular interest in Jesus. Check out Brian's article. Good stuff.



HT: my cup of coffee





Technorati Tags: Pentecostal, Pentecostalism, Charismatic, Word of Faith, Word-Faith, Brian LePort

Dangerous Thoughts on Holy Saturday

I can't even imagine what Jesus' disciples were feeling the day after his crucifixion. Their greatest hopes had died with him the day before, and the new hope beyond all their dreams was yet to be realized. They must have felt completely desperate. So it's not such a bad day to indulge some dangerous ideas.

It's in that mood that I came across John Frye's "The People Formerly Known as 'The Pastor'." It's more strongly worded than I would ever dare, but seriously, it reflects a lot of how I sometimes feel as a refugee from formal ministry. It's a response to another piece by Bill Kinnon, called "The People Formerly Known as the Congregation," which seems to me more strident and more typical in its complaints against the established church. This one is more the view from a disillusioned insider. But another piece, "Underlying Issues," kind of unpacks it and deals with the issues raised in more measured tones.

And they're issues that need to be dealt with. There may be much inchoate anger in some of the emerging movement; there may be youthful idealism and unrealistic expectations; there may be too much throwing out of the baby with the bathwater. But there are reasons--real, justified, even biblical reasons--why people engaging in the emerging conversation are rejecting the institutionalized church. We need to listen to these voices. We need to ask if what we are doing is what Jesus intended, what he wants from us now. We need to fight the perennial temptation to substitute the traditions of men for the glories of the life God wants to give us.


Technorati Tags: John Frye, Bill Kinnon, Emerging Church

On the Theory of a Wednesday Crucifixion: 4. Final Considerations and Conclusion

This is the last in a series on the theory of a Wednesday crucifixion. We've listed the relevant scriptures, dealt with some logical considerations, and interpreted the relevant texts. Here we deal with some final considerations and wrap it up.

Further Considerations

The foregoing analysis has been restricted to the comparison of various scriptures indicating the time period between Jesus' crucifixion and his resurrection. A few notes may be made on the internal difficulties of a Wednesday crucifixion as well.

A. The Hypotheses of Calendrical Disputes

The supposition of a Wednesday crucifixion is usually related to the argument that Jesus used a sectarian calendar of some sort, and thus ate Passover (i.e., the Last Supper) earlier than most of Jerusalem. There is in fact no evidence that Jesus used such a sectarian calendar, and the contemporary evidence we have of the use of such calendars is late and thin. Moreover, eating the Passover required eating a lamb properly sacrificed, and it is impossible that within Jerusalem the temple priests would accommodate a sectarian calendar (Carson, Matthew, 529-30; John, 457; Foster, 599).

B. "Preparation Day"

Several verses, relating to the Last Supper and to Jesus' trial before Pilate and crucifixion, refer to that day as παρασκευήν (Preparation [Day]"), i.e., Matthew 27:62, Mark 15:42, Luke 23:54, and John 19:14, 31, and 42. As Carson argues, this term seems to have become a term synonymous with "Friday," and it is not used in first century literature for the day before any other festival, even though that festival may be observed as a "Sabbath." Moreover, reconciling the various references to Preparation Day with one another seems to require it to be used of Friday within Passover Week, as opposed to the day before Passover itself (Matthew, 531-32; John, 603-04, 622; Foster, 599); if this is true, then it follows that Scripture flatly indicates that Jesus died on Friday.

Conclusion

While the theory of a Wednesday crucifixion is an honest attempt to accept literally Jesus' passion prediction in Matthew 12:40, it would seem to be precluded by all of the other statements in the New Testament that have bearing on the time period between the crucifixion and the resurrection, both before and after the Passion. Understood in its cultural context, "three days and three nights" could refer to any portion of three days and nights; thus it is unnecessary to insist on a 72-hour entombment. Matthew and Luke give us the correct understanding of Mark's phrase, "after three days," and the weight of the evidence seems to rest on the understanding of the resurrection "on the third day." Most fatal to the theory is the statement by the disciples on the road to Emmaus that "this is the third day since all this took place" (Luke 24:21); clearly spoken on a Sunday, it requires that Jesus died on a Friday.

_______________

Works Cited

The Bible. New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984. (All scripture references unless otherwise noted.)

------. New American Standard Bible. La Habra, CA: Collins-World, 1973.

Carson, D.A. "Matthew." The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Vol. 8. Ed. Frank E. Gaebelein. Grand Rapids: Regency-Zondervan, 1984. 1-599.

------. The Gospel According to John. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991.

Foster, Lewis A. "The Chronology of the New Testament." The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Vol. 1. Ed. Frank E. Gaebelein. Grand Rapids: Regency-Zondervan, 1984. 593-607.

