On August 7th we went for a boat ride on the Achensee to Rattenberg.   It was a nice please smooth ride to a quaint little village, otherwise known as a tourist trap.

So when we arrived at our destination we saw this…

There was the expected demonstration of glassblowing.  Joke of the day— What happens when a glassblower inhales? He gets a pane in his stomach.

Honestly, we did much care for the product— too gaudy, and too thin as well. But there were other things to see in the town.

The Van Gogh immersion experience has been going on for many months now touring the country, and Ann and I finally had a chance to get to Cincinnati and see it Sunday August 21.  It is well worth the effort.  Some of our favorite 19-20th century artists are the Impressionists, and Vincent is of course one of them.  Set to the music of audio impressionists like Debussy and Satie and St. Saens and even Ravel this exhibit is a home run.   There are two galleries, the downstairs one tells the sad story of Vincent’s life, emphasizing that as an adult he struggled with psychotic episodes and end up in an asylum but before that we learned that his father was a Dutch Reformed pastor, and that Vincent actually once trained for the ministry, though he did not pursue that career.  For the record, Vincent painted the famous Starry Night picture while looking out the window in the asylum.  He committed suicide at age 37.  Above is his last known painting done only two days before he shot himself, a painting of tree roots (the fourth picture up from the last one).

Vincent was famous for his use of color, perhaps more than anything else. What fascinated the impressionists was light and how light or the lack of it could dramatically change the colors of something. It raised the question, is the color in the object or in the lighting, or both?  The focus is indeed on the impression the object makes on the human eye under certain lightings.  Hence Monet’s famous four paintings of the same Rouen cathedral from the very same spot and angle, but as the light changed during the day on the face of the cathedral.

Things we learned this time about Vincent is that when he cut off his ear, he sent it to a nearby brothel he apparently had frequented, wanting the girls to literally have a piece of him.  Vincent had 3 sisters, but it was his brother Theo’s wife (and Theo was by far his closest sibling, to whom he wrote some 632 letters— see the Penguin edition of his letters) who acted as the collector and preserver of Vincent’s art.  We also learned that there was manic sort of period late in his life when he would make 100 paintings in a week or so. Just amazing.  We learned more about his friendship with Paul Gauguin, another impressionist.  Gauguin visited Vincent late into his life and they got along well for some weeks, but then there were times when Vincent’s brain went off the boil and he argued and even became aggressive with Gauguin.  Gauguin in fact went to the local police when Vincent cut off his own ear, and at first the police were going to charge Gauguin with attacking Vincent, but that was resolved.

Vincent’s sad and troubled life nevertheless produced some of the most treasured art of the 19th century, and it demonstrates that even the mentally ill if given a chance can contribute something valuable to the world in terms of beauty, truth, and love.

RECENT QUERIES ABOUT THE MARYS

One of the real problems in early Christian history was the tendency to blend people with similar or the same names together, as if they were all the same person.  We have this problem with assuming John Zebedee is the same person as John the elder who in turn is also the same person as John the seer who was in exile on Patmos.   In fact, there were at least two if not three different persons involved, as Papias’s comments made clear who says he met John the elder, but not John the original apostle.

This same problem has arisen notoriously with Mary Magdalene, who was assumed to be the same person as the anonymous sinner woman mentioned in Luke 7, and sometimes also assumed to be the same person as the Mary of Mary and Martha fame mentioned in Luke 10 and John 11.   A part of this tendency has recently been resurrected by the research of Elizabeth Schrader who has done her doctoral work at Duke University (and see also the recent JBL article by Joan Taylor and Elizabeth Schrader. “The Meaning of Magdalene. A Review of Literary Evidence”, SBL 140.4. The problem is, this study does not properly engage with the non-Christian early Jewish evidence, and the proper archaeological evidence at Migdal which has been and is being dug as we speak).

In this particular post I want to deal with certain assumptions that are undergirding some of this lets blend together the Marys speculation (and speculation it is).  The first point has to do with textual criticism.  There has in the guild been an increasing tendency to suggest that there is considerable ‘elasticity’ or flexibility, when it comes to the issue of textual variants.   Now Schrader quite rightly admits that most textual variants are innocuous, of no real historical or theological import.   But some are not.  I underline the word some.  This is true. It is also true that we have very few manuscripts that we can securely date to the 2^nd century A.D.

