Jeff Cook: Why I am Fasting during Ramadan

Last updated on: June 15, 2015 at 2:08 am By Scot McKnight

Why I am Fasting During Ramadan (Jeff Cook)

Over the last 50 years, Christians and Muslims have found countless reasons to kill one another. For every graphic image Americans see of ISIS, there is a parallel photo of a young Muslim boy killed in his homeland because of Western activities. Bloody tally marks have become so common we no longer see death. We see routine.

It’s time for a new way forward.

Last spring, I saw a set of photographs on Twitter of Islamic Americans who chose to fast during Lent as a sign of solidarity with their Christian neighbors (see #Muslims4Lent). I saw pictures of children who looked very different from my own holding up signs with their names and a commitment to give up their favorite toys or fast food for forty days. They were telling my kids, “We appreciate you and your culture and your faith and we want to elevate your time of devotion in our hearts.”

I saw pictures of young Muslim males with signs in hand, not highlighting our distinctions or past injuries, but outlining where they would sacrifice for Lent in order to journey with me during the season I held as most holy.

And I was moved.

Did these Muslims believe that Jesus was crucified to defeat sin and death? Probably not. Did these Muslims believe Christ should be declared “Son of God” or that his resurrection was the decisive event in world history? Again, no. But this did not keep them from saying, “We will stand beside Christians during Lent because we share this planet, because God gifts us the same sun and rain, because we need a new way forward.”

These pictures challenged me. In seeing men my own age with signs that not only said they wished me well but proclaimed my value and the value of my faith, all my natural distrust fell to the side. I realized in fresh ways that I’m tired of voices telling me that in order to love my country I need to be suspicious of Arabs. I’m tired of feeling the only response available to graphic videos is fiery retaliation. Most of all, I’m tired of being just a bystander and having nothing to offer for the cause of reconciliation and peace in a world that God loves so much.

But I hope this will change. My heart and trajectory need to change from one of simply criticizing war-profiteers and cable news channels to actually taking a decisive posture.

This year during Ramadan (June 16- July 17), I will fast and pray for those who embrace Islam: people I have not yet met, whose stories I have not heard, but whose lives matter to God and whose acts of devotion often display a character I would wish for myself and my sons.

Following Jesus is not an obstacle to such solidarity. In fact, I feel encouraged to celebrate Ramadan because I am a Christian. It is because I know Jesus is Lord that I can live without fear, that I can challenge myself to love more deeply and creatively. Table-fellowship is always a subversive act for the Christian, and it is because I follow Jesus that I can eat alongside as well as refrain withanyone—no matter who they are, no matter what they believe, no matter what they have done.

I am not interested in fasting this month for ascetic reasons. I am not converting to Islam. I will embrace the self-sacrificial practices of others around the world because Jesus reminds me that it is those who hunger that will be filled, that the meek alone will inherit the earth, and that those who make peace will be called children of God.

I recognize not everyone reading this follows Jesus, but if you wish to join If you wish to join me and many others, post a photo on twitter and tag it #Christians4Ramadan.

Jeff Cook is a pastor of Atlas Church in Greeley, Colorado and he is the author of Seven: The Deadly Sins and the Beatitudes(Zondervan 2008). You can connect with him at everythingnew.org and @jeffvcook.

But the Greatest of These is Love (RJS)

Last updated on: June 11, 2015 at 7:43 pm By RJS

I have to admit it. There have been a number of posts lately that I’ve found rather depressing. These aren’t bad posts. In fact I’d say that they are quite good by and large, but they they feel a bit like picking at scabs. Austin Fischer’s post last Thursday “Are Scientists Really Split on Evolution?” made an excellent point – and an important one. Whether you think evolution is true or not, don’t rest your argument on urban myths and wishful thinking. And try to discourage others from doing so as well. Unless you consider a few percent disagreement to mean that the scientific community is “split,” it simply isn’t true. And the majority of those in the roomy tray are there for reasons other than science – generally, but not always, for religious reasons.

Some of the conversation following this post was discouraging simply because it demonstrated how much work remains. 232 comments and counting. We have to realize that this discussion in the church is really about biblical interpretation, theology, and doctrine. It may also be about metaphysical naturalism, especially with non-Christians. But it isn’t about science.

