Would Paul Have Made a Good Evangelical?

May 24, 2012 By peteenns 34 Comments

No.

Even when you account for 2000 years of cultural differences between Paul and Evangelicalism, the answer is no.

Why? Because Paul didn’t treat the Bible the way mainstream Evangelicalism says you need to.

The way Paul handled his Bible–what we call the Old Testament–would keep him off the short list for openings to teach Bible in many Evangelical seminaraies and Christian colleges. Heck, John Piper, John MacArthur, and R. C. Sproul probably wouldn’t let Paul lead a home Bible study, at least not without supervision.

Here is the main reason why:

For Evangelicals, the Old Testament leads to the Gospel story. For Paul, the Old Testament is transformed by the Gospel.

For Evangelicals, the Old Testament, read pretty much at face value, anticipates Jesus. For Paul, the Old Testament is reshaped in order to conform to Jesus.

For Evangelicals, the Bible is God’s final authority. For Paul, Jesus is the final authority to which the Bible must bend.

You see, Paul had a monumental theological and hermeneutical task before him.  The Old Testament is centered on Israel’s need for obedience to the law of Moses in order to stay in God’s favor–what the Old Testament often calls “life.” God’s favor is most clearly demonstrated by Israel’s remaining in the Promised Land–if they obey, they stay; if they disobey, the are cast out (which is what the exile to Babylon was all about). And, as an added benefit, when Israel is faithful to God, the other nations will take notice and also bend the knee to Yahweh, Israel’s God.

Obedience to law; holding onto the land (and along with it worship in the temple); conversion of the Gentiles. All central elements of being an Israelite.

The Gospel of Christ that Paul preached said:

Law was a parenthesis, a temporary measure; holding on to land is now a non-issue; Gentiles can claim Israel’s God as their own as Gentiles.

Clearly something has to give. For Paul, it was the Old Testament.

Paul cites the Old Testament 106 times; 59 times in Romans. For example, look at the string of quotations in Romans 9:25-29. Paul is arguing for Gentile inclusion in the plan of God–Gentiles do not need to be circumcised, thus following Jewish law. They are included as Gentiles simply by faith in Jesus the messiah.

Paul could have simply said, “Jesus is here and we are turning a new page. From now on we welcome Gentiles with open arms without them becoming Jewish first.”

That would have been a pretty radical message all by itself, but Paul gets even more radical. He argues that in the Old Testament itself teaches that Gentiles are to be included among Israel solely on the basis of faith–not obeying the law. Paul claims that Gentile inclusion without circumcision was God’s plan all along.

If you’re familiar with the Old Testament, you would be right to wonder how Paul is going to pull that off, since the Old Testament is so adamant about maintaining the distinction between Jew and Gentile.

In this string of quotations in Romans 9, Paul cites two passages from Hosea and two from Isaiah to support his claim that Gentile inclusion is part of God’s plan. The problem, though, is that all four of these passages have nothing to do with Gentile inclusion. They are all aimed at God’s mercy at restoring Israel.

This is not a minor point. Paul is not getting a little creative with some passages, tweaking them a bit, teasing some fresh angle out of them. He is saying that these passages support his Gentile agenda, even though a plain reading shows unequivocally that they are about Israel.

Flip over to Romans 10:5-8. Paul places two passages from the law of Moses side by side–and he pits them against each other.

The first is Leviticus 18:5, where Yahweh tells Moses that the Israelites are to “Keep my decrees, for the man who obeys them will live by them.” Note that keeping the law is assumed to be attainable and a benefit to those who do so.

But in very next verse Paul brings in another passage from the Law, Deuteronomy  30:13-14. In Deuteronomy, these verses have a very clear meaning. The commands that God is giving to the Israelites are doable. They are not out of anyone’s reach. They are not up in the heavens or somewhere acoross the ocean. They are right here–”in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.”

The Israelites were expected to keep these laws, and keeping them brings life, which is sort of what Leviticus 18:5 says. The two passages are in complete harmony.

But Paul contrasts these two verses to pit law against faith.

For Paul, Leviticus 18:5 is correct insofar as it goes, but Paul clearly does not present obedience to the law as a benefit to anyone–which contradicts the point of the passage.

Paul’s handling of Deuteronomy 30:13-14 should, by all standards, drive mainstream Evangelicals crazy. In Deuteronomy, God tells the Israelites to keep these doable-written-on-your-heart commands. Paul says it is not about commands at all but about having faith in Christ, apart from the law of Moses.

