I am preparing for a discussion class on the Apostles’ Creed this Fall and digging into it in preparation. I will post on it occasionally over the next few months. Today I want to focus on two lines in article 3.

I believe in … the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, …

As it happens, my husband and I have been touring Germany the last two weeks, a mixture of business and pleasure. Three years ago we visited Lutherstadt-Wittenburg and I had an opportunity to attend an English service in the Castle Church. On this trip we’ve visited Schloss Wartburg (right) and Veste Coburg (below) where Luther spent time when the Protestant confession was being debated in Worms or Augsburg,  and walked through a number of old churches (built in the 1200’s to 1600’s) in various towns. We visited churches in Leipzig where Johan Sebastian Bach originally directed music. We attended a Roman Catholic service in an ancient cathedral (one we particularly wanted to see and our only option was to attend a service). Not being fluent in German, one of the few things I recognized was a version of the Creed.

Travels around the world and immersion in the history of the Christian church drive home the importance of these two lines in the creed. Ben Myers in his new book The Apostles’ Creed reflects on the significance of the holy catholic church. While we may not believe in the pre-eminence of any particular institutional form of organization, it is an undeniable tenet of the Christian faith that we believe that the church is universal and composed of all who confess belief in God the Father, Jesus Christ the son and the Holy Spirit.  We proclaim that the church is “catholic” because it is universal. Ben Myers writes:

The word simply means universal. It means that there is only one church because there is only one Lord. Though there have been many Christian communities spread out across different times, places, and cultures, they are all mysteriously united in one Spirit. Each local gathering is a full expression to that mysterious catholicity. (p. 103)

The catholic church does not distinguish rich or poor, male or female, social class or ethnic group. It is now and has long been translated into the vernacular language of any people.

But right from the start, the Christian movement was marked by translation. Jesus himself spoke Aramaic, but the four Gospels all translated his teaching into vernacular Greek so that the message would be available to as many readers as possible. Within a remarkably short time the Christian message had taken root in many different cultures, each one reading and proclaiming the gospel message in its own tongue. The message of Jesus is a catholic message. (p. 104)

Luther translated the Bible into German, working on his translation in both Schloss Wartburg and Veste Coburg. Although this was not the first such translation into German, the renewed emphasis on translation into the vernacular was one of the strengths of the Reformation.

The message of Jesus also transcends death. We are part of the communion of saints, past, present, and future. Many years ago on a trip to England, my husband and I happened on the cathedral in Durham and the grave and story of the Venerable Bede. This was important in my faith journey as it connected the history of the faith to the present in a way I’d never experienced before. It started with reading the works of Bede, then other older church fathers and has been refocused many times in many places. Although there are always elements of Christian belief and practice that are flawed in any time or place, there is also a depth of continuity to explore.

Myers elaborates on this idea of the communion of saints to emphasize that Christianity is a way of life rather than an institution.

[Jesus] was the author not of ideas but of  a way of life. Everything Jesus believed to be important he entrusted to his small circle of followers. What he handed on to them was simply life. He showed them his own unique way of being alive – his way of living, loving, feasting, forgiving, teaching, and dying – and he invited them to live the same way. (p. 110)

Jesus was not establishing an institution or a new religion (this is a continuation of the same story!) Myers goes too far though, when he claims that Jesus did not lay down right answers to moral questions. The “right answers to moral questions” are part and parcel of the way to live. It is also where the church most often gets things wrong. The deep history of the church is our strength. But innate human focus on wealth and power as well as the corruption of sexual desire mixed with wealth and power has troubled and tainted the church from very shortly after its beginning. The history surrounding the Reformation gives us some of this, but we actually need look no further than the church today to see the truth of the matter.

J.I. Packer in his short meditation on The Apostles Creed combines these two phrases into one. The holy catholic church and the communion of saints both emphasize the universality of the church. The communion of saints, however, is more than the fellowship of Christians.

Some Protestants have taken the clause “the communion of saints,” which follows “the holy catholic church as the Creed’s own elucidation of what the church is, namely Christians in fellowship with each other – just that without regard for any particular hierarchical structure. But it is usual to treat this phrase as affirming the real union in Christ of the church “militant here on earth” with the church triumphant, as indicated in Hebrews 12:22-24. (p. 123)

He goes on to note that this may include communion in holy things such as word, Eucharist, prayer etc. and this is in line with the church as God’s community. The emphasis, however, on continuity with those who came before and those who come after is an important part of the church. We are situated in time and place, but not confined to only this reality. We overlook this reality when current fellowship is emphasized. As Americans, where history is relatively short, this really hits home when traveling in Europe or the Middle East. The communion of saints has a long history.

Although he doesn’t read the Creed as necessarily affirming universal Christian fellowship (i.e. community), Packer does see this as a fully biblical concept.

The church is the supernatural society of God’s redeemed and baptized people, looking back to Christ’s first coming with gratitude and on to his second coming with hope. (p. 124)

This doesn’t mean we can go it alone in worship and Christian life. He prefaces this statement with “as long as dominical sacraments are administered and ministerial oversight is exercised, no organizational norms are insisted on at all.” We need organized community of some form, with leaders trained in the faith.

Of course, the local church is a flawed human organization.

For the present, however, all churches (like those in Corinth, Colosseum, Galatia, and Thessaloniki, to look no further) are prone to err in both faith and morals and need constant re-formation at all levels (intellectual, devotional, structural, liturgical) by the Spirit through God’s Word. (p. 124)

When we remember the reformation (501 years after Luther gave his 95 theses in Wittenburg), we remember communion with those who came before in the history of the church, those who remain faithful in all denominations and structures, and the need to be always reforming to stay true as the people of God.

How do you understand “the communion of saints” in the Creed.

How does this impact your view of the church?

What is the function of the local church?

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

You Don’t Have to Look Far to Find Trouble (by Mike Glenn)

Rabbis tell a story about the day God pinned everyone’s troubles up on a big board for the whole world to see. God gave everyone in the world permission to go up to the board and pick the troubles they wanted to live with. According to the rabbis, each person went up and picked their own troubles. After seeing what everyone else had to live with, each person decided they would take back their own troubles. At least they knew how to live with their own pain.

