In spite of the claim of many, the doctrine of the Trinity — so Kevin Giles, in The Rise and Fall of the Complementarian Doctrine of the Trinity — cannot be derived simply from the Bible, and this he contends is why the complementarian theologians who formed their own Trinity theology got into troubles.

It’s the issue of how one does theology.

When Christian Smith wrote The Bible Made Impossible it seemed to me then, and even more now, that he could have focused more on Grudem as the paradigmatic example of how so many do theology today. What Smith didn’t do is done more by Giles, and here’s what he says:

He says “it is any study that answers the question, ‘What does the Bible teach us today about any given topic’ … Because, for Grudem, the Bible gives the content of the great doctrines, he excludes on principle the idea that doctrines develop and take shape in history, and that there can be objective advances on what is said explicitly in Scripture in the “doing” of theology. … Grudem says he works with just two presuppositions: “(1) that the Bible is true and that it is, in fact, our only absolute standard of truth; (2) that the God who is spoken of in the Bible exists, and he is who the Bible says he is: the creator of heaven and earth and all things in them.”

The possibility that other presuppositions may impinge on his interpretation and systematizing of Scripture and on his theological conclusions is not seen as a possibility. The implication is that if you affirm that the Bible is inerrant you will be able to give inerrant accounts of any doctrine by appeal to the Bible alone. Our fallen nature will be saved from itself. 68

Giles presses his point hard:

It is this understanding of theology that has undone complementarian theology. Following this methodology, complementarian theologians led the evangelical world into heresy on the foundational doctrine of the Christian faith, the Trinity. It is heart-warming for evangelicals to be told that what is being taught comes directly from the Bible and to denigrate creeds and confessions and ignore the contribution of the theologians, but in the end it is disastrous. It results in evangelicals becoming a sect of Christianity with their own distinctive doctrines.

An acerbic evaluation of the claim that “my theology comes directly from Scripture” is given by the great Reformed theologian Abraham Kuyper. He calls such assertions “unscientific,” “grotesque,” and “utterly objectionable.’ 69

Giles knows that theology as we know it and do believe it, that is the Trinity, cannot be found simply by sticking to the Bible. He knows we do theology by Scripture, by tradition, and by reason. So what is it?

Let me make crystal clear what I am arguing. I am putting the case that theology, specifically evangelical theology, is always more than just systematizing what is explicitly said in Scripture. Rather, it develops in history, almost always in conflict and debate, and almost always what in Scripture answers the question before the church at any particular time is at first unclear and disputed. Coming to a common mind as to what in Scripture answers the question before the church usually involves giving more weight to some comments in Scripture than others and often demands making inferences or deductions, on the basis of what is said in Scripture because the Scriptures do not directly address the matter in dispute. In this communal exercise focused on the Scriptures, what the ancient church decided these Scriptures are saying is invaluable to us, and must not be ignored if codified in creeds and confessions. In this complex, interactive, and communal enterprise, the theologians with the best minds make the biggest and most important contribution. I am also arguing that in this historical and organic process objective advances are made in theological articulation that go beyond anything explicitly said in Scripture, and yet the Christian community comes to agree that what is concluded captures the trajectory that Scripture itself implies. 79-80

The mistake of complementarian hypotheses about the Trinity made was to ignore deep study of the church’s tradition on the Trinity.

Chapter 14 of Alister McGrath’s book A Fine-Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology deals with the question of teleology and directionality in evolution.

The neo-Darwinian paradigm, (that popularized by Richard Dawkins for example), is that evolution is an undirected, highly contingent, random process. Evolution simply operates to preserve the replication of genetic information.

McGrath quotes Stephen Jay Gould:

“We are the accidental result of an unplanned process…. the fragile result of an enormous concatenation of improbabilities, not the predictable product of any definite process.” … The influence of contingency is such that what happens is the product of happenstance. “Alter any early event, ever so slightly and without apparent importance at the time and evolution cascades into a radically different channel.” (p. 189-190)

This description of the process poses serious problems for reconciliation with a Christian view of creation. But it is not at all clear that Gould or Dawkins are correct in this regard. The evolutionary process need not be highly contingent nor intrinsically unpredictable. In fact there appears to be a remarkably robustness in the outcome – a distinct directionality to the process. This does not deny the basic facts of evolution – as an explanatory tool evolution is essentially proven. Yet the fitness landscape that governs the process may place tight constraints on key features of the outcome. There are only so many ways to make an eye, or to harvest solar energy. Similar themes recur, … independently…constrained by physics, chemistry, and biology; constrained by the nature of the universe.