Either Paul can’t read or something else is up.

Something else is up.

Paul handles his Bible the way he does for two reasons: (1) Judaism has a long history of manipulating scripture in the interest of supporting theological arguments. Paul, in case you need reminding, was a Jew trained in this way of using scripture. (2) Paul’s grand goal in Romans is to make the case that Jews and Gentiles are on equal footing before God; Paul’s angle is to show how the law itself made that same point all along–which requires Paul to take get very creative with the Old Testament.

If anyone else were doing this–me, you, the Pope, Jehovah’s Witnesses, an emergent pastor, a liberal theologian, a first year seminary student–Evangelicals would call it “distorting the inerrant Word of God.” Paul, however, either (1) gets a free pass because Paul is an apostle (and apparently it’s OK for apostles to do this), or (2) Paul’s reading of the Old Testament is defended as being consistent with the Old Testament meaning (which leads to overly subtle and back-breaking arguments).

Here is the great irony. Without question, as a first century Jew, Paul believed his scripture was God’s Word. He had what Evangelicals like to call a “high view” of scripture.

That is correct. It’s just that Paul’s high view and an Evangelical high view are clearly not the same. I’m just glad Evangelicals weren’t around at the time to try to stifle Paul, to keep him from landing his gig as apostle to the Gentiles. We would have missed out on a lot.

 

Filed Under: biblical authority, circumcision, Evangelicalism, inerrancy, Law of Moses, New Testament use of the Old Testament, Paul, Pentateuch 34 Comments

What Biblical Scholars Do (since you were likely losing sleep about it)

May 22, 2012 By peteenns 16 Comments

Biblical scholars build models.

A model is a way of accounting for as much of the available data as possible in as coherent and persuasive manner as possible, producing along the way as little cognitive dissonance as possible.

A model is a hypothesis of what the “big picture” looks like. Models do not focus on biblical issues in isolation, but are after the big picture. All biblical scholars–fundamentalist to liberal and everything in between–have models that form the intellectual parameters within which they handle the particulars of biblical interpretation.

Ideally, biblical scholars understand that the model and the data (the forest and the trees) are in dialogue. They are self-consciously aware of the paradox that models can both guide and distort biblical interpretation. A good biblical scholar will embrace that tension, which means being on the lookout for when the model moves from help to hindrance.

When biblical interpreters need to massage the data in order to maintain the model, or need to resort to specious argumentation, or find too many exceptions, it is an indication that a new model is needed–or at least a serious refinement of the existing model.

If I can switch metaphors, biblical scholarship is like building a picture puzzle. The box says 1000 pieces, but there are only 200 in the box. Biblical scholars, working with this limited data set, take those pieces and try to come up with an overall picture of what the entire puzzle looks like.

They begin by sorting the pieces out by shape and color. Pieces with straight edges form the periphery of the puzzle. After grouping the pieces together, one can see a picture forming: a patch of grass here, a path to what looks like a barn (or is it a farmhouse?) over there, a sky with patches of blue and clouds up to the left, mountains off to the right.

This looks like a compelling overall picture, and puzzle experts generally agree. Some point out, however, that there are some pieces that don’t seem to fit the scene very well. Two non-joining pieces are gray and shiny and look like two sections of a fighter jet. Some puzzle experts write books on what kind of fighter jet it is. Some suggest that, if it is a fighter jet, it is out of place in a farm scene and so abandon that model. Others think it is fully compatible with the farm model, although some adjustments need to be made (e.g., the farm scene is post World War 2, not nineteenth century as was first asserted). Some reject the fighter jet hypothesis entirely because it is so out of place with farm the model, that otherwise seems so certain.

Biblical scholars debate over how best to explain all the pieces.

Occasionally someone finds ten puzzle pieces under the sofa and adds them to the picture. The result will either corroborate the farm hypothesis, disconfirm it, or more often than not, answer some questions but raise others.

I could go on like this, but you get the point. All biblical scholars work with a fairly limited data set and by it try to explain the bigger picture. The models that catch on and stick around are those that do the best job of explaining the data in the minds of people who spend their time and energy working with the data.

The fact that the data set is limited does not mean that any explanation is as valid as any other. For example, an anti-farm fringe group may have a vested interest in interpreting the puzzle pieces as an urban scene. They do so through a clever manipulation of some pieces and discarding others. This model will fail to persuade those outside of this group, and so will likely not catch on in the long term.