Stein, Robert H. The Synoptic Problem: An Introduction. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987.

Technorati Tags: Easter, Good Friday, Wednesday Crucifixion, Wednesday, Friday, Crucifixion, Crucified, Jesus, Jesus Christ

On the Theory of a Wednesday Crucifixion: 3. Interpretation

This is the third in a series on the theory of a Wednesday crucifixion. We've reviewed the relevant scriptures and some logical considerations. Here we come to the interpretation of the scriptures dealt with in the first part.

A. μετὰ τρεῖς ἡμέρας, "after three days."

Aside from the reference to the "sign of Jonah" in Matthew 12:40, there are only three scriptures that seem clearly to imply a literal three days in the tomb. These "after three days" passages are all in the Gospel of Mark, and reflect the "three major passion predictions" found in all three Synoptic Gospels. What is notable about each of these passages in Mark is that they all find parallels in Matthew and Luke, and in these parallel passages the expressions found in Matthew and Luke never retain the meaning "after three days." In all five cases where the time factor is mentioned (Luke omits the temporal reference entirely from the third prediction), the expression is uniformly, "on the third day" (Matt. 16:21, 17:23, 20:19; Luke 9:22, 18:32-33).



On the theory of the priority of Mark (Stein, 45-88; Carson, Matthew, 11-17) Matthew and Luke each "cleaned up" Mark's rather erratic Greek, and this would account for the misleading "after three days" to be altered to "on the third day." On the theory of Matthean priority, Mark altered Matthew's expression while Luke chose to retain it. In any case, the evangelists themselves evidently saw "after three days" and "on the third day" as equivalent expressions. Since Jewish reckoning was inclusive, something happening "on the third day" after something else (the day after the day after the original event) would have been counted as three days later, or "after three days" (Foster, 599; Carson, Matthew, 296).

B. Ambiguous or oblique references

 

1. Jesus' prediction to raise the temple "in three days"

John 2:19 records Jesus' prediction that he would raise the temple "in three days." Verse 21 goes on to explain that "the temple he had spoken of was his body." The phrase "in three days" would seem to be ambiguous, potentially referring either to the "temple" being raised on the third day after it was destroyed, or after three full days; again, Jewish inclusive reckoning would seem to favor the first understanding. But in light of the potential ambiguity, it would be unwise to base a decision on this verse, and still more unwise to base it on the verses which report hostile witnesses repeating Jesus' words (v. 20; Mk. 14:58; Matt. 26:61; 27:40).

2. The guarding of the tomb

One particular case of such "hostile repetition" merits additional note: in Matthew 27:62-64, the chief priests and Pharisees ask for "the tomb to be made secure until the third day," because they remember his claim that "after three days I will rise again." Although we have here a fourth example, and in a different Gospel, of the formulation "after three days," it occurs immediately in context with the formulation "until the third day"; i.e., we seem to have here an explicit equating of the two expressions, "after three days" and "until the third day," which would reconfirm the idea that according to Jewish inclusive reckoning, "after three days" would mean "until the third day," and not "until the fourth day," as it would naturally mean in modern English.



It is possible to argue that "until the third day" would mean the third day from the time they were speaking--i.e., the day "after Preparation," or after the crucifixion. Granted a Wednesday crucifixion and Jewish inclusive reckoning, they would only be asking for a guard until Saturday; one would further have to postulate that by "until the third day," they meant for the guard to remain at the tomb throughout Saturday night (technically, the beginning of Sunday). It would be much more natural to suppose that "after three days" and "until the third day" are intended to be synonymous expressions (as the Matthew-Mark parallels make clear that they are), so that "until the third day" contextually refers to the third day from the crucifixion, not the third day from their conversation. Again, it would be unwise to base a teaching on an ambiguous reference, and especially one that comes from the mouths of Jesus' enemies.

3. Jesus' response to Herod's threats

The ambiguity of the final reference is largely due to the fact that the passage itself is a veiled reference to Christ's passion, and some could argue that it is not a reference at all. In Luke 13:32, included in a response to a threat from Herod, Jesus refers to "today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal." Although there is no explicit mention of the passion, Jesus refers to his death in the following verse, after mentioning again "today and tomorrow and the next day." If anything, this passage would tend to support a Friday crucifixion, but again, no dogmatic conclusions should be drawn.

C. τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ, "on the third day."

If the above analyses are correct, only one scripture seems clearly to indicate a full three-day entombment: the "sign of the prophet Jonah" in Matthew 12:40. Against this lone verse must be weighed the preponderance of scriptures that unambiguously indicate that Jesus rose "on the third day." These include at least ten separate scriptures, representing the pens of Matthew and Luke (writing both in Luke and in Acts) and Paul.