Nevertheless, one of the tendencies that has surfaced in the wake of all the Nag Hammadi materials and the rise of interest in ‘Gnostic’ Gospel texts in recent decades is a serious failure to consider the source of the documents.  The question that should be asked is do these documents come from proto-orthodox sources which are the mainstream of early Christianity, or do they come from heterodox sources like the numerous Gnostic texts.  The failure to consider seriously the source of the material is a serious failure indeed, and it has led to all sorts of historical mistakes—for instance the assumption that Jesus was likely married to Mary Magdalene, or that Mary Magdalene was the beloved disciple (when John 11.3 is perfectly clear that it is Mary of Bethany’s brother, Lazarus who is the one called ‘the one whom Jesus loved’ and there are no textual variants for that verse that might lead us to think otherwise).  I could say much more about synthetic tendencies and their problems, and problematic readings of textual variants without considering where they came from, but I need to move on to another problem.

This particular problem has to do with the misreading of Luke 10, and the famous story of Jesus’ visit to Mary and Martha’s house.  First of all, this story is in Luke’s famous journeying to Jerusalem chronicle that encompasses part of Luke 9 all the way to Luke 19. It is a repeated motif in this material that he is journeying up to Jerusalem, and various things are placed in those almost 10 chapters that are not in chronological order. In the case of Luke 10 itself, the theme of what it means to be a good disciple of Jesus, and also how to act as a loving neighbor are the most obvious themes.  We are not told in Luke 10 where the village is that Jesus visited with Mary and Martha but we certainly cannot conclude it must be in Galilee because it is part of a literary creation and sequence of texts that is part of the journeying up to Jerusalem motif.  Luke is more concerned with a theological ordering than a chronological ordering of materials in Luke 9-19.  Secondly, the attempt to distinguish the Mary and Martha in Luke 10 from the Mary and Martha of John 11 simply falls flat, because in both cases the personal characterization of these two women is too similar in these two texts to ignore.  Thirdly, it is simply not the case that because we are told in Luke 10 that the house in question is Martha’s house that this must mean its not Simon the Leper’s house or Lazarus’ house.  This is an argument from silence, not an argument from substance.  If Martha is in fact the homemaker for her siblings, say as the older sister, and if Simon the Leper has passed away, there is no reason why the home could not be said to be her home.  The focus is after all on the relationship of Jesus with these two sisters, just as it is in John 11.

Then there are the assumptions about Mary Magdalene that surface in this kind of approach.  She is now being called Mary the Tower, as if Magdalena were a personal attribute of Mary herself.  I’m sorry, but this ignores altogether that the town Luke is referring to is a real Galilean town called Migdal, which does indeed mean tower.  It’s the town, not the person that Luke is referring to.  Here I would refer all the readers to Richard Bauckham’s very careful study of Migdal including names and nomenclatures in his work entitled Magdala of Galilee. A Jewish City of the Hellenistic and Roman Period and also his study entitled Gospel Women.  The careful historical work that went into these two studies simply can’t be ignored or dismissed, and they lead to the conclusion that Mary from Migdal/Magdala not Mary the Tower is the correct reading of the data.  She is a Galilean disciple, out of whom Jesus exorcised some demons, and her name always comes first in the list of female disciples from Galilee.  This is surely NOT the same person as the Mary in Luke 10 or John 11.

I could say much more about all this (see my Women in the Ministry of Jesus), but this must suffice.  Curiosity and historical conjecture are of course important parts of analyzing the incomplete data of the New Testament, especially because of all the aporia.  One must keep an open mind about traditional assumptions.  But at the end of the day, there are usually very good reasons to reject speculations that the vast majority of scholars have not and do not now entertain, for good reasons.  The newest is not always the truest and the latest is not always the greatest when it comes to the analysis of the NT and its texts and textual variants.

One of the real problems in early Christian history was the tendency to blend people with similar or the same names together, as if they were all the same person.  We have this problem with assuming John Zebedee is the same person as John the elder who in turn is also the same person as John the seer who was in exile on Patmos.   In fact, there were at least two if not three different persons involved, as Papias’s comments made clear who says he met John the elder, but not John the original apostle.