Because biblical scholars are, ideally, open to migrating to news models (or at least modifying old ones), they tend not to be persuaded by arguments that rest on the authority of theological tradition. In other words, the mere presence of theological tensions resulting from a model is not automatically an argument against that model’s value. It may mean that the presence of theological tensions is an indication of a theological model that is itself in need of adjustment of some sort. (Theologians have models, too.)

So, to bring this home, one quick example.

“Moses wrote the substance of the Pentateuch in the 2nd millennium BC” is a model of Pentateuchal authorship. “The Pentateuch is a product of postexilic scribal activity working with older oral and written traditions and adding new material” is another model of Pentateuchal authorship.

The question is which of these models (or other models) does a better job of accounting for the data in as coherent and persuasive manner as possible, producing along the way as little cognitive dissonance as possible.

The fact the mosaic authorship is the traditionally accepted model does not automatically validate the mosaic authorship model or invalidate the postexilic scribal activity model.

What complicates the matter is that one must decide at some point what actually constitutes ”data” and how precisely does the interpretation of those data affect one’s assessment of the overall picture.

What makes it even more complicated is discerning how debates over models of Pentateuchal authorship square up with other issues of biblical scholarship. To return to the puzzle metaphor, Pentateuchal authorship is one group of puzzle pieces in the lower left of the partially constructed puzzle. Does this grouping of pieces “fit” with what we see in the puzzle as a whole or are we forcing pieces together and laying them out in a way that just doesn’t work?

This is why it’s sometimes difficult to answer questions directly like, “Why do you interpret Genesis 36:31 as evidence of postexilic authorship rather than slight editorial updating during the monarchy?”  or, “Why do you read Gen 1 and 2 as two separate creation accounts?” Whole models lie in the background of any answer one might give, and models can’t be laid out quickly, and certainly not in a moment of interrogation.  That takes time and patience.

So, that’s what biblical scholars do. Aren’t you glad you asked? I hope you sleep better tonight.

 

 

 

Filed Under: biblical criticism, intellectual models, Pentateuch 16 Comments

David Williams on Why Christians Shouldn’t get so Worked up about the Bible

May 18, 2012 By peteenns 5 Comments

David Williams is continuing his “Credo” series, which is a look at what the apostle Paul said is really important for Christians to believe in according to 1 Corinthains 15:3-5.

David’s point is that Paul didn’t get all worked up about “the doctrine of Scripture”–meaning, nailing down how it came to be, how it works, how to read it correctly, and basically making it the entry point of Christian theology. In fact, no one got really worked up about it for most of the history of the church.

To paint with a very broad brush, it was not until the Reformation that the Church began anxiously wringing her hands about getting “the doctrine of Scripture” (whatever that is) “right” (whatever that means).  Prior to that time there had always been (as, in fact, there still is) a variety of views, interpretations, conceptualizations, and enumerations of the Scriptures within the Church and generally speaking, Christians were not out to excommunicate one another over their differences on these matters.

David’s point: It’s really about Jesus–always had been–not the Bible.

Check out the entire post here.

ALSO…

David, as a campus staff member of InterVarsity at NC State and Meredith College, has begun a fundraising initiative,the “share HOPE project,” for renewing the university at home and fighting poverty abroad. Donations are matched dollar-for-dollar.


You can get complete information here…

Filed Under: Bible wars, David Williams, doctrine, inerrancy, Paul 5 Comments

Initial Thoughts in a New Book Defending Evangelical Biblical Scholarship

May 17, 2012 By peteenns 12 Comments

Earlier this year, Crossway released Do Historical Matters Matter to Faith? A Critical Appraisal of Modern and Postmodern Approaches to Scripture, edited by James K. Hoffmeier and Dennis R. Magary of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in suburban Chicago (hereafter DHMMF)

Briefly stated, the book is a sustained defense of what the authors consider to be the traditional and nearly universal understanding throughout church history of the Bible as the inerrant word of God. What prompted the volume was Kenton Sparks’s 2008 volume God’s Word in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship. In that book, Sparks not only laid out his vision for the need for evangelicals to come to terms with critical scholarship (which includes acknowledging the errors of Scripture), but named names among evangelical scholars for failing to do so.

I recently finished reading DHMMF, but this is not a full review. I want to think more about how to approach this issue most constructively. Here I want to offer some initial thoughts and general impressions of the book. I intend to look at specific essays later this summer where these and others impressions will be drawn out with more specificity. It is likely that at that time other evangelical scholars will want to chime in on this site, too.

So, here are some initial thoughts, in no particular order whatsoever.