Five of the ten--parallels with Mark's passion predictions--have already been discussed. Their value lies in calling into question the implication that could be drawn from Mark that Jesus lay entombed for three full days. Two other references--Acts 10:40 and 1 Corinthians 15:4--also clearly state that Jesus rose on the third day. It is important to note that in every one of these predictions and recollections (except, arguably, 1 Corinthians 15:4), Jesus is represented as rising on the third day after his crucifixion and death, not after his burial. The Thursday-to-Saturday scheme mentioned in section II, even if plausible on its face, would only account for Jesus rising on the third day from his burial, not from his crucifixion and death. Moreover, the three remaining references, all from Luke's post-resurrection account, make it clearly impossible that the Crucifixion occurred on Wednesday.

Luke 24:6-7 and 24:46 assert (from the mouths of an angel and from the resurrected Christ, respectively), that Jesus would rise on the third day. In itself, this is no greater proof than the pre-resurrection predictions. But Luke 24:21 records the disciples on the road to Emmaus telling Jesus (whom they do not yet recognize), "This is the third day [τρίτην ταύτην ἡμέραν] since all this took place." This conversation is clearly located after the morning visits to the empty tomb (vv. 22-24), which undisputedly took place "on the first day of the week" (v. 1). Since "all this" cannot refer to Jesus' entombment, but rather refers to his sentencing to death and crucifixion (v. 20), it is impossible to suppose, on the theory of a Wednesday crucifixion, that Sunday is the "third day since all this took place"; by Jewish reckoning, it would in fact be the fifth. It is simply impossible to construe events clearly taking place on Sunday--the conversation of the disciples with Jesus on the road to Emmaus--as being on "the third day" from events--Jesus being sentenced to death and being crucified--supposed to have occurred on a Wednesday.

D. "Three days and three nights"

In light of the preponderance of scriptures indicating that Jesus rose on the third day, it would seem more reasonable to search for an alternative interpretation of the sole verse that states that Jesus was in the tomb for "three days and three nights" than it would be to insist on literalism for this verse at the expense of having to reinterpret all the others.



In fact, the context of Matthew 12:40 rather clearly indicates the possibility that the time period is not to be taken strictly literally. Jesus is responding to the religious leaders' unbelieving demand for a "sign" by referring to Jonah as a type of his own passion. Quoting Jonah 1:17, Jesus draws the analogy by applying the "three days and three nights" terminology to his own passion, knowing that "in rabbinical thought a day and a night make an õnâh, and a part of an õnâh is as the whole" (Carson, Matthew, 296); i.e., his audience (the Jews) would not have been confused; and we may suppose that Matthew's audience was more familiar with this time reckoning than was Luke's, which may be why Luke chooses another rendering in the parallel passage of Luke 11:29-32. The Old Testament records examples of such reckoning, notably in 2 Chronicles 10:5, 12:

And he said to them, "Return to me again in three days." So the people departed. . . . So Jeroboam and all the people came to Rehoboam on the third day as the king had directed, saying, "Return to me on the third day." (NASB; similarly RSV KJV NKJV)

Here, not only do Jeroboam and all the people understand Rehoboam to intend for them to return on the third day, when he had said, "in three days," but they even repeat his words back to him, paraphrased as "on the third day." Other similar examples include 1 Sam. 30:12-13 and Esther 4:16, 5:1.



In light of the precedent of such language, it is reasonable to suppose that Jesus' resurrection "on the third day" was close enough for those familiar with Jewish time reckoning to be regarded as a fulfillment of the Jonah typology.



The final installment of this series will deal with a few ancillary issues and wrap it up with a final conclusion.

_______________



Works Cited



The Bible. New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1984. (All scripture references unless otherwise noted.)



------. New American Standard Bible. La Habra, CA: Collins-World, 1973.



Carson, D.A. "Matthew." The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Vol. 8. Ed. Frank E. Gaebelein. Grand Rapids: Regency-Zondervan, 1984. 1-599.



------. The Gospel According to John. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991.



Foster, Lewis A. "The Chronology of the New Testament." The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Vol. 1. Ed. Frank E. Gaebelein. Grand Rapids: Regency-Zondervan, 1984. 593-607.



Stein, Robert H. The Synoptic Problem: An Introduction. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1987.

Technorati Tags: Easter, Good Friday, Wednesday Crucifixion, Friday, Wednesday, Crucifixion, Crucified, Jesus, Jesus Christ

On the Theory of a Wednesday Crucifixion: 2. Logical Considerations

This is the second in a series of posts discussing the theory that Jesus died on a Wednesday, instead of Friday, as has traditionally been held. The first post simply catalogued the various scriptures that have a bearing on the question.