This same problem has arisen notoriously with Mary Magdalene, who was assumed to be the same person as the anonymous sinner woman mentioned in Luke 7, and sometimes also assumed to be the same person as the Mary of Mary and Martha fame mentioned in Luke 10 and John 11.  A part of this tendency has recently been resurrected by the research of Elizabeth Schrader who has done her doctoral work at Duke University (and see also the recent JBL article by Joan Taylor and Elizabeth Schrader. “The Meaning of Magdalene. A Review of Literary Evidence”, SBL 140.4. The problem is, this study does not properly engage with the non-Christian early Jewish evidence, and the proper archaeological evidence at Migdal which has been and is being dug as we speak).

In this particular post I want to deal with certain assumptions that are undergirding some of this speculation (and speculation it is).  The first point has to do with textual criticism.  There has in the guild been an increasing tendency to suggest that there is considerable ‘elasticity’ or flexibility, when it comes to the issue of textual variants.   Now Schrader quite rightly admits that most textual variants are innocuous, of no real historical or theological import.  But some are not.  I underline the word some.  This is true. It is also true that we have very few manuscripts that we can securely date to the 2^nd century A.D.  Nevertheless, one of the tendencies that has surfaced in the wake of all the Nag Hammadi materials and the rise of interest in ‘Gnostic’ texts in recent decades is a serious failure to consider the source of the documents.  The question that should be asked do these documents come from proto-orthodox sources which are the mainstream of early Christianity, or do they come from heterodox sources like the numerous Gnostic texts.  The failure to consider seriously the source of the material is a serious failure indeed, and it has led to all sorts of historical mistakes—for instance the assumption that Jesus was likely married to Mary Magdalene, or that Mary Magdalene was the beloved disciple (when John 11.3 is perfectly clear that it is Mary of Bethany’s brother, Lazarus who is the one called ‘the one whom Jesus loved’ (and there are no textual variants for that verse that might lead us to think otherwise).  I could say much more about synthetic tendencies and their problems, and problematic readings of textual variants without considering where they came from, but I need to move on to another problem.

This particular problem has to do with the misreading of Luke 10, and the famous story of Jesus’ visit to Mary and Martha’s house.  First of all, this story is in Luke’s famous journeying to Jerusalem chronicle that encompasses part of Luke 9 all the way to Luke 19. It is a repeated motif in this material, and various things are placed in those almost 10 chapters that are not in chronological order. In the case of Luke 10 itself, the theme of what it means to be a good disciple of Jesus, and also how to act as a loving neighbor are the most obvious themes.  We are not told in Luke 10 where the village is that Jesus visited with Mary and Martha but we certainly cannot conclude it must be in Galilee because it is part of a literary creation and sequence of texts that is part of the journeying up to Jerusalem motif.  Luke is more concerned with a theological ordering than a chronological ordering of materials in Luke 9-19.  Secondly, the attempt to distinguish the Mary and Martha in Luke 10 from the Mary and Martha of John 11 simply falls flat, because in both cases the personal characterization of these two women is too similar in these two texts to ignore.  Thirdly, it is simply not the case that because we are told in Luke 10 that the house in question is Martha’s house that this must mean its not Simon the Leper’s house or Lazarus’ house.  This is an argument from silence, not an argument from substance.  If Martha is in fact the homemaker for her siblings, say as the older sister, and if Simon the Leper has passed away, there is no reason why the home could not be said to be her home. The focus is after all on the relationship of Jesus with these two sisters, just as it is in John 11.

Then there are the assumptions about Mary Magdalene that surface in this kind of approach.  She is now being called Mary the Tower, as if Magdalena were a personal attribute of Mary herself.  I’m sorry, but this ignores altogether that the town Luke is referring to is a real Galilean town called Migdal, which does indeed mean tower.  It’s the town, not the person that Luke is referring to.  Here I would refer all the readers to Richard Bauckham’s very careful study of Migdal including names and nomenclatures in his work entitled Magdala of Galilee. A Jewish City of the Hellenistic and Roman Period and also his study entitled Gospel Women.  The careful historical work that went into these two studies simply can’t be ignored or dismissed, and they lead to the conclusion that Mary from Migdal/Magdala not Mary the Tower is correct reading of the data.  She is a Galilean disciple, out of whom Jesus exorcised some demons, and her name always comes first in the list of female disciples from Galilee.  This is surely not the same person as the Mary in Luke 10 or John 11.