One of the discoveries we’ve made in all of the religious surveys we’ve been taking over the past several years is that people lie. (OK, maybe we didn’t need a survey to find out that interesting fact.) Let me explain. When you ask a question like, “How many times do you go to church in a month?” people will answer by giving the number they “intend” to go, not necessarily the times they actually go. They intend to go to church three times a month, but when you check their actual schedule, you’ll find out they only went to church once. You know how it goes, a child gets sick or we schedule a quick weekend trip out of town. Now, we fully thought we were going to church, but it’s that we just can’t make it this Sunday.

Now, add Facebook and other social media platforms to this dishonest reality of human nature, and we’ve found ourselves in quite a fix. What fix is that? No one is telling the truth. We’ve developed this curious habit of only posting the great moments of our lives. If we only believed our social media posts, all of us have fantastic marriages and above average children.

Recently, social scientists and mental health professionals have been raising concerns about the growing rate of suicides in our nation. Believe it or not, one of the factors cited for this increase is the worthlessness and despair that comes from not being able to match the Facebook lives of their friends.

Like I said, people lie.

Why? Because lying buys us all a little time. Most of us know that sooner or later, we’ll have to deal with the truth, but right now, that’s just too hard for most of us.

And that’s a shame. Here’s why. All of us are hurting. All of us have our own stories of pain, and we’d be so much better off—all of us—if we’d just trust each other with a little honesty.

When I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2010, I was surprised by the number of guys, most of whom I had known for a long time, who would pull me aside and tell me their stories—when they were diagnosed, how they dealt with it, what treatment they chose, and how they were doing now. There was a whole fraternity of guys who had dealt with prostate cancer that had never told me before. Now, I was one of them, so they shared their stories.

Four years ago, when we moved my mother to Nashville after her diagnosis with Alzheimer’s, a number of my friends, and sometimes even total strangers, would walk up and tell me their stories. It was their father, their mother, their husband or wife—all of us were on the same journey. Some are a little ahead, some are a little behind, but we’re all on the same journey.

And sometimes, it helps to just know you’re not on this journey by yourself.

I’ve been at the church where I currently serve for almost 27 years. I’ve been here long enough to know a lot of people’s stories. A lot of people work hard to put on a good face and keep up illusions that everything is fine.

It’s not, and everyone knows it…but again, lying buys a little time.

But lying also keeps us apart.

Church should be the one place you don’t have to pretend. Church should be the one place where it’s OK to say, “I’m having a bad day.”

Church should be the place where you can sit next to a friend and let them know you’re with them and that they’re going to be OK, and not have to use a lot of words. It should be a place where you can simply say, “I’ve been there too…”

Sometimes, all you need is to know you’re not alone. Church should be the place where you know that.

But you and I know it isn’t that way. And it won’t be that way until someone changes it—until someone takes a chance by being honest. We don’t have to share everything. We don’t have to tell everything we know to everyone. But what if we just took a little step?

Like what?

Like finding a person who’s where you once were, taking their hand or touching their arm, and telling them, “I’ve been where you are. I got through it and so will you.”

Where do you start? How about on the pew where you sit? Or in the seat in front or behind you? You won’t have to look far to find hurting people. They’ll be sitting all around you.

We’ve been lying to each other long enough. Take a chance. Be honest with each other this Sunday. Well, maybe just a little bit honest. Let’s not try to do too much too fast.

It is common to say there are Realists and Utopians. Some say the two ends of the Christian and War spectrum are Just War and Pacifism. It’s not that simple as there are significant agreements between both sides and no Christian should want violence.

But it is worth examining what Just War is, whether most wars are “just,” and how Christians are to be involved in war.

We turn again to Eric Seibert’s new book, Disarming the Church.

What is Just War? What qualifies a conflict to be called a “just” war?

The origins of the just war theory are typically traced back to two early church fathers, namely, Ambrose (340-396 CE), who was the bishop of MiIan, and Augustine (354-430 CE), who was converted under the ministry of Ambrose and who became one of the most significant figures in church history. Although neither of these individuals believed it was appropriate for Christians to use violence in self-defense, both believed it was “the obligation of Christian love to defend and protect the innocent third party.” As they saw it, participation in war was not simply a matter of personal conviction. It was not just something each individual could develop an opinion about based on their own conscience. Rather, they believed it was the duty of Christians to rise up and fight when innocent people were being oppressed.

The basic premise of the theory is that some wars are just and some are not. For a war to be considered just, it must meet a set of predetermined criteria. If all of these criteria are met, just war theorists believe the war is just and Christians are free to participate in it. If even one of the criteria is unmet, the war is not considered just, and Christians have no right to engage in it. The basic criteria used to determine whether a war is just, as articulated by Walter Wink, are as follows:

1. 1. The war must have a just cause.
   2.  It must be waged by a legitimate authority.
   3. It must be formally declared.
   4. It must be fought with a peaceful intention.
   5. It must be a last resort.
   6. There must be reasonable hope of success.
   7. The means used must possess proportionality to the end sought.

Then, when the war is actually being waged, the following criteria also come into play and dictate certain rules of engagement.

1. Noncombatants must be given immunity.
2. Prisoners must be treated humanely.
3. International treaties and conventions must be honored.

If these criteria for going to war were rigorously applied, it would effectively limit warfare since the criteria are very stringent and few wars are able to satisfy them all.

Question: Is it ever morally right for a Christian in one nation to kill a Christian in another nation for the sake of one’s nation? Is this a case of rendering to Caesar what is God’s?

What does it mean to call Dietrich Bonhoeffer an apocalyptic ethicist or theologian? Philip Ziegler, in his new important study on apocalytpic theology, Militant Grace: The Apocalyptic Turn and the Future of Christian Theology, contends against the grain that Bonhoeffer (=DB) was an apocalyptic ethicist.

Is Bonhoeffer’s moral theology apocalyptic? This question is unsettled from L front to back. The texts that constitute Bonhoeffer’s Ethics are unsteady though well-worked fragments of the actual theological ethics he hoped to write. More unsettled still is the meaning of “apocalyptic,” whose popular and scholarly valences are as many as they are divergent and contested. Even if one could steady the question, prospects for a positive answer appear remote. Readers of the Ethics have not been led to the idea of “apocalyptic”: quite the opposite. One possible exception here is Larry Rasmussen, who does associate Bonhoeffer with apocalyptic eschatology. Yet even he considers the association forced: turning to apocalyptic means diverging from Bonhoeffer, who was “almost immunized” against such an eschatological perspective by Lutheran confessional and German academic traditions, says Rasmussen.” [SMcK: Criticism of Rasmussen was clear on this very point.]