The four expressions used in Scripture to refer to the time period between Jesus' death and his resurrection are "on the third day," "after three days," "in three days," and "three days and three nights." (There are a few more Greek constructions, but they boil down to these four meanings.) It seems clear that (at least on the surface) there is a conflict between these four expressions. If indeed Jesus rose from the dead "on the third day" after his crucifixion, it is impossible that he spent "three days and three nights" in the tomb; conversely, if he did spend "three days and three nights" in the tomb, it would seem necessary that he rose on the fourth day, not the third. While "in three days" could be reasonably accommodated to either scheme, "after three days" would seem to support the idea of three full days and nights in the tomb.



As all parties in this debate are committed to the infallibility of the Word of God,¹ all see the need to reconcile these disparate expressions with one another. The theory of a Wednesday crucifixion is an attempt to deal seriously with the expression, "Three days and three nights" in Matthew 12:40. Those who hold to that theory would tend to take the observance of "Good Friday" as a piece of church tradition that does not adequately reflect the Gospel record, and would generally tend to take defenses of a Friday crucifixion as resulting primarily from a desire to retain that tradition.



The weakness of a Wednesday crucifixion theory would be those scriptures that indicate that Jesus rose "on the third day." It may be argued that Jesus wasn't actually in the tomb until sundown Wednesday--i.e., Thursday, according to Jewish reckoning--and that he could have risen at any point Saturday night, so that from Thursday, Saturday is the "third day." However, this reconstruction involves using two separate calendars--a Jewish one for Wednesday evening, so Jesus can be regarded as being entombed on "Thursday," and a Roman/modern one for Saturday night, so he can be regarded as rising on "Saturday." Without further exegetical proof, this reconstruction is highly suspect on its face: time periods should be measured consistently. Moreover, such a reconstruction, even if tenable, wouldn't allow for the resurrection to be on the third day from Jesus' crucifixion, but rather from his burial; similarly, a "Saturday night" resurrection might be conceivable as on the third day from the burial, but later events on Easter Sunday would inescapably be on the fourth day, no matter how the time periods were reconstructed.



Those who hold to a Friday crucifixion must find some way to reconcile the expressions "after three days" and "three days and three nights" with their conviction that Jesus died on Friday and rose Sunday morning; such a scheme does not allow for a literal "three days and three nights" entombment of Jesus. The strong point in their argument is that a Friday crucifixion seems to make the best sense of the statement that Jesus rose "on the third day."

_______________



Note

¹ For those who do not hold to the verbal, plenary inspiration of scripture, there is no point to harmonizing disparate accounts. They would probably say that different streams of tradition held to different crucifixion dates, or that the originators of those traditions had no interest in the question, and thus were not careful to keep their writings consistent. Therefore, the question only rises to importance for those who do believe in inerrancy (at least on this point).



Next up: Interpretation of the various passages discussed in part 1.



Technorati Tags: Easter, Good Friday, Friday, Wednesday Crucifixion, Crucifixion, Crucified, Jesus, Jesus Christ

On the Theory of a Wednesday Crucifixion: 1. Relevant Scriptures

I'm going to begin a series on the theory that Jesus was crucified on a Wednesday, rather than on a Friday. We'll start out surveying the various scriptures that refer in various ways to "three days" or "the third day."



A. One passage that stipulates Jesus' entombment as "Three days and three nights"

Matthew 12:40 "For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth."

B. Passages that state that Jesus will rise μετὰ τρεῖς ἡμέρας, "after three days."

Mark 8:31 "He then began to teach them that the Son of Man . . . must be killed and after three days rise again."

Mark 9:31 "The Son of man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise."

Mark 10:34 "[The Gentiles] will mock him and spit on him, flog him and kill him. Three days later he will rise."

C. Ambiguous or oblique references

John 2:19 "Jesus answered them, 'Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.'" (Cf. v. 20; Mk. 14:58; Matt. 26:61; 27:40; all repetitions from hostile witnesses of Jesus' words; a few various Greek constructions, but all meaning "in three days.")

Matthew 27:62-64 "The next day, the one after Preparation Day, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. 'Sir,' they said, 'We remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said, 'After three days I will rise again.' So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day."

Luke13:32-33 "He replied, 'Go tell that fox [Herod], "I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal." In any case, I must keep going today and tomorrow and the next day--for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem!'"

D. Passages that state that Jesus will rise τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ, "on the third day."

Matthew 16:21 "From that time on, Jesus began to explain to his disciples . . . that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life."

Luke 9:22 "And he said, 'The Son of Man . . . must be killed and on the third day be raised to life."

Matthew 17:23 "[Men] will kill [the Son of Man], and on the third day he will be raised to life."

Luke 18:32-33 "[The Gentiles] will mock him, insult him, spit on him, flog him and kill him. On the third day [τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῇ τρίτῃ] he will rise again."

Matthew 20:19 "On the third day he will be raised to life."