1. I agree that, for the most part, DHMMF is a good faith effort to present a positive case for a traditional mainstream evangelical view of the Bible. Some of the contributors are clearly irked with Sparks, but by and large most contributors succeed in finding a balance between blunt disagreement and respect.

2. Most of the contributors are names well known among evangelicals. They are well trained and have thought through and written extensively on their positions, and what they say is worthy of respect and considered attention regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees. I found nearly all of them very much worth reading and learned things from them.

I will go so far as to say that there is no better contemporary exposition of the mainstream evangelical understanding of the nature of the Bible and how properly to respond to the pressing challenges of critrical scholarship (although see 4 below).

3. In edited volumes, it goes without saying that not all contributions are of equal value. Despite the impressive lineup, some essays obscured issues more then shed light, others seemed off topic, and one, in my opinion, actually undermined the project itself, Jens Bruun Kofoed’s essay “The Old Testament and Cultural Memory.” (The OT reflects not “the past” but how the past is remembered, i.e., how postexilic Israelites understood themselves in their cultural moment, which is something I could see Sparks saying and other authors in this volume contending against.)

4. The tone of the volume is set early on when inerrancy is claimed as the “central doctrine of Scripture among Western churches and … Scripture’s own teaching about its truthfulness” (p. 18). This is not up for discussion, and of course, given the book’s aim, one can see why. The problem, however, is that it it not too difficult to point out  instances of “confirmation bias,” where (1) data favorable to the paradigm are emphasized, (2) otherwise ambiguous data are given generous interpretations, and (3) non-compliant data are obscured, ignored, or their shortcomings overstated.

To be clear, everyone is guilty of confirmation bias on some level–including Sparks. Human beings tend to hold on their narratives and seek ways to confirm them. But DHMMF does not rise above that fray; it is as susceptible to the charge of confirmation bias as a number of contributors accuse Sparks of being. DHMMF is a good example of this very dynamic: “Our model is an inerrantist model and here is how we are able to interpret the data in support that model.”

Specifically, one runs up again what I have called elsewhere the “it’s possible” argument, which is a common rhetorical device among evangelicals: cast doubt on the competing paradigm by pointing out it inconsistencies, thus establishing the (mere) possibility of one’s own, which is deemed a sufficient defense of that paradigm regardless of its own inconsistencies. The problem, however, is that there are many possible models for explaining Scripture, the critical model being one of them.

The central question to be asked is which model (inerrantist or critical) accounts best for as much the data as possible, as economically as possible, and leaving as little cognitive dissonance as possible in the wake. So, yes, essential Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch is a “possible” model, but so is postexilic redaction of various oral and written traditions. The issue is which of these possible models answers the most questions concerning the available data while creating the fewest problems.

In this respect, I do not think the volume is successful in defending the absolute value of a mainstream inerrantist paradigm over against a critical one. It simply shows the possibility of how one can maintain that paradigm given an agreed upon starting point which then governs the interpretation of the data.

5. Again, in view of the stated goal of the book, alternate models are generally discounted insofar as they do not affirm an inerrantist starting point. With one or two exceptions, I did not see much acknowledgment for the genuine challenges raised in the moden study of Scripture. More often than not, non-traditional (non-inerrantist) views are attributed to modernist and postmodernist influences (the implication being that the current evangelical paradigm is free of such influences). In several essays, one gets the impression that the entire modern study of Scripture is an act of spiritual rebellion, though the essays as a whole do not take this approach.

6. The editors did a very good job making sure the hot button issues were addressed in the book. Personally, I would have liked to have seen some discussion about myth in the Old Testament, but there was no discussion of Genesis 1-11 (other than one unfortunate  comment in a footnote dismissing myth as a viable category for inerrancy, p. 64, n. 25).

I would also have liked to have seen some discussion of scribal culture in the ANE and in ancient Israel to address when the books of the Old Testament could have been written and for what reason (e.g., Karel van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible). I found a persistent undertone in several of the essays of a modern western “bookish” mentality, which does not reflect how ancient, largely oral, cultures went about the task of writing.

Along with that, the role of the exile in kick-starting the formation of the Hebrew Bible as we know it, a staple of critical scholarship, is not addressed.

7. I appreciate the division of the book into four sections: theological prolegomena, OT criticism, NT criticism, and archaeology. For my tastes, an expanded section on OT archaeology and perhaps one or two (not five) theological essays would have provided more space to address some substantive historical issues. (I also think Hoffmeier’s essay on the exodus needed to be grouped among the archaeological essays, not the theological prolegomena.)