Undeterred in going against the grain of DB scholarship, which is formidable, Ziegler says,

I want to argue that in draft upon draft of his Ethics manuscript, Bonhoeffer is definitely working out a theological ethic whose intent is to conform to the contours of Paul’s apocalyptic gospel.

He is undeterred because of the rise of apocalyptic Pauline theology that fits more with Barthianism (and some would say is Barthianism) and therefore with DB.

Recent reconsideration of Pauline apocalyptic by de Boer, Martyn, before them also J. Christiaan Beker, and others has discerned with renewed clarity, as we have seen, that in Paul’s gospel “revelation” (apocalypsis) denotes God’s redemptive invasion of the fallen order of things such that reality itself is decisively remade in the event. God’s advent in Christ utterly disrupts and displaces previous patterns of thought and action and gives rise to new ones that better comport with the reality of a world actively reconciled to God.

There is some slippery land to navigate here. For many, apocalyptic for Paul must fit into Jewish apocalyptic which is both a genre and a kind of theology, while for this new group it’s only marginally about Jewish apocalyptic, not about a genre, and more about how best to describe the revelation of God in Christ and its radical impacts on everything it touches (which is everything).

Apocalyptic, on this view, is more than a literary genre or a form of extreme ancient rhetoric; it is a mode of theological discourse fit to give voice to the radical ontological and epistemological consequences of the gospel, consequences intensely relevant to doing Christian ethics. The basic moral question that Paul’s apocalyptic gospel demands to be asked and answered is this: “What has paraenesis to do with apocalypsis?”

Which leads to his first question to establish his case: What is apocalyptic gospel? Here he opens the door to the common terms like radical, ontological, newness, incursions and disruptions.

Rather, it denotes an understanding of Christ as “the effective and definitive disclosure of God’s rectifying action” whereby the old “world or age is destroyed and brought to an end.” [It] is shorthand for a distinctive acknowledgment of the divine identity and eschatological importance of Jesus Christ. … Paul’s witness is that what takes place in Christ is the incursion of God’s power into the world with effect. Revelation is “no mere disclosure of previously hidden secrets, nor is it simply information about future events.” For revelation itself is an event that initiates, even as it discloses, a new state of affairs; not simply “a making known,” revelation is also “a making way for,” involving God’s conclusive “activity and movement, an invasion of the world below from heaven above.” The event in which God is made known as Savior, the coming of the Christ, is the very event that saves. We might say concisely: divine revelation is redemption. The gospel is not mere reportage but brings to bear “the power of God for salvation” (Rom. 1:16; 1 Cor. 1:18). Yet it is testimony: a telling of the “good news” that human captivity to sin is ended by God’s graciously powerful rescue.

A key then is his claim: revelation is redemption. The redemption in Christ is the revelation of God. There’s more, something altogether new is now reality:

If the identification of revelation and redemption in this way is a first hallmark of Paul’s apocalyptic discourse, a second is its claim that evangelical talk is talk of reality. The gospel speaks of what has taken place and of the state of affairs that God’s “incursion” or “invasion” for sinners’ sake has actually brought about.

Now we are alerted to the fact that those who hear its message are always already implicated in that of which it speaks. The logic of the apocalyptic gospel is thus never one of possibility. It does not take the form “if . . . then,” and it is not an offer to be realized only on its acceptance.

o, for example, Martyn restates the primary message of Galatians simply as ‘”God has done it!”  . . [And] there are two echoes: ‘You are to live it out!’ and ‘You are to live it out because God has done it and because God will do it!’ Such a gospel, as de Boer says, “has little or nothing to do with a decision human beings must make, but everything to do with a decision God has already made on their behalf,” which is identified with God’s enactment of salvation in Christ. Reconciliation is real, and so God’s gracious justification establishes our “true position in the world” without awaiting our permission.

Two observations here: (1) this means apart from human will one is saved, and thus there is an implicit universalism (not as potential but as reality), and (2) this theology cannot escape supersessionism or even colonizing of all other faiths. God has done it means God has saved the Torah observant who is non-messianic in faith through God’s revelation in Christ. If it is altogether new, then the old (Judaism) is now taken to a new level or, more consistently, undone and reconfigured in Christ.

These points aside, What about DB?

Ziegler contends two themes of apocalyptic are characteristic of DB’s ethics and theology, and Ziegler is right on DB’s characteristic themes (though I’m not sure I’d call his ethics apocalyptic so much as Christocentric, and there’s a difference in framing in these two terms):

What Bonhoeffer said of Discipleship is no less true of the Ethics that followed it. Here too justification shows itself to be central to the proceedings. Bonhoeffer distinctly expounds the doctrine through the interplay of three central categories: revelation, reconciliation, and reality. And these categories are freighted with the logic of Pauline apocalyptic. This can be discerned most sharply in the two claims that structure all of Bonhoeffer’s theological ethics: first, that revelation is reconciliation, and second, that the event of reconciliation in Jesus Christ is constitutive of reality.

The realism that Bonhoeffer sets over against all idealism in church and theology is thus apocalyptic. Since “revelation gives itself without precondition and is alone able to place one into reality,” he says, serious theological ethics, no less than dogmatics, must struggle for forms of thinking appropriate to God’s apocalypse in Christ Jesus. The ages having turned, Christians are alert to the fact that they stand together with all others in a world whose reality has been both taken apart and put back together with effect by God’s redemptive triumph through the cross: it has become Christ-reality.

As  Christians know, the Bible is an important book. It is through Scripture that we learn about the mission of God in his people Israel. We realize that the Old Testament sets the stage for the incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension of Jesus. Jesus is God’s messiah, the faithful Israelite, king from the line of David. We should read it, study it, and be immersed in the story.

I’ve made it a habit for eight or so years now to listen to the Bible read aloud on my morning commute (streaming through the BibleGateway App works well). It is an enlightening practice. This week I’m listening to Leviticus and Numbers. Although I’ve known the major stories most of my life, there is much, especially in the Old Testament, that is generally ignored in our churches. It simply doesn’t seem relevant today. There are passages the purpose of which seems (to put it mildly) obscure.  The laws in the Pentateuch, Exodus 25 to 31, 35 to 40; pretty much all of Leviticus (there is one narrative concerning the dedication of Aaron and the death of two of his sons),  Numbers 5, 6, 19, (the census is also rather boring) and several passages in Deuteronomy are among the passages often overlooked in our churches. (The image is of Moses ca. 840 AD receiving the law and reading the law: source)

Some of the laws, we agree, still apply today. The ten commandments (a.k.a. ten words) for example.