And then …

This post was followed by Jeff Cook’s post Monday on Josh Packard and Ashleigh Hope’s book Church Refugees. As of this writing the post has 165 comments, many by Christians who are quite disillusioned with the way a local church too often acts. There are many hurt people around. I have to admit that I have fought against disillusionment and despair at times myself. The kind of misinformation and untruths about science and scientists that are portrayed by far too many Christians plays a role here, but it isn’t the only factor or even the most important reason. The church as a growth business, the focus on human celebrities, authoritarian structures, theological purity, fights over style (with the rhetorical putdowns that are often in play), and the sneaking suspicion that the focus is on building an earthly empire rather than on being and growing the people of God.

Why stay in the church?

The church isn’t a celebrity, or a sermon, a worship service, a music style, or a brand (or even an evangelistic outreach mission). A church is a gathering of the people of God. I’d say that it is a gathering for worship (which is not another term for music), sacrament, exhortation, discipleship, fellowship, service, and evangelism. A church is a gathering of the people of God – not for an hour once a week, but in community. Not any ordinary community though – a community with a purpose. On my walk last evening I passed a church sign that put it well: Ordinary People Living Differently Because of the Love of Christ. Too often this isn’t the church – but it should be. We are called to be a people of love because of the love of God.

Consider the instructions given to the people of God (aka “the church”) in the pages of the New Testament. These instructions don’t concern style and form (music, preaching, and such) or size. They concern character and community and love. Paul lays it on the line:

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. … And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. (1 Cor 13:1-3, 13)

Without love, powerful preaching, prophecy, faith, knowledge, acts of piety and charity are all nothing. And 1 John agrees:

Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. (1 Jn 4:7-8)

What does this mean for the church? I’d suggest it means that any local church that doesn’t take these to heart has a problem. All of the instructions contained in the New Testament are governed by the directives above to love one another.

I will make another observation. While outreach and mission are certainly important, the command to love is directed first, but not only, to one another. That is to fellow Christians and to the local body of Christians. The local church should embody love for one another as a family and as the body of Christ. Any church that doesn’t do this is a failure. Through that witness I think we would find a much more open field for the message of the gospel. If this was authentically in the center of the local church I think we’d see a good deal fewer “dones” and fewer “nones” as well. Nothing drives people away faster than hypocrisy.

However tempting it might be at times to call it quits and walk away, I’ll stay in community with fellow Christians, trying (imperfectly and too often failing) to live this out. We can’t be the people of God as isolated individuals.

I don’t mean this as a condemnation of those who have found themselves “done,” but rather a call for contemplation and perhaps a change in focus by those who have been called to shepherd God’s people.

For those who think I may be overstating the case, the command to love isn’t something we proof-text with a verse or two here or there. It permeates the entire New Testament, all four Gospels, Paul, Hebrews, James, Peter, John. The following isn’t the sum total, but it gives the flavor:

“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. …Do to others as you would have them do to you. (Lk 6:27-28, 31) (See also Mt 5:43-45)

Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mt 20:25-28) (See also Mt 23:8-12, Mk 10:42-45, Lk 22:24-27, Jn 13:14)

“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mk 12:29-31) (See also Mt 22:36-40, Lk 10:25-28)

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (Jn 13:34-35)

Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. (Rm 12:10)

Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. (Rm 12:16)

If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. (Rm 12:18)

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, … are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. (Rm 13:8-10)

Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. (Ga 6:2)

Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. (Ep 4:2-3)

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. (Ph 2:3-4)

In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant … (Ph 2:5-7)

My brothers and sisters, believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ must not show favoritism. … If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” you are doing right. But if you show favoritism, you sin and are convicted by the law as lawbreakers. (Ja 2:1, 8-9)

God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. We love because he first loved us. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister. (1 Jn 4:16,19-21)

And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love. (2 Jn 5-6)

Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. … Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” (He 13:1-5)

There are prohibitions as well – but these are generally related to the positive command to love as we are being shaped into the community of the people of God.

Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbor, for we are all members of one body. … Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen. … Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. (Ep 4:25-32)

Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry. …But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips. … Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. (Col 3: 5, 8, 12-14)

When we don’t get this right as the church, and don’t even make it the aim, we will continue to have problems. It blows my mind that some (too many) Christian leaders will build doctrine and church structure around a verse or two (the opposition to women in ministry has what … two or three “proof-texts”?) and ignore, for the most part, this running theme.