I could say much more about all this (see my Women in the Ministry of Jesus), but this must suffice.  Curiosity and historical conjecture are of course important parts of analyzing the incomplete data of the New Testament, especially because of all the aporia. One must keep an open mind about traditional assumptions.  But at the end of the day, there are usually very good reasons to reject speculations that the vast majority of scholars have not and do not now entertain, for good reasons.  The newest is not always the truest and the latest is not always the greatest when it comes to the analysis of the NT and its texts and textual variants.

What exactly is the pathway to the Kingdom of God and what are the entrance requirements?  Jesus and Paul both talk about entering, obtaining or inheriting the Kingdom of God. Now the important thing about such discussions is that in each of those cases what is envisioned is a future entering of God’s kingdom when it comes on earth as it is in heaven.  It is not about dying and going to heaven.  While Paul says flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom in 1 Cor. 15 he says this in the context of discussing the future resurrection on earth of believers.  He tells us that when Christ returns to earth, the dead in Christ will be raised, and in that condition they can inherit the kingdom and be part of it.  The process of salvation is not over until we are fully conformed to the image of Christ by means of a resurrection body. Period.

This is precisely why I have stressed that there are three tenses to salvation for all of us who are being saved: 1) I have been saved (which refers to justification and also the new birth which can also be called becoming a new creature/creation), 2) I am being saved (which refers to sanctification, which indeed does involve our own participation, co-operating with the Spirit we must work out our salvation with fear and trembling as God works in us to will and to do.)  Notice that that discussion in Philippians 2.12 says that our willing and our doing is a necessary part of working out our salvation. It doesn’t happen inexorably or without our free and voluntary co-operation. Notice that Paul makes that remark having prefaced it with a reference to ‘obedience’.  Salvation, involves obedience, not merely faith.  Behavior is what obedience is about as the context makes clear.  It is simply not true that salvation is by faith alone.  Martin Luther’s reading of Romans 1 is frankly badly off the mark.  Yes, you can say that initial salvation or justification is by grace and through faith. What you cannot say is that is all there is to salvation.  It is not. Lastly, 3) final salvation is in the hands of God and involves his raising us from the dead.  Notice that even Paul talks about hoping that he may attain to final salvation— he puts it this way in Phil. 3, one of his very last pronouncements on salvation: ” ¹⁰ I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹ and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. ¹² Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.”   If even Paul can say that he has not yet attained to resurrection, and that he must make every effort to press on to that goal, it should have been very very clear that the salvation process is not concluded before the resurrection of believers and that our behavior in this life definitely has something to do with the final outcome.  Obedience to God is required.  In short, you are not eternally secure until you are securely in eternity.   You just aren’t.   Why not?   Because before you die, there is the danger of apostasy.   So let’s talk about what that is and what that isn’t.

Apostasy is not about forgetting, losing, or misplacing your salvation.  You can’t lose your salvation like you’d lose a pair of glasses— ‘I swear that my salvation was here this morning.  Now where have I lost it.’  Nope, it doesn’t work like that.  Apostasy doesn’t happen by accident at all.  It is by definition a willful turning away from the relationship you have already had with God Almighty.  It is a deliberate and willful rejection of the work of Christ already done in you.  It is a quenching of the Holy Spirit’s presence and work in you.   And this activity has nothing to do with whether or not God loves you,  because God loves all his creatures, and he sent his Son to die for them all.  The reason some aren’t save is precisely because they reject the Good News, whether when first offered or later.

Hebrews 6 is the classic passage about this, and it could not be much clearer, as the author is warning Jewish Christians who have already experienced both initial salvation and some sanctification as follows: “It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, ⁵ who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age ⁶ and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace. ⁷ Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God. ⁸ But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned. ⁹ Even though we speak like this, dear friends, we are convinced of better things in your case—the things that have to do with salvation. ¹⁰ God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them. ¹¹ We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, so that what you hope for may be fully realized.” Notice at the end of this quote that it speaks about God knowing of the person’s work and love shown, and then the exhortation that they need to keep doing that to the very end so their hope of final salvation can be fully realized.   