Some seem to apply only to another time long past. The laws concerning sacrifices and festivals fall into this category.

Some offend our modern sensibilities. Why should an accused wife be tested with bitter water?

Others simply seem bizarre. Why all the concern with moldy walls?

For some there is no evidence they were ever obeyed. The year of Jubilee and the freeing of slaves fall into this category.

John Walton and D. Brent Sandy (The Lost World of Scripture) suggest that the primary purpose of the Old Testament legal literature was revelation. The revelation of God and his character. The establishment of a stable, just, and merciful people of God. [Square brackets delineate my clarifications in the following quotes.]

[T]he general literary context for the legal collections of the Pentateuch is related to the covenant. In this case the illocution [the intent of the words] becomes stipulations of a covenant agreement rather than legislation of a society. (p. 220)

The consequence of the laws in the Pentateuch is to shape and form a people who will be holy.

The literature of the Pentateuch, with its covenantal context, carries the perlocution [anticipated response by the audience] for Israel that they should adhere to the torah so that they might remain in covenant relationship with Yahweh and that he might remain dwelling in their midst. … [T]hey will be keeping the covenant to the extent that they are holy as Yahweh their God is holy. The ultimate perlocution is not justice or obedience, those are only stops on the way to holiness.  (p. 220)

How then should Christians understand and keep the laws?

The legal sayings in the Pentateuch revealed the character of Yahweh, and the character of Yahweh has not changed. Believers still have the obligation to reflect that character as they seek to be holy as God is holy. Jesus, as God in the flesh, embodied the character of God, and so revelation through the legal sayings is fulfilled in him, and through him we see how we are to respond to those legal sayings. The authority of the legal sayings is found in the revelation they offer of the character of God and the way they serve as guides to holiness. None of the locutions [words] (“jot and tittle”) will pass away until the ultimate illocutions are fulfilled in the outworking of the ultimately intended perlocutions. (p. 221)

Locutions, illocutions, perlocutions. This jargon can get in the way of understanding, even if it lends a necessary precision to the argument.  The exact laws can change because the context changes and the way holiness works out can change with the context. There is some evidence that laws do change in the Old Testament, even in the Pentateuch itself.  John and Brent don’t mention any specific examples, but one such example concerns the Passover lamb. I’ve heard this raised by skeptics to impeach the “inerrancy” of Scripture.  Concerning the Passover lamb,  Ex. 12:9 says  “Do not eat the meat raw or bashal it in water, but roast it over a fire.” while Deuteronomy 16:7 says “Bashal it and eat it at the place the Lord your God will choose.” Our English translations cover this using different words to translate bashal in the two places. This could be right – but it is also possible that some change in context affected the practice. It doesn’t really matter as long as the ultimate intended result – to be holy as the Lord is holy – remains.

John and Brent summarize:

[The legal sayings] do not carry authority for us primarily in the legislative realm (although they have implications for that realm) or in the covenantal realm (although they serve a purpose there); they carry authority as God’s revelation of his character and his holiness. Christians remain responsible for holiness as they seek to be like God as revealed in Christ, and the legal sayings retain their usefulness in giving information about what that will look like. (p. 222)

Moving beyond John, Brent, and The Lost World of Scripture to some thoughts of my own. Jesus summarized the law for us as recorded in Matthew 22. Jesus was asked “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Considering the Old Testament laws then, a good place to stop, perhaps, is with Deuteronomy 10:12-22 where the focus is on God and the revelation of his character.

And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, to love him, to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the Lord’s commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good?

To the Lord your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. Yet the Lord set his affection on your ancestors and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations—as it is today. Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer. For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who shows no partiality and accepts no bribes. He defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt. Fear the Lord your God and serve him. Hold fast to him and take your oaths in his name. He is the one you praise; he is your God, who performed for you those great and awesome wonders you saw with your own eyes. Your ancestors who went down into Egypt were seventy in all, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars in the sky. (Deut. 10:12-22)

The theme concerning foreigners is not limited to Deuteronomy; Exodus 22:21-24, 23:9 and Leviticus 19:33-34 repeat the command. We are still called to love those who are foreigners as well as the fatherless and widows. We are called to this because God shows no partiality and accepts no bribes and loves the foreigner. There is nothing in the New Testament that counteracts this command for us in the church. If anything the command to love our neighbors is strengthened. We are, after all, foreigners and exiles ourselves (1 Pt. 2:11)

Love God, Love others. Especially, but not only, fellow Christians … those who call upon the name of the Lord.

If you wish to contact me directly you may do so at rjs4mail[at]att.net

If interested you can subscribe to a full text feed of my posts at Musings on Science and Theology.

July 4th celebrates America’s freedom, though the USA and England are no longer at war. King George — all I can think of are the hilarious “You’ll be back, wait and see” episodes in Hamilton — stood down, ahem, and we went our separate ways. Not so separate, actually, but independents with very similar approaches to life.

To see what the Brits thought of our “rebellion,” here’s a wonderful article. It’s made more wonderful because the letters are housed at the UNotts.

July 4th celebrates freedom, and our freedom was not simply about the “rights of man/humans” but instead freedom from the impositions of a king and a return to what was common law prior to King George (and others of his ilk). It was not the creation of something previously unknown, it was not an experiment in ideology, but rather the return to the wisdom of the ages.

What, then, is the freedom we value?

… political communities, democracies included, are held together by something stronger than politics. There is a ‘first person plural’, a pre-political loyalty, which causes neighbours who voted in opposing ways to treat each other as fellow citizens, for whom the government is not mine or yours’ but ‘ours’, whether or not we approve of it.

Many are the flaws in this system of government, but one feature gives it an insuperable advantage over all others so far devised, which is that it makes those who exercise power accountable to those who did not vote for them. This kind of accountability is possible only if the electorate is bound together as a we’. Only if this we’ is in place can the people trust the politicians to look after their interests. Trust enables people to cooperate in ensuring that the legislative process is reversible, when it makes a mistake; it enables them to accept decisions that run counter to their individual desires and which express views of the nation and its future that they do not share. It is to the maintenance of that kind of trust that conservative politics has always been directed.