What does it take for a church to be biblical?

What does mean to be devoted to one another in love?

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.

Performing a Pauline Letter

Last updated on: June 7, 2015 at 6:39 pm By Scot McKnight

In a previous post I observed that Paul’s letters were not read by individuals but performed by a reader (or lector). The lector didn’t read a letter of Paul cold on the spot but instead would have been given instructions (by Paul and his co-workers). In fact, it would not have been unusual for the lectors to have prepared and performed the letter in advance — or a number of times, perhaps rehearsing the letter’s performance a few times. None of this, of course, is discussed by Paul in his letters but he does mention couriers and reading (e.g., Rom 16; Col 4).

Though this helps explain Lucy Peppiatt’s theory about 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, the post today is about performance in the world of Paul and is based on the excellent sketch of memorized speech-making by William D. Shiell, in a book called Delivering from Memory: The Effect of Performance on the Early Christian Audience (Eugene: Pickwick, 2011). Shiell is the senior pastor at First Baptist Church Tallahassee. His work is rooted in the excellent work on rhetoric by George A. Kennedy.

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Some are calling this “performance criticism,” and perhaps America’s best-known expert is David Rhoads. The facts/details about performance are based on ancient rhetorical handbooks. I don’t know anyone who thinks Paul was trained as a rhetor or a lector, but the reality is that most in the Roman and Jewish worlds would have experienced trained rhetors on a common basis — the public square. Thus, those who “read” Paul’s letters aloud would have “performed” them on the basis of experiencing other lectors/rhetors. None of this stretches evidence and is therefore valuable for learning to “hear” Paul’s letters as they were meant to be heard for he wrote them to be read in the congregation’s public gatherings (Col 4:16).

To quote Shiell, “In Hellenistic Jewish and Greco-Roman audiences, the performer and the audience were shaped together by the recitation [or reading], retention, and response to the performance” (7). Furthermore, “Prior to performance, the reader practices, remembers, retains, and paraphrases the reading” (8). [Is it possible that what we now know as text-critical variants began at the original performance?]

Here are some clear texts about public reading of letters: Acts 15:31; 1 Thess 5:27; Col 4:16; Luke 4:17-20; 1 Tim 4:13-16.

On performance, notice these texts: Acts 12:17; 13:16; 19:33; 21:40; 23:1, 6; 24:10; 26:1.

On audiences, here: Acts 2:37; 19:28; 26:24; 2 Tim 3:16.

What are the characteristics of delivery/performance in the ancient world?

The Body: gestures were learned and mastered; the face correlated with the text; the voice was used to communicate the emotions (pity, indignation, envy, and zeal/emulation).

Performing Various Elements in a Text: lists were exploited by order and emphasis, riddles were used to create liveliness, surprise and delight; fables or parables; and visualization enables listeners to imagine themselves into a reality; characterization: the reader would impersonate people in the text. At this point we can see that Lucy Peppiatt’s thesis that different voices are at work in 1 Cor 11, or Douglas Campbell’s that different people are speaking in Romans 1-4, et al., are compatible with the realities of ancient reading. Paul could well have explained to his readers how to perform speeches-in-character if he composed his letter like this.

What about the listeners?

“Much like the orator or lector, the audience does more than simply fill a space in the room. They are a part of the process through listening, responding, and remembering” (23). The African American “call and response” approach to sermons and speeches is consistent with how ancient audiences participated in public reading. This is not a “come and sit and be quiet” Sunday sermon but instead a “come and participate” public reading of a Pauline letter.

Thus it begins with listening — and texts remind us that some fell asleep and some were engaged.

The response involved applause, filling in gaps (aloud), react (empathy, awe, delight) or asking questions, giving feedback, debating or interrupting. (Sounds like 1 Cor, eh?)

A critical element in ancient reading was remembering: audiences were not waiting for handouts or texts but relied on their ability to listen and remember what they heard. Note-taking sometimes occurred; recalling with others happened. The use of images by the reader or the text of Paul and its performance enabled greater remembering.

The result of reading and audience participation, then, is paideia, or character formation. Here I will focus on the audience’s formation. Shiell points to a few elements. In some ways the churches became analogous to ancient reading communities in that they gathered to hear, responded and carried on the formation with one another. There was emotional submission to the lector/rhetor, which can be negative or positive. Audiences were often encouraged to identify with a moral figure, and in Paul’s letters at times he functions this way; Peter appeals to Sarah; we could expand this but the point needs little more support. One of Paul’s major aims was to form his audience morally into character formation. That is, his theology was mixed with exhortation to get his churches to live properly in Christ.