But you may say— but what about a passage like at the end of Romans 8—  ^{38 “}For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, ³⁹ neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”  And while we are at it, didn’t Paul just say in Romans 8.28-30 that there was this thing called predestination?   Yes he did.  More on that in a second.  But first, look closely at Romans 8.38-39.  What’s the one thing not listed in that list of things that cannot separate you from the love of God?  Answer—YOURSELF.  Paul is assuring his audience that no circumstance, no angel or demon, no human being, in short no third party or circumstance can rip you out of the loving grasp of God.  The Devil cannot make you an offer you can’t refuse.   Apostasy is a deliberate and willful choice to abandon ship and the outcome is disastrous.  It happens not because God chose for it to happen before the foundations of the universe.  It happens because that individual person, despite all the blessings etc. from God chose for it to happen— knowingly, willingly, and never by accident.  Does attaining to final salvation involve our, with the help of God’s grace, persevering to the end in faithfulness and obedience? Yes it does. 

So finally, back to Romans 8.28-30, some of the most misread verses in the whole Pauline corpus. What this text says is that God works all things together for those who love God and are called according to purpose/choice (the word his, is not in the Greek text before purpose). Now what is crucial is the ‘ous’ in the next verse which has as its antecedent ‘those who love God’. The correct way to read the Greek of what follows is as follows:  ‘For those who love God, God foreknew, and destined etc.’   This is not about God choosing some lost souls to be Christians in the first place. Remember Paul is writing to those who are already Christians, and he is reassuring them that God has a wonderful future planned, a wonderful destination planned in advance for them.  Those whom God foreknew would love him,  he destined in advance to a wonderful outcome. These verses are not about God picking and choosing some to be saved. It is about God’s plans for those who have already responded in love to the offer of the Gospel.  Period.     As for the language of election in Ephesians 1, I would refer you to the whole discussion in my Biblical Theology volume for Cambridge.   Election is in Israel in the OT and does not determine the fate of particular Israelites, and election is in Christ in the NT and does not determine the final salvation of particular believers.  In short, election is corporate in both cases, not individual. 

Think on these things.  

The Bible as the Word of God

All Scripture is given by the inspiration of God. Upon this statement of facts evangelical Christianity stands. By inspiration we mean that the Holy Spirit exerted his supernatural influence upon the writers of the Bible.  The writings were inspired, not necessarily the writers, for the Bible nowhere claims to have been inspired by human beings.  The Holy Spirit is the author of the Bible.  Christ told his disciples that he would leave many things unrevealed and that the Holy Spirit would come and choose certain persons and through them reveal his perfect will unto human beings, and that the Holy Spirit would be the believer’s teacher. Human beings are the instruments the Holy Spirit used to write Scripture. The result is the infallible Word of God. Therefore the Bible is free from error and absolutely trustworthy.

The Bible is a difficult book because it came from the Infinite to the finite, from the unlimited all powerful God to limited human beings. Therefore, you cannot understand the Bible the way you would the writings of Plato or Socrates. You can study the great philosophers with the natural mind and by diligent application, grasp their profound meanings. If the Bible could be understood by the natural mind it would be a natural book and could not be the Word of God.  Since the Bible is from God and therefore spiritual, before you can receive its teachings, you must be born of the Spirit, and filled with the Spirit. Always approach the Bible praying that the Spirit will be your teacher and will guide you to a better understanding of his Holy Word, or it will remain a difficult closed book. The oneness or unity of the Bible is a miracle, it is a library of 66 books written by over 35 different authors, in a period of approximately 1,500 years! Represented in the authors is a cross section of humanity, educated and uneducated, including kings, fishermen, public officials, farmers, teachers, and physicians. Included in the subjects are religion, history, law, science, poetry, drama, biography and prophecy, yet its various parts are as harmoniously united as the parts that make up the human body. For 35 authors with such varied backgrounds to write on so many subjects over a period of approximately 1,500 years in absolute harmony is a mathematical impossibility. It could not happen. Then how do we account for the Bible?