Of course conservatives value liberty, and acknowledge the right of individuals to choose their own way to happiness. But they also believe that the human individual is an artefact, brought into being by the customs and institutions of society, and that true liberty arises only from a culture of obedience, in which law and community are shared assets maintained for the common good.

Hence it was in the name of their social and political inheritance that conservatives fixed their banner to the mast of freedom. What they meant was this kind of freedom, the freedom enshrined in our legal and political inheritance, and in the free associations through which our societies renew their legacy of trust. So understood freedom is the outcome of multiple agreements over time, under an overarching rule of law.

Liberals are beneficiaries of this belonging. But they believe in the right of individuals and communities to define their identity for themselves, regardless of existing norms and customs. They do not see liberty as a shared culture, based in tacit conventions.

Roger Scruton, Conservatism

I have long felt that the most challenging passage in Scripture is found at the beginning of Genesis 6.

When human beings began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown. (v. 1-4)

The most challenging, that is, to the insistence that Genesis 1-11 is intended as a narrative of past history.

Tremper Longman and John Walton admit that this is a tough passage to interpret. In his commentary on Genesis John calls it “one of the thorniest in Old Testament interpretation.” Who are the “sons of God” and why were their relationships with the daughters of humans wrong? (And as an aside, how did the Nephilim survive the flood?)  Many interpretations have been advanced over the years and both Tremper and John outline some of these in their commentaries on Genesis (NIVAC: Genesis; The Story of God: Genesis). Tremper leans toward the idea that the sons of God are angels while John  seems to favor the connection with heroic tyrant kings of old. Another possibility raised is that the sons of God are descendants of Seth and the daughters of humans were from the line of Cain.  In The Lost World of the Flood John and Tremper suggest some connections with Mesopotamian texts and stories and admit that we simply cannot know for sure the background of this particular passage.

Frankly, if we insist that Genesis 2-11 is historical narrative giving us a snapshot of deep time (even if using rhetorical devices and figurative language as many commenters including John and Tremper agree) … this passage is a real problem. I find none of the possibilities terribly convincing. They have the feel of tortured attempts to make Scripture fit a mold we have established. John and Tremper remain committed to a historical narrative of sorts, with this passage referring to some kind of actual event. My personal opinion is that this passage is one of the clearest indications we have that Genesis 2-11 uses concepts from the ancient world to set the stage for the election of Abraham and Israel. There is important truth in Genesis 2-11, but God’s revealed truth is found in the use to which the narrator (author of Genesis) puts the stories not in any historical roots.

John and Tremper agree that the use the narrator is making of the story is of primary importance. The world is a mess. Instead of order it is characterized by increasing disorder devolving to chaos.

The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” (v. 5-7)

The entire human experiment had failed – or so it seems. “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.” (v. 8) And in the flood we have a do-over, a restart. With chaos unleashed to clear the stage for a re-creation and re-established order.

But destruction and re-creation did not establish order. Before we know it humans have again strayed. They start to build a tower to establish a relationship with God on their terms and to make a name for themselves. The story is ancient – it uses, John and Tremper note, appropriate technologies for something like 3250 to 2750 BC. The tower is a ziggurat – a structure in ancient Mesopotamia designed to allow the gods to come down to earth. The people are making an irreverent attempt to take control, bring God to them, and make a name for themselves.

Genesis 11:1-9 gives an account of the builders taking initiative to reinitiate sacred space through the abiding presence of God in a temple (associated with the ziggurat), to bring God down, and thereby regain a privilege lost in Eden. (p. 137)

And this story is a fitting conclusion to the primordial period setting the stage for Abraham.

Tower builders conceived of sacred space as focused on themselves (making a name for themselves) – a repetition of the Garden of Eden scenario – thus forming an inclusio to Genesis 1-11. The motivation of the building project was for order determined by them and built around themselves. (pp. 137-138)

The confusion of tongues and scattering of people is a necessary prologue to election. The solution starts with Abraham and then with the people of Israel.

Genesis 11 is failed human initiative to reestablish God’s presence; Genesis 12 is God’s initiative that will lead to relationship in his presence and sacred space. (p. 139)

The stage is set.

The idea that all diversity in human language and dispersal from the Fertile Crescent occurred a mere 4000 years ago is hard to defend. There is so much evidence to the contrary.  But perhaps the prologue to the flood, with the sons of God and the Nephilim, tells us that we should not consider Genesis 2-11 as historical narrative and this includes elements of the Babel story. It is pointless to worry too much about historical roots. Instead we should look for truth in the use the narrator makes of the stories. (Again, John and Tremper affirm some kind of historical root – the opinion here is my suggestion, not theirs.)

What do you make of the sons of God and the Nephilim?

What does this passage tell us about the nature of the primeval history in Genesis 2-11?

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What does it mean to confess the Final Judgment in our creeds and catechisms? The most common approach to final judgment is about “Will I get to heaven?” That is, eternal life beyond the judgment is about personal salvation, and for the same common approach that decision is now so that any actual awe about that final judgment, an awe and fear that surely is present in European art, has evaporated. Its song is “When the Roll is Called Upon Yonder.”

Question 52 of the Heidelberg Catechism asks, “What comfort does the return of Christ ‘to judge the living and the dead’ give you?” and answers: “That in all affliction and persecution I may await with head held high the Judge from heaven who has already submitted himself to the judgment of God for me and has removed all the curse from me; that he will cast all his enemies and mine into everlasting condemnation, but he shall take me, together with all his elect, to himself into heavenly joy and glory.”

Ziegler develops a few themes from this catechism that shift the substance from me and my salvation forever and ever to God’s liberating work for the cosmos. We are looking at Philip Ziegler, Militant Grace: The Apocalyptic Turn and the Future of Christian Theology.

Ziegler begins with Kant’s approach to morality, immortality and the existence of God before turning to Jüngel and Moltmann. So here’s what he says about Kant, beginning with some classical summarizing of abstractions:

In short, a happy conspiracy of the supreme power of moral order and the infinite extension of the time of our autonomous moral agency renders intelligible the moral world and our lives within it.

Immortality is needed for the good life to be good and for that we need God.

The solution to the problem of perfecting the autonomous moral will in the rational world that the divine Legislator oversees is simply that, as a matter of practical necessity, we believe there will always be more time.