Luke 24:6-7 "He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 'The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.'"

Luke 24:21 "This is the third day [τρίτην ταύτην ἡμέραν] since all this took place."

Luke 24:46 "He told them, 'This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day . . . .'"

Acts 10:40 "God raised him from the dead on the third day . . . ."

1 Corinthians 15:4 " . . . he was raised on the third day [τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῇ τρίτῃ] according to the scriptures."

Next up: the logical issues involved in interpreting these scriptures.



Technorati Tags: Easter, Good Friday, Crucifixion, Crucified, Wednesday, Friday, Jesus, Jesus Christ

Does Your Theology Honor God?

Does your theology honor God? By asking this question, I do not mean, do you have The Right Theology, the one that objectively honors God by having all its "i"s dotted and its "t"s crossed and will at the Judgment be decreed The Final Truth about God. What I mean is, do you honor God by your interest in theology? Is your desire to read and write about it motivated by a love for God and a desire to honor Him?



This question has been prompted by my on-again, off-again conversations with Timotheos, a Reformed brother. He and I have gotten into some comment discussions on Peter Lumpkins's blog, as well as on this one and via email. During one of these discussions, I was quite moved by recognizing that Timotheos deeply cared about what he was writing about--that his theology was motivated, more than anything else, by his desire to honor God. I felt at that moment that even if I could have served up a definitive rebuttal to his position, I would not have desired to do so: it would have been robbing Timotheos of something that was precious to him and contributed to his appreciation for God. Timotheos was just as concerned to honor God by defending God's thorough and unasked-for transformation of His elect, as I was to honor God by defending His mercy and genuine offer of forgiveness to all of humanity. At that moment, the specifics that we were debating paled into insignificance compared with the desire we both had to honor God by what we believe about Him.



It is not always this way with theological debate. We are all too often motivated by the desire simply to Be Right--to be proven right, to show our superiority over the other person's argument, to defeat our opponent in verbal battle. Do we hold to a theological system because we truly believe that it honors God, or do we hold to it because it's the most logical, or the most experiential, or the most contemporary, or the most rooted in history and tradition, or the most evangelistic, or the most strongly opposed to the theological tradition we like the least? We can hold any theological position--even the correct one--for all kinds of wrong motivations. Ultimately, I think God cares more about why we believe what we believe than He does about the precise specifics of what we believe. It seems to me rather obvious that all of us are going to have some of our positions, er, adjusted in eternity. Probably much of what we squabble about will prove to be a false framing of the question. Meanwhile, the real issue will have been, were we honoring God with our theology?



It would be reasonable to wonder, at this point, why I bother taking theological positions at all. What does it matter exactly what we believe, as long as we have a heart that desires to honor God? Well, in a broad sense, content does matter: we can't be honoring God if we're honoring the wrong god. And in a narrower sense, Jesus did say that the Great Commandment was to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Especially for those of us who have that bent, loving God with our minds involves pondering these things, trying to make sense of what the Bible tells us about God. And it's inevitable that we should come to some conclusions, even if they're tentative, and end up in discussions with others who have come to differing conclusions.



But ultimately, the specifics of our conclusions matter less than our desire to honor God through them. One thing I know about my brother Timotheos: he loves God with all his heart, and his conception of God contributes to that love. My conception of God contributes to my love for Him. Maybe the real challenge is to love God, and to love one another, more than we love our conceptions.



Technorati Tags: Calvinism, Arminianism, Calvinist, Arminian, Theology, Theological, Debate, Reformed

Are Charismatics New Testament Believers?

Mark from Ephesians 4:14 kindly commented on a post of mine, and wrote a post himself questioning whether charismatics are New Testament believers. His essential thesis is that with their commitment to the gift of prophecy, charismatics revert back to the Old Testament hierarchy in which only some are allowed to be prophets. I responded to his post, but decided I may as well crib from myself and rework the response into a blog post here.

Mark has an interesting thesis, but the only passages he cites in support of it are from the Old Testament. The New Testament does not support his view of what a "New Testament Church" ought to be.

We are all familiar with Paul telling the Corinthians that there is indeed a gift of prophecy, one that some, but not all, exercise (1 Cor. 12:10, 29). There is also Agabus the prophet, who foretold a great famine, precipitating Barnabas and Saul's famine-relief visit to Jerusalem (Acts 11:27-28) and also foretold Paul's arrest (Acts 21:10-11). Philip the Evangelist also had four daughters, of whom it is written that they prophesied (Acts 21:9). And in the church at Antioch, named among the "prophets and teachers" were Barnabas and Saul. It seems clear to me that the New Testament itself bears witness to many instances of a practice that Mark writes, "deserves no place in a New Testament church."