William Shiell’s fine book, from which I learned a ton, is an excellent introduction both to rhetoric and performance, but it goes beyond this to give illustrations from NT texts on how to make use of what we can learn from performance criticism. I’m working on Colossians these days and I find myself wondering how a 1st Century lector would have performed the letter and also how that church at Colosse might have responded in the public reading of the letter.

We will be returning to Lucy Peppiatt’s book soon on this blog and this post sets the stage for being more sensitive to 1 Cor 11 as performance and audience response.

Creation – Once or Continual? (RJS)

Last updated on: June 9, 2015 at 6:21 am By RJS

The next chapter of Mark Harris’s new book The Nature of Creation looks at the theological significance of the relationship between creation and creator. In particular he considers two aspects of the creative activity – creation from nothing and continuous creation – and what these tell us about the nature of God. Harris also looks at the coherence between modern science and these two aspects of God’s creative activity.

Creation from Nothing or creatio ex nihilo is a Christian doctrine of long standing. The theological significance is important: God is neither dependent on the world nor necessarily a part of it, with the corollary that the world is necessarily dependent on God for its existence. This is a cornerstone in a theistic understanding of God.

God both created the world at the beginning of time ex nihilo, and continues to support and uphold (or sustain) it, and is active in it. Since the world was dependent upon God for its existence in the first place (“In the beginning”), it continues to be dependent upon God for its continues existence; it is contingent in the widest possible sense. In fact, if God is said not to sustain the world in every moment of its existence, then this suggests that the world exists by means of its own power and is in a sense equal to God. The theological position of creatio ex nihilo is therefore not only relevant for how things began, but for how they continue to be. In short, creatio ex nihilo is not an explanation of “In the beginning” so much as a statement that there is an ongoing relationship between the created world and its Creator. (p. 112)

God’s transcendence is connected to the concept of creation from nothing. While God is not (necessarily) outside of time and space, God is not constrained by time and space. God is omnipresent and it is God who prevents a fall back into nothingness.

This is distinct from the claim of deism which attributes the initiation of the universe to a divine action but then essentially removes God from the picture, relegating his activity (if any) to a purely spiritual realm. Harris is emphatic on this distinction because we, raised in an era of scientific exploration and explanation, are quick to separate natural and supernatural as though God was responsible for one and not the other, and then to explain away or deny supernatural action. This is not the orthodox, theistic, understanding of God’s action.

Continuous Creation or creatio continua is related to the idea that God is not only transcendent, but also immanent. God supports, sustains, and preserves the world and is also active in an ongoing creative sense.

Rather, creatio continua suggests that the creative work is constantly ongoing in order to reveal the world’s full potential, which is perpetually novel and fresh. … God’s immanence is seen in the creative work of the Holy Spirit (e.g. Ps 104:30). (p. 116)

These to aspects of God’s creative activity are not mutually exclusive and both are required in some sense to understand both the present world and the world to come (new creation).

Science and Creation. Now it is tempting to equate the Big Bang with creatio ex nihilo and cosmological and biological evolution with creatio continua, and this is not entirely wrong. Nor is it entirely correct. The Big Bang isn’t quite creation from nothing. At the very least there are laws of physics describing the quantum fluctuation that resulted in the emergence of our universe. There could also be many universes (multiverse), or a prior universe from which ours arose. While Harris (and I) would hold that evolution (both cosmological and biological) is a manifestation of creatio continua, it is important not to limit God’s creative action in the world to this alone. God is active in a far broader sphere, including ordinary life and human history. It is also important that we not classify creatio ex nihilo as “supernatural” and creatio continua as “natural,” placing one within the realm of scientific study and the other outside this realm.