Ziegler contends this is inadequate:

Adjudged theologically, Kant’s moral religious vision is soteriologically anemic: the self-saving subject is afforded neither aid nor grace but only authorized to “believe in” there being space to continue to struggle on ad infinitum. Here we are not so much saved by the bell as saved by the fact that the bell never rings to call time on our moral endeavors to realize the highest good and marry justice with happiness.

For Kant, the fragile finitude of the moral will is the problem to which immortality (as indefinite extension) provides a rational solution. Theology acknowledges that both the problem and its solution are far more radical.

It’s bigger and better and broader and deeper than Kant’s postulates:

Approached evangelically, eternal life stands as the crowning gift of the unimaginably gracious advent and realization of ultimate divine justice upon and for us, rather than being merely structurally instrumental to its human pursuit. Pace Kant, the determinative movement really is and can only be “from grace to virtue.” If this is so, then the primary theological task is to understand the nature and role of saving divine judgment as the necessary and creative ground and source of eternal life.

By thinking through the links between cross, resurrection, justification, and final judgment, these writers [Jüngel, Moltmann] try to attain to an understanding of eternal life adequate to the gospel.

The last judgment is a judgment unto life—eternal life—not least because it is the terminal defeat of death’s annihilating enmity.

It is also too common to see the last judgment so much about personal salvation that the great themes of the Bible — or Lord of the Rings or Star Wars — are sublimated or erased. What about new creation? These theologians let the last judgment serve themes of new creation. When it does, judgment becomes the act whereby God eliminates evil and establishes goodness, and when it does it is fundamentally revealed in the cross and resurrection. They anticipate the final judgment in the here and now.

Positively, Moltmann suggests that a properly Christian account of the last judgment must begin by recollecting both the concrete identity of the Judge and the scriptural concept of creative divine righteousness. It is Christ, who bears the sins of the world so that “grace also might reign through righteousness to eternal life” (Rom. 5:21 RSV), to whom humanity goes for final judgment; it is his “judgment seat” and his “day” (2 Cor. 5:10, Phil. 1:6). And he will be manifest then as the One he is: not a “divine avenger” or “final retaliator” but rather the “crucified and risen victor over sin, death and hell. As such, Christ will render the selfsame divine righteousness that has already erupted proleptically in his death and resurrection: a righteousness that creates justice, reconciles all things to God, and rectifies the distorted field of sinful relations.19 This is a creative, salutary, and healing righteousness—the work of the cross—that brings about liberation on all sides: justice and restoration for victims, transformation and rectification for perpetrators, genuine creaturely freedom for all.20 It is an act of love that “burns away everything which is contrary to God so that the person whom God has created will be saved.” This is judgment that one might actually implore and await with “head held high.”

Jüngel’s theories overlap with Moltmann’s and need not be detailed so I will move to the second major theme: not only is the final judgment a liberation for but it is a liberation from as well. From death and the enemies and evil and sin/Sin.

Salvation is an apocalyptic act of God, an incursion into our world to liberate it.

The theme is even more sharply present in Jüngel’s theology. Evangelical faith obediently trusts that “the God who in participating in man’s death gains victory over death” has done so for me.54 As Jüngel sees it, the antithesis between God and death structures the gospel itself. “God and death are opponents,” he writes, “they are enemies. The style in which God deals with death, and in which death also has to deal with God, is the history which faith tells about Jesus Christ.” As the annihilating power and consequence of sin, death is aggressively active, “repudiat[ing] life by hopelessly alienating men and God from one another.” Salvation is the business of dealing with death, as it were. For Jüngel, the death of Christ accomplishes the death of death: in the identity of the living God with the dead man Jesus, God meets death, taking its enmity and contradiction into himself in virtue of his own divine life. Death is thus overcome in and by the outworking of the eternal vitality of God’s love. When this victory is consummated, “even then” in the final judgment, human beings will be given to know that it is by grace that they are “undying, or better . . . plucked from out of death.”

The Devil’s Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism

Michael McClymond is Professor of Modern Christianity at Saint Louis University. He has published widely on Jonathan Edwards. His book, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards (co-authored with Gerald McDermott) was chosen by Christianity Today in 2012 as the best book in theology/ethics.

The following interview revolves around McClymond’s just released (June 2018), two-volume (!) magnum opus, The Devil’s Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism

This interview was conducted by David George Moore. Dave blogs at www.twocities.org and some of his video can be seen at www.mooreengaging.com.

Moore: I did a recent interview with Alvin Plantinga on potential ties between aspects of his work and Barth. http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jesuscreed/2015/10/10/plantinga-and-barth-a-marriage-made-in-heaven/ Would you respond to his response to my question here? Moore: I am a graduate of both Dallas Seminary and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.  We read a bit about Barth (mainly to critique him), but not really much by him. There is much suspicion about Barth in American evangelical circles.  To what degree is that concern legitimate? Plantinga: I realize that in evangelical circles (including in my own background) there has been a lot of criticism of Barth (for example, holding a somewhat nonstandard view of divine revelation).  I think this response to Barth is unfortunate.  Maybe he is wrong on some points, deviates from standard evangelicalism in some areas; but he is nonetheless a serious and influential Christian theologian who proclaims the main lines of the gospel.  The energy that some evangelicals have expended criticizing Barth could much better have been expended in, for example, defending the main lines of the Christian gospel against the various attacks leveled at it ever since the Enlightenment.  We have real enemies out there; we don’t need to attack each other.

McClymond: Karl Barth himself had quite a lot to say (consult the Gesammelte Schriften!), and of the making of many books (on Barth) there is no end. My 100+ pp. discussion of Barth in The Devil’s Redemption is a focused response to just one aspect of Barth’s theology. It’s hard to improve on Flannery O’Connor’s comment: “I like old Barth. He throws the furniture around.” There is always more to learn about Barth and more to learn from Barth. When I set out to write The Devil’s Redemption, I would essentially have agreed with Plantinga as cited above. Yet the longer I worked on the universalism project, the more I began to see the subtle, pervasive, and damaging effects of Barth’s doctrine of universal election, which had I believe a distorting influence over academic Christian theology since the 1950s.