The usual cessationist response is that until the Canon was complete, there was a need for continued prophecy. However, that argument undercuts Mark's position. It makes of the actual New Testament church--the one in the New Testament--a sub-New Testament church. A practice that Mark writes "reverses Pentecost" is being carried out and cited approvingly in Scripture.

Also, in my view, Mark seriously misunderstands how prophecy is viewed and used in pentecostal and charismatic circles, and it is worthwhile for all of us to recognize that this misunderstanding exists and why it does. It is simply not true, as Mark asserts, that "those who are not prophets must go to those who are to find out what God’s will is for them." What we do believe is that

1. God can speak personally to any believer who is open to hearing His Voice;
2. Anything we think we hear from God must be tested against Scripture--anything that is contrary to Scripture is automatically invalidated;
3. God may use some people more often than others in this gift of prophecy, but what they say never has the authority of Scripture, and God speaks through them what He wants to say: we don't get "prophecy on demand."

Admittedly, there are some fringe groups that may operate more like Mark describes, but these are the fringe, not the mainstream; nonetheless, when non-charismatics think of us, that is what they think.

Overall, it seems to me that the main criticism cessationists have against those of us who believe in the continuation of miraculous spiritual gifts is that miraculous spiritual gifts are messy. They doesn't fit neatly into a logical system. A God who can still speak to people and work miracles--why, He could do anything! We want so badly to have the loose ends tied up, to be able to say, "Thus says the Lord--and no more." But Aslan is not a tame lion, and our God is not a tame God. Those who most strongly assert His sovereignty should know better.

Technorati Tags: charismatic, cessationist, continuationist, cessationism, continuationism, New Testament, Old Testament, Christian

Interesting New Directions with Earl Creps

I'd gotten away from reading Earl Creps on a regular basis, and decided to check him out again today. Turns out he's starting a church plant in Berkeley, California. (Yeah, the one with the legendary 60s college campus.) He also has some interesting posts on contrarian explanations of the emerging church movement and what he calls the X factor, the factor that differentiates a growing, dynamic church from a stagnating, lifeless one. The scary thing is that even he doesn't know what this X factor is: "Consulting with faith communities has left me in some ways feeling like I now know less than I ever have."



Anyway, stuff well worth reading. Check it out.

Hearing God's Voice John Piper and the role of present-day divine revelation

Update: Added a pull quote and a note at the bottom regarding Piper's affirmation of a present-day gift of prophecy.

John Piper wrote an interesting piece entitled "The Morning I Heard the Voice of God." He describes a majestic experience of hearing God's voice, intensely and personally. The "reveal," of course, is that the words he "heard" were from a Psalm.

This would be unobjectionable, except that Piper contrasts his experience with that of an anonymous professor contributing to Christianity Today in a piece called, "My Conversation with God." Piper appears not to dispute the validity of the experience shared by the professor, but writes that

What’s sad is that it really does give the impression that extra-biblical communication with God is surpassingly wonderful and faith-deepening. All the while, the supremely-glorious communication of the living God which personally and powerfully and transformingly explodes in the receptive heart through the Bible everyday is passed over in silence.

Which is a little unfair, since that was not the point of the professor's article at all. Piper appears to think that describing extrabiblical divine communication is somehow threatening to the truth that God communicates also, and primarily, through His written Word.

The very Scriptures that cessationists are so desperate to guard are the witness of God's communication to human beings through means other than ScriptureThe roots of this issue stem from the Reformation. Since the Reformers had concluded from their reading of Scripture that the medieval Church's position on important doctrines was incorrect, they had to reject the authority of the Church and substituted for it the absolute authority of the Bible. Sola Scriptura. All well and good. But then a further corollary of this position developed: that there can be no longer any direct communication between God and human beings, because that (in the eyes of those who hold this position) directly undercuts the supremacy of Scripture. This is the root of cessationism: the idea that any present-day communication (or, for some, even experience) of God will undermine the authority of Scripture in determining faith, practice, and doctrine.

As I argued in "The Logical Quandary of Cessationism," this is a self-refuting position, because the very Scriptures that cessationists are so desperate to guard are the witness of God's communication to human beings through means other than Scripture. To be plain: Scripture records numerous instances of God talking directly to people. Not capriciously, not on-demand, but He does speak to people. And apart from some pitiful instances of eisegesis (think 1 Corinthians 13:8-12), there is no biblical witness to the idea that this communication will ever stop. Why should it?

Well, because that would set up a rival authority, says the cessationist. Nonsense. That's like saying that Job sets up a rival authority to Moses, or like saying that Paul sets up a rival authority to Jesus. All we have to do is be clear on the fact that God doesn't speak with forked tongue. And in fact, those of us who do believe that God continues to speak--apart from Scripture--make clear that God's voice in Scripture is authoritative in a way that any direct divine communication today is not. I might be mistaken about hearing God's voice; I'm not mistaken about the truth of John 3:16.