The only adequate explanation is Holy persons of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. For the Word of God is quick and powerful. The Bible claims dividing power as a sword. The Bible will separate a human being from his sin, or sin will separate him from the Bible. The Bible claims reflecting power like a mirror.  In the Bible we see ourselves as God sees us, as sinners. The Bible also claims a cleansing power, like water.  David prayed that God would wash him from his iniquity and cleanse him from sin. The Bible claims reproductive power, like a seed. We are children of God because we have been born into the family of God by the incorruptible seed of God.  This is the new birth.  The Bible claims nourishing power, like food. The Bible is spiritual food for the soul.  No Christian can remain strong in the Lord and not study the Word of God. Study to show thyself approved unto God is a command.

As you study the Bible, you will discover that it does not just contain the Word of God, it is the Word of God. You must also keep in mind that the Word of God contains the words of God, as well as the words of Satan, demons, angels, and human beings both good and bad.  God is truth and cannot lie. Satan is a liar and the father of lies. Humans are natural and therefore limited and do not always speak the truth. To illustrate, in this portion of Scripture, the Gospels, we have the words of Jesus, of the Pharisees, of the Herodians, and of the Sadducees. All these latter were trying to entangle Jesus in his teachings, so that they might accuse him of breaking God’s law. Their words were spoken with evil intentions, revealing the thinking of the natural person, along with the Words of God which came from the lips of Jesus. As you study the Bible, ask yourself these questions– Who is speaking? God, demon, angel or human being?  To whom is he speaking? To the nation Israel, to the Gentiles, to the Church, to human beings in general or to some individual person or being?  Then ask– How can this Scripture be applied to my life to make me a better Christian. This is the question for each and everyone one of us to ask ourselves.

Q. Jesus’ choice of the particular 12 he did choose—four fishermen, one or two tax collectors, one or two former zealots of some sort seems in itself an unlikely grouping of persons, indeed a grouping of persons already at odds with one another. Would you see this as some sort of statement of ‘can’t we all just get along’ and love our neighbors even our enemies? In short, would you see this as an enacted parable of what the kingdom community should look like?

A. Yes indeed. I see Jesus ‘new commandment’ to love one another of John 13:35 as hugely important for the first Christians. In John 13 it follows Jesus’ washing of the disciples’ feet and precedes the passion – very practical loving and very humble serving. Jesus says in John that this is to be the distinctive mark of his followers. The same idea comes out in Matthew, Mark and Luke, where Jesus speaks to his disciples about leadership and says that they are to be different from worldly leaders who like to rule and dominate; instead his followers are to serve – he uses the word ‘slave’ – ‘for the Son of man came not to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many’ (Mark 10:45). I see the same idea in Paul’s letters, most notably in Galatians 6:2 where Paul refers to bearing one another’s burdens and so to ‘fulfil the law of Christ’ and in 5:9 where he says ‘through love be slaves of one another’. Jesus’ community was indeed to be a lived-out picture or parable of God’s kingdom.

Q. Let’s talk about the family of faith concept which begins with Jesus and carries on in early Christianity as particularly evidenced in Paul’s letters. It is said to have priority at least over one’s obligations to one’s physical family, at least for some of Jesus’ disciples. Notice how Jesus on the cross in John bequeaths his mother to his beloved disciple, and vice versa, not back to his brothers and sisters who at the time were not Jesus’ disciples. This is a pretty radical thing to institute not only in Jesus’ day but in our own. What we tend to mean by a ‘family church’ is not a church which is a spiritual family for everyone who is present or is a member, but rather a church which nurtures nuclear physical families and neglects the priority of the family of faith. The church serves the status quo, rather than instituting a new kind of family. What do you think Jesus would think about the church as it exists today in regard to this matter? Do you think he would have agreed with Loisy’s famous quip— Jesus preached the kingdom but it was the church which showed up?

A. Yes and no to Loisy! The church has often not lived out the kingdom of God, sometimes exactly the opposite.. But I don’t think the first Christians got Jesus wrong. They and a lot of Christians since have demonstrated the love and community spirit of which Jesus spoke – imperfectly, but really. I quite like to translate Matthew 5:16 ‘Let your light so shine before people that they may see your beautiful works and glorify your Father in heaven’. The call to the church is to be a beautiful people. And yes a beautiful family. The thought of the church as a family is important, with Jesus speaking of his followers as his family and with Paul (and others) addressing fellow-Christians as ‘brothers’ (including sisters!). I agree that there is a tendency for us in modern church life to focus the physical human family rather than on the family of faith, which reflects the values of our secular society. Not that the physical family is unimportant: Jesus endorsed the fifth commandment ‘honour your father and mother’, and the ‘household codes’ in the NT letters emphasize and teach about the responsibilities of parents and children. It is a proper priority in the contemporary church to nurture family life in face of all sorts of threats, as well as to do everything to build up the life of Christ’s family the church.