Prior to Barth’s elaboration of universal election in Church Dogmatics II/2 (German, 1942), Barth repeatedly insisted on God’s freedom and independence vis-à-vis the created world. God was defined as “the God-who-is.” From Church Dogmatics II/2 onward, and in the later volumes, there is a tendency toward redefining God as “the God-who-is-for-us.” In other words, God’s grace was defined increasingly not as flowing from God’s free decision but simply as who God inherently is. (Like most issues in Barth, things get complicated, and yet God’s self-constituting choice to be the God-who-is-for-us-in-Christ transforms a divine decision into an ontology. On my view, one ends up with some of the same problems in construing salvation ontologically in Barth that one also finds in Western esotericism, as well as in Solovyev and Bulgakov.)

After Barth’s passing in 1968, the tendency to posit a conjoint God-plus-world system accelerated in the theologies of Jürgen Moltmann and the later kenotic-relational theologians. One ends up then with a God “essentially” related to the world—i.e., as if God and the world were “codetermining” or “codependent.” This perspective is contrary to the fundamental biblical and creedal principle of creation from nothing. Some recent theologies have such a disempowered God that in my book I use the admittedly incongruous analogy of a terrified schoolteacher, confronted by rowdy students in the classroom, who do drugs in the back of the room, start fights, and ignite a fire in the wastebasket. Let us imagine that the school in question allows the teacher to give student rebels a fifteen- or thirty-minute time-out, but not to expel any students. All students are “essentially” related to the teacher and the school. My point is that the metaphysical assumptions of contemporary kenotic-relational theologians do not permit God to exercise judgment over creatures.   We would do well to cleanse our minds of all such unworthy conceptions regarding God. God is self-defining. God is God. God is. And as the Hebrew prophets and psalmists tell us: God is judge.

The great irony of Barth’s half-century theological career (1918-1968) is that he more than anyone else in his early days summoned the church and its thinkers to let God be God. Yet Barth’s fateful decision to embrace the doctrine of universal election marked a major turn—as Bruce McCormack of Princeton Seminary convincingly argues (though McCormack evaluates this differently than I do). On my view, this move opened the door to the later and more radical departures from a biblical picture of God.

And what should one say regarding the idea of universal election? Did the God of the Old Testament choose the Egyptians, the Chinese, and the Incas as his “chosen peoples” alongside the Hebrews? Barth’s relentless assertions and reassertions of universal election in Church Dogmatics II/2 cannot conceal the exegetically unsoundness of his claims. Biblical election begins with God’s particular choice of Abraham and Abraham’s descendants, and it continues into the New Testament with a particular people, i.e., the church. There are of course many questions regarding so-called inclusivism, and those who have lived outside of the visible community of faith. Yet the idea of universal election stands in obvious contradiction to the whole thrust of the biblical teaching on this topic.   On this point, the Emperor of Basel is naked, and so I feel like I’m the little boy in the fairy tale who says out loud what should be obvious to all. It shouldn’t have been necessary for me to have taken so much space in my book to argue that “Barth is wrong on election.” At least a few biblical scholars, whom I cite, have been willing to say so. I am willing to say it in the book because theologically it needs to be said and to said clearly: “Barth is wrong on election.”

Regarding Barth I would say this: the vast mansion that is Barth’s theology has many beautiful chambers, rivaling the most beautiful rooms furnished by earlier thinkers. I would not want to move in and to occupy this mansion, but I’m happy to visit it every now and then and perhaps spend a weekend there.

Moore: Other than Origen who seems to get all the press, weren’t there other Church Fathers like Gregory of Nyssa who held to universalism?

McClymond: Gregory of Nyssa (as noted above) was an early Christian universalist. In my book I offer an analysis and tabulation of early church opinions on eschatology—based on part on the meticulous work of Father Brian Daley, SJ, of Notre Dame University, who is a reliable guide. I won’t recount a long list of names here (see The Devil’s Redemption, pp. 1097-1099), but I will cite the overall statistics. Of the authors Daley surveys in his comprehensive book, The Hope of the Early Church (1991; 2^nd ed. 2002) there are sixty-eight authors who clearly affirm the eternal punishment of the wicked, while seven authors are unclear, two authors who teach something like eschatological pantheism (i.e., all creatures dissolve into the Creator), and perhaps four authors who appear to be universalists after the fashion of Origen. The support for universalism is paltry compared with the opposition to it. The Fifth Ecumenical Council denounced Origen by name in its formal proceedings, and this condemnation almost certainly had to do not only with Origen’s idea of preexistent souls, but his idea of final salvation for all.

Contrary to what one reads online at certain pro-universalist websites, there is really not much of a “universalist tradition” in ancient Christianity. The non-universalist authors come from each of the centuries surveyed, from both the Christian East and the Christian West, and they wrote in Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syriac, and Armenian. From Daley’s analysis, one can see the distortion involved in claiming a “universalist East” versus an “infernalist West.” The opposition of the Coptic, Syriac, and Armenian authors to Origenism is little known and yet noteworthy. It weighs against the widely diffused though erroneous idea that the doctrine of eternal punishment was somehow unique to the Latin West—or perhaps even largely an invention of Augustine during the early fifth century. Those who say this seem not to have read the so-called Apostolic Fathers of the second century, who clearly wrote of heaven and hell and a two-fold final outcome for humankind. The early church scholar Ilaria Ramelli has tried to make a case for universalism as a kind of common tradition in the early centuries, and yet she can only make this argument only by largely ignoring the sixty-eight authors noted above. It is also striking that there are no unambiguous cases of universalist teaching prior to Origen among the acknowledged church teachers (i.e., not the teachers of gnosis). If, as Ramelli suggests, universalism had been understood as the correct biblical teaching on eschatology during the first century, then one might have expected the second-century Christian authors to transmit this teaching. And they do not.

Moore: What kind of impact both on the scholarly community and the church would you like to see from The Devil’s Redemption?

McClymond: Books are like children that grow up and leave one’s house, and then have an independent life of their own. One may be surprised, delighted, or appalled at what happens along the way, but the outcome is beyond one’s control. The Devil’s Redemption is written for the entire global church—Catholic, Orthodox, mainline Protestant, Evangelical, Nondenominational, and Pentecostal-Charismatic. There is something in it for self-described Christians of every category and subgroup. So my hope is that the different subgroups of professing Christians would take notice of the sections that are most pertinent to themselves.