Simon Conway Morris, a Cambridge paleobiologist,suggests that there is a convergence in the evolutionary process. Conway Morris has a number of lectures available online at the Faraday Institute (Search on Morris). He has published several books including Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe and The Runes of Evolution: How the Universe became Self-Aware. He is also the editor of the book The Deep Structure of Biology: Is Convergence Sufficiently Ubiquitous to Give a Directional Signal.

McGrath summarizes his argument as follows:

Conway Morris’s case is based on a remarkable compilation of examples of convergent evolution, in which two or more lineages have independently evolved from similar structures and functions. Conway Morris’s examples range from the aerodynamics of hovering moths and hummingbirds to the use of silk by spiders and some insects to capture prey. “The details of convergence actually reveal many of the twists and turns of evolutionary change as different starting points are transformed towards common solutions via a variety of well-trodden paths.” And what is the significance of convergent evolution? Conway Morris is clear: it reveals the existence of stable regions in biological space. “Convergence occurs because of ‘islands’ of stability, analogous to ‘attractors’ in chaos theory.”

The force of Conway Morris’s critique of Gould cannot be overlooked. While contingency is a factor in the overall evolutionary mechanism, it plays a significantly less decisive role than Gould allows. (p. 192)

The point Conway Morris hopes to make in assembling his matrix of convergence is that the number of evolutionary endpoints is limited. Time and time again, evolution “converges” on a relatively small set of possible solutions to the problems and opportunities that the environment offers to life. (p. 193)

A directionality to evolution, the presence of islands of stability, is not empirical evidence of design – it is a property of the universe, a nature of the evolutionary algorithm. Yet it is entirely consistent with the existence of design and the presence of a designer. Darwin’s theory of evolution may have removed the necessity of a designer, a creator God, to explain the complex structures of biology, yet it does not eliminate the possibility that a creator God exists. John Henry Newman said “I believe in design because I believe in God; not in God because I see design.” and McGrath continues…

Theists are free to agree that natural processes are adequate to explain biological design, but they are also free to insist that theism provides another equally rational and plausible explanation which may ultimately prove to be the best explanation. Once more, the issue concerns the consonance or resonance of a Christian vision of reality with what is actually observed. (p. 196)

McGrath puts the key question like this:

Might not the evolutionary process, despite its contingency, still be consonant with the achievement of purpose on the part of a creator God?

Perhaps a certain amount of contingency, choice and chance, is an intentional and necessary part of God’s creation. God created a world capable of ongoing development and growth. His hand is active in the entire process. Yet choice and chance are required for a creation and a creature capable of relationship with the Creator. In science we perceive and study the natural processes designed by God. God himself is seen only through eyes of faith. The evidence for God is found in relationship with God, we err when we expect to find it through empirical and detached observation.

What do you think?

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

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In perhaps Greg Boyd’s deftest of moves, the theology of the cross of Luther is both absorbed by Boyd but centralized even more than Luther’s version. In so doing, Greg Boyd virtually contends — with proddings from Alister McGrath — Luther’s theology of the cross was not consistently applied by Luther.

All of this is in Greg Boyd, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God.

The issue is how Luther poses Deus revelatus (the God who reveals himself) over against Deus absconditus (the God who hides himself in the revelation). Here is the progress of Boyd’s thought, and it begins by quoting Luther on the God who is control of everything:

[Luther:] For the will of God is effectual and cannot be hindered The will of God is immutable and infallible, and it governs our mutable will.

God was deterministically behind every single event in history, he sometimes referred to particular events as “masks of God” (larva Dei). But Luther most frequently used this concept to talk about the work that he believed God deterministically accomplished by controlling the thoughts and actions of evil agents. 684

… he nevertheless believed the devil was “nothing other than a mask of the almighty God in his terrifying hiddenness.” 684

Alien as it was, however, Luther insisted that God “nevertheless … binds himself to be present in these masks in a particular way.” 684

And, as we shall now see, this is precisely why Luther acknowledged that the work that God deterministically accomplishes through evil agents was a terrifying mask behind which God is hopelessly hidden from us. 685

God is hidden in two ways:

First … Luther often speaks about God remaining hidden in the shocking, paradoxical, unfathomably beautiful way God is revealed in Christ. 685