8. I don’t mean to make enemies here, but I do wish this volume could have been published with Eerdmans, Baker, or IVP. Crossway has become to go-to publisher for defensive expositions of fundamentalism and evangelicalism, and I fear it may keep this volume from attracting critical attention it deserves from scholars outside of those arenas.

OK. I said brief–and I was, but this is still longer than I had intended. There is clearly a lot the authors have given us to think about, and I recommend the volume for appreciation of a learned defense of an evangelical paradigm and for critical appraisal.

 

Filed Under: Bible and History, biblical criticism, defending the faith, doctrine, Evangelicalism, inerrancy, Kent Sparks, modernism, postmodernism 12 Comments

What’s the REAL Problem with No Historical Adam, Really?

May 15, 2012 By peteenns 27 Comments

I’ve read a lot of responses to my book The Evolution of Adam and nearly all, supportive, critical, and in between, have something to say that is worth listening to.

But few are nailing the problem that a non-historical reading, or at least a non-first man reading, of the Adam story poses for Christian theology. Some have circled around it, but I am surprised no one (that I can recall) has simply came out and said it.

The problem isn’t that it threatens inerrancy. (There are plenty of other problems in the Bible that threaten inerrancy.)

The problem isn’t that it threatens theology by divorcing it from history. (The problem of history and theology is a staple of modern interpretation and isn’t caused by this particular instance.)

The problem isn’t that it threatens the sanctity of humanity, since God created humanity in his image. (The image of God is not an issue with Adam in Genesis 2 but humanity as a whole in Genesis 1.)

The problem isn’t that it threatens Paul’s integrity, since he read Adam historically. (Paul typically reads the Old Testament at a creative hermeneutical distance from what the Old Testament authors were saying.)

The problem isn’t that it threatens our continuity with the history of the church, since the church has taken Adam as historical. (The wouldn’t be the first time Christians have reversed earlier church belief–remember Galileo.)

The problem for Christian theology is God’s wrath.

A historical Adam, who is first human created without evolutionary predecessor, whose disobedience is somehow put on the shoulders of all humans, gives some rationale for why God is so angry and why that anger needs to be dealt with.

If there is no first man who fell, why is God so mad at everyone?

This is not a minor problem, for God is mad an awful lot in the Old Testament. Typically he is mad at Israel for disobedience to the law. He is also angry with the nations, typically for how they treat the Israelites but also for failing to act justly.

For whatever reason, God is mad–and he demands something be done about it.

You can chalk up all of the wrath business in the Old Testament to Israel reflecting its tribal cultural context. Every nation had gods who needed to appeased, gods who were angry at the drop of a hat for a myriad of reasons. It’s possible, perhaps, to dull the wrath theme in the Old Testament by saying that Israel was stuck in its cultural moment.

But wrath shows up in the New Testament–not as much, I would say, but it’s there.

Jesus is plenty angry, though the object of his wrath is Jewish infidelity to God, much like the Old Testament prophets were angry with Israel (and it seems that Jesus’ hell-talk was largely, if not entirely, aimed at his fellow Jews.)

But still, if you want wrath in the New Testament, one simply need point to the gospels and Paul: Jesus died for the sins of the world.

He had to. God said. Failure to have one’s sins dealt with means to be on the wrong side of the dividing line between God’s wrath and God’s good pleasure.

Take away an Adam as the cause of all of it, and you have to account for why God is so mad at us.

Actually, even with an Adam it’s not exactly clear in the Bible whether Adam is actually the cause of it all (including Paul’s words in Romans–read some commentaries if you don’t believe me). And it’s not at all clear in Genesis itself that Adam’s disobedience caused the universal problem of wrathful alienation from God (since that is not what the Adam story or the Old Testament as a whole say.)

So, maybe God’s wrath has to be explained with or without an Adam. But the view that lays the problem on Adam’s shoulders is the traditional Christian way of looking at it.

It is no good fighting the fact that the problem of wrath is at the very least exacerbated without an Adam.

I’m hardly the first person to point this out, but it’s worth stating plainly. Take away an Adam and you have a theological problem. But….as I never grow tired saying…the fact that no-Adam causes a theological problem does not mean there must have been a first man. It means we have a theological issue to deal with.

As I said toward the end of my book, that is where I would like to see our energies focused. I’m open to suggestions. I think we all should be.

 

 

 

Filed Under: Adam, evolution, Paul, The Evolution of Adam, theology, tribalism, wrath of God 27 Comments
« Older Posts