I hope that those who read my work will see a need for Christian theological recalibration in light of my argument, and especially pertaining to the doctrine of God (see pp. 1000-04, 1013-24). Another broad point concerns the impact of gnostic-kabbalist-esoteric ideas on academic theology as well as popular Christian literature (e.g., Carlton Pearson, John Crowder, Francois du Toit). If humanity during the twenty-first century undergoes religious as well as economic globalization, then I anticipate that notions of a divine humanity or human-divine selfhood will become increasingly popular, and that forms of gnosis or esotericism will be on the rise. Some today are calling for a unification of historical religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism), and such a move would almost certainly involve some kind of neo-gnosticism. My historical analysis and theological critique of gnosis, kabbalah, and esotericism might serve as a help to understanding future as well as past developments.

Regarding the church’s evangelistic challenge: Christ’s followers will not be faithful to Christ unless they are willing to speak not only of the benefits of being a Christian, but also of the consequences of deliberately rejecting Christ. In the Sermon on the Mount (Mt 7:24-27), Jesus didn’t say, “look, there were two builders, and both of them turned out okay, but one of them had a stronger foundation.” Instead Jesus said: “If you build your house on sand, the outcome will be devastation.” The Sermon on the Mount was thus not “good advice for successful living,” but a wake-up call and a warning. The longer I have spent in studying and meditating on the gospels, the more the urgency of Jesus’ sayings and parables has come through to me. God’s spokesperson must be willing to give warning as well as consolation. The Lord commissioned Ezekiel: “Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the house of Israel. Whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me” (Ezk. 3:17). Then Ezekiel received the solemn warning that if “you have not warned him, he shall die for his sin, and…his blood I will require at your hand.” As any reader of the Book of Jeremiah will know, the false prophets of Judah were known for giving false consolation: “They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying, ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace” (Jer. 6:14; 8:11). May the church be kept from false prophets!

Faithful preaching of God’s Word today, I believe, has to convey the boldness and urgency of Jesus’ message, and later manifested in the classic evangelical preaching of Whitefield, Wesley, Edwards, Finney, and Spurgeon. One can differentiate these figures theologically, but it may be more important for us today to realize how alike they were as bold preachers of the gospel. One Greek word for gospel preaching is parrhesia, variously translated as “freedom,” “boldness,” “candor,” “openness.” The final verses of Matthew 5 tell us that Jesus spoke boldly: “The crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes” (Mt. 7:28-29).

The point is not to replace a message of love with an overemphasis on judgment. Love has priority. The scripture does not say that “God so hated sin that he sent his Son,” but rather that “God so loved the world…” The Father’s actuating motive is love. To highlight the centrality of God’s love it is important above all to preach the cross of Christ. Here we find revealed God’s holy offense at sin and God’s loving initiative to bring salvation. Last year, when I met with a group of about fifty local ministers, I asked them to come up with a pastoral response to contemporary Christian universalism. Collectively they arrived at the same point that I did—i.e., the necessity of preaching Christ’s cross and his atoning death. I have found John Stott’s book, The Cross of Christ, to be an excellent resource for preachers, and I would recommend it to Christian ministers and teachers who might want to focus on the cross but not know how to do so. Stott’s multi-dimensional perspective on the cross serves as a corrective to deficient understandings of God’s love and God’s holiness.
 

Communication is a deliberate action with a specific purpose or intent.  Human communication generally uses words and sentences and it uses these to convey an idea and to elicit a response. John Walton and Brent Sandy, The Lost World of Scripture, make the point that intent is part and parcel of the authority of a communication. It is the integral and essential carrier of authority.

When we affirm the authority (or inerrancy or infallibility) of Scripture we are (or should be) focused on the intent of the communication. It is the intended message that is inspired and carries the authority of God. We read and study Scripture to understand the intended message. We are not being faithful to Scripture by forcing it to fit into a mold of our modern expectations.

When we neglect the goals of ancient literature and instead use the literature to accomplish our own goals, we engage in a cultural imposition that subordinates what the ancients considered the reality and values of their literature … to what we moderns consider to be a higher pursuit. We will never achieve a sound understanding of the literature, let alone a legitimate understanding of biblical authority, if we are always judging its suitability for reaching our modern objectives. We need to start approaching the literature as their literature rather than simply transforming it into our literature from which we draw theological inferences. (p. 201)

What does this mean for the narrative literature in the Old Testament? The stories are generally event oriented and the authors intend to convey both the events and the meaning of the events in God’s relationship with his people. This is theological history not “straight” history. The ancient Israelite authors had nothing like our modern discipline of history. “The authors and compilers do not edit events with the same goals or methods that we use.” (p. 211)  Abraham, Moses and David are not merely literary figures in a historical novel of some sort … but neither are the reports of the events surrounding their lives modern historical transcripts. These are stories in community memory, told and retold and recorded, for a purpose. They are told and recorded according to perfectly appropriate conventions of the ancient world.

Of course we do have to consider which portions of Scripture are, in fact, event oriented. Certainly Genesis 12-50, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, portions of Jeremiah and Isaiah fall into this category.  (This is not intended to be an exhaustive list – just the books that came to mind readily).  Other books sometimes considered “historical” were probably never intended to be event oriented. Job is not – its genre is something different. Walton makes this point in his commentary on Job. Nor is Song of Songs event oriented, or, I would claim, Jonah (although Walton may disagree with me here).

In much of the narrative event-oriented literature in the Old Testament, the focus is on the outcomes of the events rather than the details of the events themselves.

Some consequences of this (selected and paraphrased from pp. 213-214):

We are misguided when we focus primarily on defending a modern definition of historicity and the critics are equally misguided when they use failure to meet a modern definition of historicity to undermine Scripture. Both fail to appreciate the ancient conventions at work in the literature.

The authority of Scripture is in the intended message. (Walton and Sandy use the term illocution.) The authoritative message comes through the ideas, values, and conventions of the communicator.

Ancient communicators did not falsify events or people, but neither did they share or abide by our conventions of reportage or testimony.

It was common and acceptable for some events (like the political and military achievements of Ahab) to focus on covenant failures or in other cases on covenant faithfulness. The intent is to accent the truths that are the most significant.

Exact numbers, populations, casualties, flocks and herds, precise geography, are not of great importance because the stories convey truth using ancient conventions where these elements could be used for rhetorical impact or shaped to enhance the understanding of the original audience.  “The convention of reportage and the rhetoric associated with the genre may not correspond to our own” but the major characters in the event-oriented narrative literature were real.

What does it mean to say that a Biblical story is “true.”

How do these stories convey the intended message?

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