But direct divine communication may be personal, in a way that Scripture cannot be. I don't mean that one can't personally experience the message, as Piper writes that he experienced Psalm 66:5-7. But Piper's experience was simply that: an experience, an emotional response to reading the words on the page. It didn't, to be blunt, tell him to do anything specific. The professor, by contrast, was given the idea and outline of a book to write, and told to give the royalties to a struggling student. This should not be threatening from a doctrinal standpoint--he's not saying that all writers should give their royalties to struggling students--but it applied scriptures about generosity and about all wealth ultimately belonging to the Lord specifically to the professor's situation.

That's what present-day divine revelation does: it applies the truths of Scripture to personal circumstances that don't apply to everyone else. Denying even the possibility that God can and does communicate directly and personally with people cuts off personal guidance from the Christian life, and that's a very sad thing indeed.

Update: Dr. Piper's blog has put up a post entitled, "Does God Speak Outside the Bible? in order to clarify that he is not a strict cessationist. While I am very glad to hear that, a quick perusal of the material that that page links to suggests that Piper acknowledges present-day revelation in only a very limited way. My issue was not so much discerning an implied cessatioinism in Piper's former post, as it was his apparent distaste for someone to describe a moving experience of extra-biblical revelation without finding a way to make sure everyone knew that revelation through Scripture was somehow superior.

Technorati Tags: John Piper, Cessationism, Cessationist, Bible, Hearing God's Voice, Doctrine

I'm Not Dead Yet!*

Just a quick note to let anyone who cares know that I haven't been abducted by aliens and I haven't discarded this blog. Just been busy. I'm trying to get a post on John 10 rolling, I've got an old paper on the theory of a Wednesday crucifixion that I need to put into bloggable form, and I've also been doing some thinking about contextualization.



It seems to me that "traditional" church (whatever that means) has been deemed irrelevant to our culture (I guess I'm talking USA specifically, and perhaps Western culture as a whole), and that both the "seeker sensitive" and some aspects of the "emerging" movements are intended to make church more relevant. In most cases, the attempt is to make church (and by extension, our view of Jesus) more similar to the lives of the people we're trying to reach. In essence, put Jesus into a polo shirt, or give him some funky tattoos. But is that what is really going to reach people? Maybe people don't want more of the same; maybe they want something different. Or maybe that's what God wants for them. It doesn't seem to me that most revival movements have occurred because people have been given a more palatable Jesus; rather, people have been challenged and responded in a life-changing manner.



So anyway, that's as far as I've gotten. Maybe I need to think more like a blogger (as Joe Carter recently wrote) in order to keep things going. Or maybe if I toss out my half-baked ideas, some of you will come along to fully-bake them. Any takers?



*For anyone who recognizes my Monty Python and the Holy Grail reference in the title, this is one of those famous movie sayings that never happened, like "Play it again, Sam" from Casablanca. Just thought I'd share. For no particular reason.

Two Types of Apologetics

Stephen from Y Safle wrote a kind response to my post on the Jesus Family Tomb. Based on his and others' responses, however, I get the feeling that many people may not have understood where I was coming from. If I link to and approvingly cite others' reasoned objections to the Jesus Family Tomb television program and book, why do I on the other hand appear to dismiss their contentions and wave the whole thing away as irrelevant?

My post was primarily a reaction to the piling-on that was being done by Christian bloggers, which appeared 1) to want to preemptively snuff out any consideration of the program before it ever aired, and 2) to deal with the issue without any mention of what Stephen correctly termed the elephant in the room: namely, the Resurrection, believed in by all those who were vociferously challenging the program's stats.

Stephen wrote that while I might be right that the special would be irrelevant to a convinced Christian, there would still be value in trying to convince a nonbeliever that the claims of the special were false. In order to discuss this, I need to examine two types of apologetics. The usual type is evidential: gather the evidence that supports Christian claims and present it to the intellect for a verdict. The problem is that our intellect is fallen; a confirmed nonbeliever can always find more reasons to remain a nonbeliever. Nobody ever gets argued into saving faith.

The other type of apologetics is presuppositional: make the assumption that people really do know the existence of God but are suppressing it in unrighteousness (Rom. 1:18-21). From this point of view, arguments over whether God exists or not are quite beside the point, and actually shift the argument onto the nonbeliever's ground. He can continue debating a point that the Bible indicates he already knows the truth of, while not having to deal with the claims that that truth make on his life. A presuppositional apologetic approach is two-pronged: on one hand, the apologist attempts to expose the contradictions inherent in the nonbeliever's worldview--contradictions that are necessary to maintain this suppression of the truth--and on the other hand, simply proclaims the gospel, regardless of the hearer's protests that he does not believe it.