Both categories then, ex nihilo and continua, are fundamentally theological at the end of the day: they both describe God’s creative work, one as immanent and the other as transcendent. … The two categories complement each other, describing how God is both present in creation and transcendent with respect to it. And it hardly needs saying that this is the traditional solution known as theism. (p. 120)

Scripture and Creation. Both creatio ex nihilo and creatio continua find support in the Bible, although neither can be simply proof-texted from scripture. According to Harris (and others) the Bible makes no clear statement of creation from nothing. It does make rather clear statements about God as transcendent over creation. Genesis 1:1-2 is often cited, but this isn’t an unambiguous translation:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. (NIV)

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. (NRSV)

The NIV translation is possible, but so is the NRSV. It is not wise to put too much weight on the passage as a defense of creatio ex nihilo. In the NRSV translation the sense is that God is forming something out of chaos, introducing order and function. The same is true in the NIV translation – except that here God first creates the chaos. Harris finds the NRSV more likely because it doesn’t seem likely that the author would have intended to make God responsible for the chaos of “formless and void” (tohu wabohu).

There might be no unambiguous statement which says that before creation existed there was nothing but God, but there are many which are compatible with the idea which stands behind creatio ex nihilo, that God is utterly transcendent. After all, the biblical creation motif unfailingly sees God as the root and basis for all that exists and continues to exist, which is what “from nothing” means. We also see – on almost ever page of the Bible – the corollary of God’s transcendence: the idea that creation, and especially God’s people, are utterly dependent upon God, (p. 122)

An apparent proof-text for creatio continua doesn’t immediately leap to mind the way Genesis 1:1 does for creatio ex nihilo. However, many passages speak to God’s divine action. Harris points to Job 38-41 and Psalm 104 as possibles, and to Psalm 139 among others. These are passages that speak to God’s immanence and involvement in the ongoing processes of the world. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit and God’s role in preparing the way for new creation are important examples from the New Testament. God isn’t simply letting the world move on a deterministic path to obliteration or perfection. There is uncertainty and all is contingent on God.

Creation isn’t just a one time act. God as Creator is an ongoing truth – transcendent and immanent.

Where or how does the Bible teach creation from nothing?

Is continuous creation also taught in the Bible?

What might this mean for the way we think about the relationship between science and Christian faith?

The pictures in this post, by the way, are of God’s wondrous creation along the Banias or Hermon stream just below the ancient city of Caesarea Philippi (Mark 8:27; Matt. 16:13) about 25 miles north of the Sea of Galilee (Lake Kinneret). This stream joins the Dan which also originates at the base of Mount Hermon and is one of the four streams that form the headwaters of the Jordan River. It was a marvelous hike with wild figs, long grasses, woodland, and rushing water.

If you wish to contact me, 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.

Bread From Heaven in the Desert (RJS)

Last updated on: June 4, 2015 at 6:56 am By RJS

The next chapter of Walter Moberly’s book Old Testament Theology: Reading the Hebrew Bible as Christian Scripture looks at Exodus 16 and the provision of manna in the wilderness.

In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”

Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.”

The Israelites ate manna forty years, until they came to a land that was settled; they ate manna until they reached the border of Canaan. (Exodus 16:3-5,35)

This is a powerfully important story in the history of God’s interaction with Israel that carries over to his mission among all who call on his name.

It is also a story that raises questions. What was manna and how did God provide it? The modern approach is to look for some “scientific” source of this food with the suggestion that it was the sap of a tamarisk tree defended by some. Here Moberly cites Colin Humphrey’s discussion in The Miracles of Exodus: A Scientist’s Discovery of the Extraordinary Natural Causes of the Biblical Stories. But this really isn’t satisfactory, and answer many of the questions raised by Exodus. If we take the numbers literally there were some 2+ million people in the group, 600,000 men plus women and children, and livestock (c.f. 12:3, 17:3). The sap of tamarisk trees in the desert will not feed a group of this size.

To put this in perspective, at approximately the population density of New York City (8.5 million in 790 km²) two million people require 185 km². We’ll pack them into 100 km² – a square 10 km on a side as shown on a screen image map of the Negev. This allows each person (never mind the livestock) a space about 7 m by 7 m. (The present day population of Be’er Sheva is under 200,000.) This is an enormous group wandering in a pretty inhospitable wilderness. The picture at the top of the post is in the Negev. This isn’t exactly the area referred to in Exodus 16. But the whole region is desert, and my impression was that it makes the Arizona desert look quite lush. For the most part it seemed more like the badlands of South Dakota.