Second … elates to Luther’s famous concept of Deus absconditusy and, as McGrath notes, it expresses a “God who will forever remain unknown to us, a mysterious and sinister being whose intentions remain concealed from us.” When Luther speaks of the hidden God in this second sense, the emphasis is “especially ‘on] God’s absolute control over all creation.” More specifically, this concept expresses “the riddle of divine predestination, where faith is forced to concede the existence of a concealed (occulta) will of God.’ 686

Alister McGrath uncovers the problem:

McGrath is on the mark, if in an understated sort of way, when he argues that there is a “total antithesis” between Deus revelatus and Deus absconditus, for God’s concealed will “may stand in contradiction to his revealed will.’ 686

Rather, Luther rightly saw that the NT calls on us to be theologians “of the cross” who only seek to comprehend “what is visible of God (visibilia et posteriora Dei) through suffering and the cross.” In short, for Luther, “the cross alone is our theology.” 687

As McGrath points out, Luther’s second concept of God’s hiddenness not only suggests “that Luther … abandoned his earlier principle of deriving theology solely on the basis of the cross… it [also] suggests that the cross is not the final word of God on anything.” 687

So Boyd steps in to say consistency is in order, a cruciform hermeneutic can resolve the tension in Luther’s theology:

Against this inconsistency, I submit that we should rather resolve to know “nothing . . . except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (l Cor 2:2) and that we should interpret Scripture in this light, as Luther himself taught. 688

Boyd adjusts, adapts and turns around Luther’s masks:

While Luther was motivated to speak of God wearing masks because he assumed God meticulously controlled agents, I contend that we need to speak of God wearing masks precisely because God refuses to control agents. 688

Hence, whereas Luther held that God intentionally puts on masks that mysteriously conceal his Christlike character as he determines agents to carry out evil aspects of his sovereign plan, I contend that God stooped to wear masks only because his people were not capable of viewing him as he actually is. 689

Hence, in my view, God’s masks are nothing over and beyond the manner in which God’s revelation was necessarily conditioned by the fallen and culturally conditioned medium through which he “breathed” it. 689

In contrast to Luther, who understood God’s masks to be historical in nature, I understand them to be literary in nature. 690

When I state that God’s masks are literary rather than historical in nature, I am simply denying that God actually engaged in or commanded the violence that the mask ascribes to him. 690

That is, now that we know God’s true cruciform, sin-bearing character, we are able to identify the literary masks God allowed to be placed on him to be the masks that they are and to see through them to discern the true, humble, sin-bearing character of the One who wore them. 692

The literary masks God allows to be placed on him in the narrative leading up to the crucified Christ mirror his people’s sin, and especially their proclivity toward violence, by reflecting the fallen and culturally conditioned way his people viewed him. In these literary masks, therefore, God is portrayed as a guilty perpetrator of violence. By contrast, the historical mask God stoops to wear when he becomes a human and sacrifices himself on the cross mirrors his people’s sin by portraying God as a guilty victim of violence. And, as I will now attempt to show, this difference discloses an important aspect of the way the cross exposes the OT’s violent depictions of God to be the literary masks that they are. 693 [Yes, he uses Girard in some ways.]

He takes Luther’s masks, he stands with McGrath in seeing the tension in Luther’s inconsistent crucicentricity, he finds resolution in a consistent cruciform hermneutic, and he supports it by appealing to Girard’s scapegoat mechanism.

By Mitch East, currently the preaching intern at the North Atlanta Church of Christ

One summer during graduate school, a college minister asked me to speak at a retreat for his students. The retreat would deal with the students’ questions about Christian faith. On the first night, I shared four questions with which I had wrestled. I prompted the students to write their own questions on slips of paper and place them in a bowl. I told them I would answer their questions.

That night, I sat down with the tiny slips of paper, prepping to address them in the next speech. As I read the questions, a lump formed in my throat. The students asked about sexuality, the Bible, addiction, church doctrine, and depression. First of all, I knew I needed months to prepare, but I only had a day. Second, I felt like a fraud. Was I really about to pretend like I had the final say on these subjects? Even attempting answers would be a disaster.

So for the next speech, I didn’t address any of their questions. I talked about “living in the mystery” and “living with your doubts.” I made sure to be biblical: I talked about Job and Jesus, whose prayers didn’t receive clear answers from God. But I looked out into a frustrated audience.