An example of the presuppositional approach would be as follows: an unbeliever maintains that she cannot believe in God, since there is so much evil in the world. The apologist maintains that the unbeliever's recognition of evil is an implicit recognition of a transcendent moral authority--she does not mean by "evil" simply things that she personally dislikes--and thus the unbeliever's very contention demonstrates her knowledge that God exists. If she is really concerned about evil, she should place herself under God's moral authority and trust in Jesus as the solution to the moral issues in her own life.

In the end, I think both types of apologetic have value; but the value of the evidential variety does not lie in the ability simply to argue another person into becoming a Christian. That will not happen. The value, rather, lies in correcting the misgivings of those who may want to believe but feel that Christian faith is intellectually indefensible. C.S. Lewis was once called the "best persuader of the half-convinced." But the real battle is in getting people to the point of being "half-convinced," and that is not to be done by a merely logical approach. It's no use trying to overcome a person's every objection in order to get him to believe; get him to believe, and you'll find that most of the objections evaporate. (The ones that don't become real questions with hope of an answer, not just obfuscations.)

Conversion doesn't happen merely in the mind; it happens in what the Bible calls the "heart," the center of our personality, of who we are. The heart is influenced quite a bit more by the examples it sees from the people around it than by logical argumentation. A Christian who sews up his airtight logical argument with an exultant "Gotcha!" probably alienates the person he is attempting to persuade; the one who says, "I don't have all the answers," but demonstrates the love of Christ is likely to be far more persuasive.


Technorati Tags: Jesus Tomb, Jesus Family Tomb, Lost Tomb of Jesus, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Resurrection, Logic, Presuppositional Apologetics, Evidential Apologetics

Brouhaha Over the Jesus Family Tomb

If you read Christian blogs at all, it would be hard to miss this year's version of the Lenten tradition of debunking some radical new theory or "discovery" that purports to invalidate the historic claims of Christianity. The current entry is a Discovery Channel special on the Talpiot tomb in Jerusalem, which the special argues is the "lost tomb of Jesus." There will also be a book by Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino entitled The Jesus Family Tomb: The Discovery, the Investigation, and the Evidence That Could Change History. So the usual suspects are giving us the typical full-court publicity press timed to exploit the Christian practice of reflecting on Jesus' crucifixion and celebration of his resurrection.

Articles opposing the special and the book have been written by many; some of the most helpful have been those by Ben Witherington (including an interesting and detailed comment on statistical analysis) and Nathan Busenitz at Pulpit Magazine. The basic argument that these and other Christians are making is that the names on the ossuaries in the tomb are common, and therefore should not necessarily be identified with the figures in the New Testament who bear those names, and also that the statistical analysis used by Cameron, Jacobovici, and Pellegrino--to the effect that the cluster of names is highly unlikely to refer to anyone other than the family of Jesus--is flawed and skewed to produce a predetermined outcome. I think that this type of evidential apologetic has its value, but I also think that in a significant sense it misses the point.

Dr. Witherington and Mr. Busenitz do not oppose the identification of the Talpiot tomb as Jesus' tomb because they've conducted a dispassionate statistical analysis and found the idea without merit. Rather they believe, as do I, that Jesus was physically raised from the dead, and therefore his body is not to be found in any tomb. That belief means that we have an a priori commitment to reject any purported evidence to the contrary, and we may as well admit it. This doesn't mean that critical assessment of these annual theories, always timed to exploit the season just prior to Easter, is incorrect or without value. But in responding point-by-point to the charges and slogging it out in the world of statistics, we end up lending credence to the charge and actually helping to publicize it. There must be something to it if we're this worked up about it, right?

Like I said, I'm divided on the issue. Of course, someone does need to respond to these theories, for the sake of those who may be led astray by them. It's worthwhile to demonstrate that even if you don't assume Jesus' resurrection, the claims being made are without merit. Amos Kloner, the archaeologist who oversaw the excavation of the tomb in 1980, told the Jerusalem Post, "It’s impossible. It’s nonsense.” At the same time, I think that scurrying to preemptively answer charges sends the wrong signal. Alongside the evidential apologetic, I think we need a bit of a presuppositional mindset as well. God's truth hasn't been suppressed for two millenia. It's not going to happen now. There's something to be said about standing above the fray and simply being the witness that the world needs to see. 

Technorati Tags: Jesus Tomb, Jesus Family Tomb, Lost Tomb of Jesus, Jesus, Jesus Christ, Christianity, Resurrection, Discovery Channel Special, Talpiot Tomb, James Cameron, Simcha Jacobovici, Charles Pellegrino, Ben Witherington, Pulpit Magazine, Nathan Busenitz, Amos Kloner