Q. As time has gone on, I have found the translation as kingdom for malkuta/baseleia less and less plausible and helpful. The English word always conveys a place, whereas often the word seems to refer to an activity, on Jesus’ lips the final divine saving activity at last breaking into human history, particularly the history of God’s people. I don’t find the term ‘reign’ which is more static as helpful as ‘saving activity’ because the term is not talking about the ongoing sovereign reign of God. For this reason I’ve preferred the term dominion, because in English it can have both a verbal aspect (a king can take dominion over some people) and a noun aspect ( one can enter, obtain, inherit a dominion which is a place). In sum, when Jesus and also Paul refer to entering, obtaining, inheriting the dominion they are referring to something future, when the dominion comes on earth as it is in heaven, but when the subject is the divine saving activity it refers to something happening again and again in the present— happening to people who are being saved. So the dominion is in one sense ‘already’ here and in another sense ‘not yet’ come, hence the Lord’s Prayer. This of course implies that we live at a time when God’s will is often not done on earth, indeed quite the opposite. Paul would not have to talk about God working all things together for good for those who love him, if everything that was happening was already good and reflected the will of God. Does this make sense? How would you respond?

A. I am glad to meet another translation or paraphrase for malkuta/baseleia! Dick France entitled a book Divine Government, and I quite like that. Jesus saw himself as bringing an end to the devil’s hijacked and evil rule of the world (John 14:30), and restoring God’s government. Tom Wright entitled a book The Victory of God, and that has a positive dynamic feel. I went for ‘the revolution of God’, again because of the dynamism (contrast static or simply constitutional ideas of a monarchy) and because ‘the revolution’ is something you can join and that has a present and a future aspect. Your ‘dominion’ is another real contender, though I wonder if you and I both lose something in that neither the abstract term ‘dominion’ nor especially ‘revolution’ suggests a personal king, contrast the Psalms that say ‘Yahweh reigns’ (e.g. 97). Jesus is God’s king, indeed embodies God coming as king.

Q. In his recent book History and Eschatology Tom Wright chronicles how the Enlightenment, though in some ways helpful in getting the West beyond some aspect of the obscurantism of the Medieval period, did us no favors in setting up binaries like the natural vs. the supernatural, or miracles vs. mundane activities readily explained by empirical science, or even sacred vs. secular realms of human existence. I think he is absolutely right about this, and of course the NT never uses a term like miracle— Jesus’ special deeds are called mighty or powerful works or signs in the 4th Gospel especially. The question is raised as to what sense it makes to call miracles violations of the natural laws, which God in turn set up, the same God credited with miracles. Do you think it is possible that we could discuss the mighty works of the NT without resorting to Enlightenment categories and could assess their historical authenticity without such pigeon holes? I was reading a work by the philosopher Thomas V. Morris, and he suggested that we think of ‘miracles’ as things that go beyond what we know of natural laws (which of course is not exhaustive knowledge anyway) rather than going against them. Do you find this a helpful distinction?

A. Yes, I do see that as helpful, though I am no philosopher. I am in regular discussion with a friend who is a disciple of Richard Dawkins, the sceptical Oxford scientist, and he wants to explain absolutely everything in terms of natural causality. That sort of reductionism is not persuasive biblically or experientially. On the other hand, the Bible, though pre-modern-science, does know that there are ordinary and extraordinary events and acts of God: people were astonished at Jesus’ powerful deeds and asked: what is this? Even his opponents commenting on his exorcisms described them as the work of the ‘prince’ of demons. And as for his resurrection, people had doubts. It was virtually unbelievable, and John’s description of Thomas’ demand for what we would call empirical evidence is explicitly linked by John to the purpose of his writing of his gospel. It was the extra-ordinary things about Jesus that made him such persuasively good news in the first century. A book that I enjoyed reading recently is the collection of essays Raised on the Third Day, edited by David Beck and Michael Licona.