Now, I’m not clueless. I’ve given my fair share of bad speeches. But this was one of the rare times I knew exactly why the students were not tracking with me. They were mad. I told them to ask questions, promised them I would answer, and despite my promise, I did the exact opposite. I avoided every question they had.

You might think I shouldn’t have promised answers at all. I thought the same thing until the college minister talked to me after the speech. He looked at me with a one-of-a-kind look that criticizes without cutting down. He said, “Mitch, you can live in mystery all you want, but my students have to live their lives. Try to answer their questions.” He walked away.

His comment stung a little, but he was right. He knew his students better than I did. I had to change course, so I prepared to answer their questions to the best of my ability. Trust me: the third speech was much better than the second.

A student in seminary once told me, “In this department, it’s not if you have a faith crisis, but when you have a faith crisis.” At the time, I laughed. He was right plenty of students had faith crises during the program. But since then, his words have stuck with me – but not for good reasons. He sounded proud about it, as if it were a badge of honor. A friend of mine calls this trendy doubt. Someone with trendy doubt rolls his eyes and says, “How cool is that we don’t have silly faith like we used to?” This is the kind of trendy doubt that led me to avoid people’s legitimate questions.

Of course, not all doubt is trendy. Some doubt comes from suffering or wrestling with difficult topics. This kind of doubt wonders if God really exists, is really good, is really worthy of trust. I’ve been there myself. I can remember those questions buzzing around in my head after a visiting a teenager’s family after he overdosed. So while I think that these doubts are real (and okay as far as they go), they are also part of a modern condition.

Here’s what I mean. Before the modern period, plenty of Christians went through deep suffering and did not experience doubt. It’s not as if we know from our modern perspective they were really doubting God, but on the surface they were playing pretend. For example, Christian slaves faced immense suffering (suffering that I can only read about) and didn’t doubt God like I have. In fact, they would think it’s strange that I have doubted God in the midst of suffering.

Their great faith doesn’t mean my doubt is illegitimate or grounds for my excommunication from church. But doubt can’t be a “necessary step” for Christians. Doubt is real and, for some Christians, more intense than others. But that’s why faith is a gift. And that’s why doubt is not something that those who have great faith have missed out on.

That would be like saying the point of the story of Thomas is that we must imitate his doubt. But the point is that Jesus has great mercy for Thomas despite his doubt. What else could “stop doubting” mean? Jesus says to him, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” In other words, Jesus gives Thomas a gift that other people will not experience, and Jesus blesses those who don’t have what Thomas had and yet still trust.

My point isn’t to bash doubters, but to challenge ministers. My point is that I was wrong. I’m the minister who told college kids to “live with doubts” and “live in the mystery.” Jesus might call me someone of little faith. If that’s the case, then instead of telling people to “live with doubts,” I should discern people’s different situations and do my best with what I know. Sometimes, a new Christian doesn’t know what her church teaches on a subject. She asks, I answer, and that’s that. Other times, a new Christian experiences a tragedy that leads to doubt, and he can’t rid his mind of his doubts about God. I walk alongside him in the tragedy and do my best to answer his questions as they come. Ministers must pastor both of these Christians.

But the need to pastor both doesn’t mean we need to universalize one of their experiences for the other. The former doesn’t need to doubt – she’s simply asking for clarification. I know the distinction between “doubting” and “asking for clarification” isn’t easy to make in real life. I also know that these situations require something more sensitive than “Get over it and have faith!” But we shouldn’t assume every Christian must be like Thomas to be faithful.

I should admit: I didn’t learn this lesson in seminary. I actually learned this lesson from a minister of the church – and I just so happened to be in seminary at the time. But looking back, I remember professors who practiced what the college minister was asking for. They didn’t pretend they had the final word on every subject. They didn’t pretend like they knew more than they did. They were humble and confident women and men who answered questions the best they could in order to build up the faith. My professors practiced these things all the time, and I hope I can follow in their footsteps.

In one of the most influential, however small, books on early Christian worship, Paul Bradshaw maps the development of the meals of Jesus into the eucharist. I have added numbers and reformated the citation. See his book Reconstructing Early Christian Worship (pp. 18-19).

1. I believe that the regular sharing of food was fundamental to the common life of the first Christian communities, as it apparently had been to Jesus’ own mission. At these meals they would have experienced an eschatological anticipation of God’s kingdom, one of the primary marks of which was that the hungry are fed and many come from East and West to feast (Matthew 8.11; Luke 13.29), and they would have responded by calling upon Jesus to return, crying Marana tha (1 Corinthians 16.22; Didache 10.6; Revelation 22.20)
2. They would have recalled stories of Jesus eating – not just with his disciples, but scandalously with tax-collectors and sinners. They would have recollected that he had miraculously fed large multitudes with small quantities of food. And they would have remembered that he had at least once, perhaps in relation to one of these feeding miracles, associated bread with his own flesh.
3. At least some communities of impoverished Christians, whose staple food would have been bread and little else and whose meals generally did not include wine, came to associate what they called the breaking of bread with feeding on the flesh of Jesus.
4. In other cases, where wealthy members of the local congregation would entertain their brothers and sisters in the faith to a more substantial supper in their homes each week, either on the eve of the Sabbath or at its conclusion, the bread and wine of the meal might have been thought of as simply ‘spiritual food and drink’ (as in the Didache), or as the flesh and blood of Jesus, although in some Greek-speaking circles the expression ‘body and blood’ came to be preferred.
5. In neither case, because they did not associate what they were doing specifically with the Last Supper or with the annual Passover meal, did they apparently experience any qualms about doing it much more often than once a year or feel the necessity to adhere strictly to the order of that meal in their own practices.
6. Someone, however, possibly even St Paul himself, did begin to associate the sayings of Jesus with the supper that took place on the night before he died, and interpreted them as referring to the sacrifice of his body and blood and to the new covenant that would be made through his death.
7. This interpretation had some influence within the churches founded by Paul and possibly beyond. It certainly reached the author of Mark’s Gospel, who inserted a version of the sayings into his already existing supper narrative, perhaps because he was compiling his account of Jesus in Rome, where the Christians were particularly subject to sporadic persecution and so the association of their own spiritual meals with the sacrificed body and blood of their Saviour would have been especially encouraging to believers facing possible martyrdom themselves, however novel to them was this juxtaposition of the two traditions.
8. But this combination does not otherwise seem to have been widely known in early Christianity. It was only much later, as the New Testament books gained currency and authority, that it began to shape both the catechesis and the liturgy of the churches, and to shift the focus of eucharistic thought from feeding to sacrifice.
9. Does any of this matter? Is it important whether the ultimate roots of Jesus’ sayings may lie in the life-giving feeding of those who were hungry rather than in primary association with his imminent death? Did not that sacrificial death also come to be viewed by Christians as life-giving, and therefore to an equal degree as spiritually nourishing? Was anything really lost?
10. I think so. While I believe it was, and is, perfectly legitimate for Christians to interpret Jesus’ sayings in relation to his death, whenever and wherever they may have first been uttered, yet I believe a valuable balanced insight was lost by an excessive focus on the power of his sacrificed body and blood and a consequent diminishing of the value of his living and nourishing flesh and blood.
11. In particular, it led in the course of time to a decline in the reception of communion, as that came to be seen as less important for believers than the offering of the eucharistic sacrifice – to a disproportionate emphasis, if you like, on altar rather than on table.

The critical mistake here is not considering enough the atonement saying of Jesus in Mark 10:45 as well as the many times when he clearly perceives his likely death combined with his interpretation of that death, including Passover themes well before Paul. See my Jesus and His Death as well as A Community called Atonement.

I began my career teaching seminary students, shifted to undergraduates for seventeen years, and now am teaching at a seminary again, at Northern Seminary (check out our DMin and MANT special cohorts). This move has driven me to think and rethink what seminary provides the church, or what the church provides the seminary.

Today’s post offers ten reasons for going to seminary, and I know full well that many today both find seminary irrelevant and contend they are “successful” ministers without seminary. I’ve heard not a few of said contenders say that they think seminary would have hurt them. I disagree mostly… and, yes, the MDiv or a seminary degree is the union card or accreditation level for many churches … so here then are ten reasons to attend seminary:

1. Gift enhancement. Seminaries will not “gift” a person but seminaries can almost always enhance the gifts God has given to a person. I have argued for years that seminaries work best when they are populated by ministers and not by folks who think or want, but aren’t sure, if they are gifted or called. What seminaries do well is enhance gifts.