A very long time ago, there were a couple of songs by the Doors that suit this movie to a T— ‘People are Strange’ and ‘Strange Days’.  On the basis of the last Spiderman movie I was prepared for the confusions involving the multiverse.  That didn’t bother me. I was also prepared for Benedict Cumberbatch to do a good job playing a difficult role— Stephen Strange, as he had before.  And he did do a good job, although making him call the young lady America Chavez ‘kid’ as if he was Humphrey Bogart talking to Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca was beyond phony, it actually was belittling to that powerful young woman.  Boo.

Of course with all Marvel movies you have to be prepared for suspending your disbelief at points, but this movie was one long requirement for such an approach.   Missing entirely was any of the usual wry wit of a Marvel movie, any of the non-sinister light hearted moments. Instead, we got Sam Raimi horror, and demons, and a scarlet witch that turns Wanda of Wanda vision into someone you loathe.   Again, Boo.   There are many CG special effects, but most of them have to do with adding more wow factor to the violence.   Considering the amount of violence and horror in this movie, I do not recommend it for young people under 13.  Nope.

And may I just say I am already quite tired of the tendency to interweave all the Marvel story lines into one ongoing story line so that basically you have to watch all their new movies now to keep up with the characters etc.  Boo again.  This is way over the top.    I agree with the increasing number of critics who have panned this sequel to the 2016 Dr. Strange film, which I liked.   It was 2 hours and 6 minutes of kaboom and oh no, one right after the other, without a real good plot or character development…. and then there is the trailer in which we run into the three eyed Dr. Strange. Not reassuring.  And even the Illuminati, which turned out to be just some other Marvel characters, including Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four (please do not rent or stream the previous Fantastic Four movie— it’s a bomb) do not illumine us about what’s really going on. Their cameo appearance is a waste.

Well you can’t win them all, but let’s hope the Thor movie this summer doesn’t produce the same less than Marvelous effect.  This movie was more like something that  came from Tales from the Crypt.

Q. I wonder if you have read Bruce Winter’s monograph. Is Paul among the Sophists?  What Winter demonstrates, at least to my satisfaction is that Paul is not claiming he is not a rhetorician, he is claiming he is not like the orators of the 2^nd Sophistic, who focused on mere verbal eloquence and flattery, overcome by the exuberance for their own verbosity.  Larry Welborn and others have rightly warned that the hints in 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians have to be read within the context of the popular sophistic rhetoric of the day, which Paul eschews.  Welborn is especially helpful with the ‘his letters are heavy but his ethos is weak or miserable’.   I think Winter and Welborn are right about this, and surely the evidence of Paul’s use of speech in character in Rom. 7 makes quite clear he knows advanced rhetorical devices, wherever he got the education. In a dialogue with Stan Porter, which continued into some articles back and forth in JETS, one of the things that bewildered me is that Porter came to the point of basically repudiating the detailed work of Margaret Mitchell, Duane Watson, Kennedy and others and without good reason.  I wonder how you have evaluated all the recent back and forth about Paul and rhetoric in some of these discussions?

A. I suppose Paul had the kind of rhetorical education that anyone would have who had received a secondary or tertiary education. One learns much rhetoric simply by listening to good speakers. Undoubtedly, Paul learned rhetoric by listening. He sometimes uses rhetorical terms. I suspect that his comment that he is an idiotes in word may be an exaggeration (“I’m just a country boy” routine), and I assume that his oratory was not in the class of those in the second sophistic. Some of the church fathers acknowledged that Paul’s speech did not measure up to the highest standards. I am less convinced about Margaret Mitchell’s analysis and Hans Dieter Betz’s commentary than I was previously. I think both tried to “shoe horn” rhetorical arrangement into Paul’s letters. Betz even invented a category exhortatio to fit his scheme. I also see quite a bit of parallelomania in his use of classical parallels.

As I recall, Kennedy has said that one can do rhetorical analysis of any document, whether the writer was consciously using rhetorical tools or not. Schellenberg has an interesting chapter in which he finds many of the characteristics commended by the rhetoricians in the speeches of the Seneca chief Red Jacket (argument from ethos, exordium, self-praise) and Billy Sunday. That is, rhetoric comes largely from socialization. Nevertheless, as you can see in my book, I think attention to Greek rhetorical terms is a useful tool for analyzing an argument.