2. Biblical and Theological enhancement. Seminary students will study the Bible, the whole Bible, and that will be a first for some. And, they already have a theology; seminaries can enhance that theology, both by way of subtraction (getting rid of some careless ideas) and addition (adding better ideas). Students have the opportunity to study great theologians, and pity the seminary that assigns textbook-ish theology books, and I’m thinking here of Athanasius and Augustine, Aquinas and Anselm, Luther and Calvin (and the Anabaptists like Hubmaier), and then into the modern era with Barth and Moltmann.

3. Personal enhancement. There was a day when seminaries assumed seminary students would be praying and reading the Bible and practicing the disciplines and attending church … they assumed formation was already underway. No more. Increasingly, seminaries are making spiritual formation — personal enhancement — a part of each course in the curriculum. I will be.

4. Dedicated time. Let’s face it, to develop theologically as a minister you need time, and that’s what seminary does. In sociological terms, seminary can be a time of encapsulation: you are isolated from your work, your church, and you are holed up in a class with other students and a professor, and you wander into quiet libraries and you study — it is that dedicated time that seminaries can offer. Most pastors aren’t afforded the luxury to study in big chunks of time, so going to seminary, even if it is as a commuter, offers dedicated time. It probably won’t happen without dedicated time.

5. Access to specialists. One of the problems with seminaries is that they can take on the flavor of a research institution and its professors want to be left alone to do historical and technical research and write books and articles and monographs for the academic guild. I am proud to say at Northern, the aim is for the professors to be both specialist enough to be able to work in the guild but who are shaping their lives toward pastors, toward ministry, and toward the church. Seminaries provide specialists to ministers who need specialists on the topics of the day.

6. Fellowship with peers. How many — I’m asking ministers this question — of your friends are peers you gained in seminary? In my years of speaking and writing and teaching, I have observed that many pastors made their closest ‘ministry peers’ in their seminary years. I sat in the graduation at Northern Seminary and then watched afterwards to see how many of these students have become friends. Adult friends, especially those who are ministry peers, remain friends. At seminary you will find a collection of peers who will form a ministry fellowship for life.

7. Theological diversity. Some seminaries (names omitted) prefer to have faculty who all think alike. I’m 100% persuaded diversity, theological diversity, is the name of the game for seminaries. No two pastors think exactly alike and no two professors think alike, and having theological diversity (within some creedal constraint) that interacts with one another sets a pattern for ministry for years to come. Taking classes from professors who don’t agree with you, or who think differently, will make you a better minister.

8. Languages. Here we go: not all seminaries require Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic. But the professors will know those languages and you will be exposed to professors who read those texts well and who can show why it matters and how it matters and how it matters for sermons, for devotion, and for ministry. At seminary you have the opportunity to study the original languages. Take the opportunity.

9. The New Perspective, etc. The blazing issues of the day, and the New Perspective on Paul is one such issue and I think of open theism and universalism as well, are often complicated enough that ministers simply don’t have the time to read and read and read to figure out what is going on. But what happens if the student can walk into a professor’s office or into a classroom and ask someone who knows and who can reduce it to 2 minutes and point you to what to read and how to think through the issue? Seminaries do this.

10. Who and not just What. When you are done with seminary you will be someone else. So the big advantage is not just what seminary did for your career but Who you became.

Exodus 20 ties the command to remember the Sabbath directly to the Genesis 1 story of creation.

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shall you labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of the Lord your God; you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant or your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (8-11)

Deuteronomy 5 adds to our understanding of this commandment, but does not tie the sabbath to the creation week. Rather the Sabbath is tied more directly to the rescue from slavery in Egypt.

Observe the Sabbath day to keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath of the Lord your God; you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your cattle or your sojourner who stays with you, so that your male servant and your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out of there by a mighty hand and by an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to observe the Sabbath day. (12-15)

These passages raise a number of questions.

What is the significance of the connection with the creation week of Genesis 1? There are many Christians who hold that this passage in Exodus demands that we understand the creation as six literal 24 hour days. Otherwise the Sabbath makes no sense. Churches and organizations supporting young earth creationism will often bring this up.

How are we to keep the Sabbath holy? Many different rules have been put forth for keeping the Sabbath in both Jewish and Christian contexts. High on the list is the definition of work.

When should we as Christians observe the Sabbath? For some the question becomes simply should we observe the Sabbath?  The commandment to keep the Sabbath may or may not be one of those abolished with the coming of Christ. Some have been abolished. Few of us worry about mixing fabrics. However, the commandments in the Decalogue are not generally among those considered abolished.

I started thinking about this because the summer sermon series at the church I attend is working through the Ten Commandments and this one was the subject of a recent sermon. The importance of Sabbath was upheld, but new insights were provided. A few of the thoughts below come from the sermon, but others from other sources.

The focus on six days of creation, on rules for work, on a day off (for rest) … it seems to me that all of these miss the point.

Remember the Sabbath to Keep it Holy. To remember the Sabbath means to observe the Sabbath as a day holy to the Lord. To understand this it can help to turn back to Genesis 2:1-3 and to New Testament passages such as Mark 2:23-28.

Thus the heavens and earth were completed and all their hosts. By the seventh day God had completed His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which he had done. Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made. (Gen. 2:1-3)

Jesus was called to task for violating the Sabbath, not an unusual occurrence. He responded to his accusers … “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27-28)

What does it mean to claim that the Sabbath was made for man?

In Genesis God does not rest to replenish his strength and prepare for the next week of work. A day of rest may help us replenish for the week ahead, but it seems unlikely that this is the reason for the Sabbath. Viewing Sabbath as a generic day of rest (i.e. a day off) is a misuse of the term and concept. I recall a sermon years ago where the preacher claimed his Sabbath was some other day of the week and endorsed the idea that church employees (especially the pastoral staff) are called to observe the Sabbath on some day other than the weekend. Churches should provide a regular day or two off for all personnel (Sunday is not a “day off” the way it is for many of us) – but these are probably better left unconnected with “sabbath.”

Some have argued that the seventh day in Genesis 2 should not be understood as a “day” but as a continuation of time following creation. N.T. Wright has made this argument.

If we understand the Genesis story as a temple narrative, with God preparing creation as a temple for his presence, then God takes up residency in his temple on the seventh day.

Concerning Genesis 1, John Walton has noted that “what is happening is that people and God are moving into the home they will share. It all begins to function when people in God’s image come on the scene and when people “move in”—as an origins account, this is the story of the origins of the home, not the origins of the house. So it is more than just praise—it is inauguration of sacred space.” (See here.)

This connection with God taking up residence in his temple with his creation – including humans created in his image – may help us understand the Sabbath in a more useful fashion.  Perhaps observance of the Sabbath to keep it holy should be understood as taking up residence in the presence of God. We are called to enjoy God, to enjoy his presence, to enjoy his creation and our relationship with others in this creation. Perhaps the point is that the Sabbath is made for man to enjoy the presence of God in community with each other. This isn’t just for the upper levels of society, but for everyone. Even for the beasts of burden.

It is entirely appropriate to gather for worship on the Sabbath. But we gather as a community and observation of the Sabbath is a communal activity focused on God. One of the most unfortunate developments in the church is the elimination in some organizations of the Sabbath (i.e. Sunday) as a day of worship for church employees, pastors and others. The implicit message is that their task is “work” providing a service for others rather than participating in a communal day of worship.

It is lawful to do good on the Sabbath, to preach and teach and sing is good for the church. This is work, but to be effective it must also be worship for all involved, not primarily or solely for the audience.

Why go to church? Scot put up a couple of posts recently, the first Church: Seven Reasons Not to Go to Church, and the second 10 Reasons to Go to Church. This is a question I have pondered often over the last seven or ten years. The lists didn’t really touch on the issues I find most compelling.

• I am part of a church because this is a community of the people of God.

Most of the 10 reasons from John Pritchard’s book Why Go to Church? seem to fit into this category.

• I go to church (i.e. a worship service) because celebrating God in community and as part of a “Sabbath” kept holy is an important sacramental act of remembrance and worship.

It isn’t the teaching and preaching … although this can be good.

It isn’t the music (worship and music are not synonyms … although some seem to have forgotten this).

It is worship in many and varied forms.

The seeker sensitive movement sent me digging deeply into this question, in existential angst over the importance of “church” to a Christian. If the purpose of the service is evangelism, there is really no need for a Christian to attend except to bring others – and this isn’t worship.  (It certainly isn’t “Sabbath.”) In my view this is the major problem with “seeker sensitive” church … it moves the focus of gathering away from worship.  Evangelism is an essential function of the church – but shouldn’t usurp the place of worship in our gathering.

How do you understand Sabbath?

Why do you go to church?

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