In fact though, the enumeration of 600,000 men isn’t consistent with the general tone of the Exodus narrative, which often implies a group of a few thousand. Moberly looks as an example at the last verse of chapter 15 after the Israelites had complained about the supply of water and God provided drinkable water: “Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs and seventy palm trees, and they camped there near the water.” The implication is that this was an oasis of plenty – and it is plenty for a more modest sized group, but not for 2 million people, complete with livestock.

Nor could Moses speak simultaneously to a group of this size, although the text portrays him as speaking to the Israelites as a whole on multiple occasions. Imagine Moses and Aaron on the field of Michigan Stadium speaking without the aid of amplifiers and then multiply the size of the stands by 20 (or by a factor of 6 if he only addresses the men).

And despite the people’s constant complaints concerning food and water, they had livestock for feasting and sacrifice when Aaron shaped the golden calf for them (32:6).

These details make us look twice at the text. The numbers might be symbolic, or a mistranslation, or an exaggeration. Or they might be anachronism … numbers from a later time written into the text “presumably through the assumption of a continuity between Israel past and present.” (p. 90) Moberly is inclined toward the later explanation. But this isn’t the point of the text. This is a foundational story of the people of Israel, following God through the wilderness. Most likely it is a story passed along orally before it was written down.

Whatever the origins of the narrative, as the narrative is handed on and retold, it acquires ever greater coloring from the contexts of its retelling. This is because the narrative is seen to be a suitable vehicle for the expression of certain recurrent existential issues and questions of identity that are important to the people who cherish the narrative. Because of such a history of prior use, the narrative in its received form may relate somewhat somewhat loosely to its received literary contextualization. One consequence is that it is usually more or less impossible to separate out, or reconstruct, the different elements that have come to constitute the narrative, though sometimes anachronisms can give some clues. (p. 93)

This is an explanation that won’t sit well with many evangelicals, as it is not consistent with our general expectation of inerrant divine revelation. Is it possible that the problem is our expectation of the text rather than with the received text?

What this means for our reading. In any event, Moberly points out that this suggestion that the narrative has a history of being shaped in retelling, if true, has a number of ramifications on the way that we should approach the text. (p. 94)

First, the large number of Israel as in the millions should not be introduced into one’s imagination with the manna story.

Second, livestock should not be presumed to be present within the manna story, for this becomes an example of how a story that has had its own history of use may relate somewhat loosely to its received literary contextualization. … [T]he contemporary theologically engaged reader should resist the temptation to produce an integration of divergent narrative elements

In other words we should read the story for the meaning it contains and not worry about harmonizing all the elements of the narrative with other parts of Exodus or the Pentateuch. Yes we can, and should, synthesize the biblical narrative. There is a theme. But heavy-handed harmonization if a mistake. “If in some places a diamond is polished and in other places it is rough, it still remains a diamond.”

Third, an instinct to rationalize manna as a natural phenomenon … should be resisted as a category mistake.

We should read the multi-layered manna story canonically, and for its theological significance. This doesn’t deny a historical root to the story, but rather leads us away from fixating on (inconsistent) details to concentrating on the big picture.

Some of the lessons to be learned:

Not by Bread Alone. Deuteronomy 8 gives a lesson to be learned from the provision of manna.

He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your ancestors had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

It is through having their hunger met thus that Israel is opened to learning a fundamental principle about human life; not by bread alone is human life sustained, but by responsiveness to the divine will. Material needs are affirmed, but qualified. … One may not unreasonably see significance in the use of the generic ‘ādām, “humanity.” rather than simply “Israel,” as making the point that what Israel learns in this particular way is in a principle of universal applicability. (p. 97)

Jesus articulates this principle of responsiveness to divine will when he quotes this passage when in the desert, hungry, and tempted. He is the faithful Israelite in a situation when they were not. (Mt 4, Lk 4)

The Bread of Life. In John 6:39-58 the people ask Jesus for a sign and refer to the provision of manna in the wilderness. Jesus turns this around and connects it to himself as the bread of life.

Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever. (v. 57-58)

This takes the interaction with the story of Exodus 16 a bit further. Jesus himself is the bread of life.

Trust God Afresh. Moberly points to the discipline of daily living in Exodus 16. The people are called to trust on God afresh every morning. They are not to store up for themselves, for God will provide. Although the circumstance and means of God’s provision changes once the Israelites enter the promised land, the need to trust God afresh every morning doesn’t change. The seven day pattern with a double portion on the sixth followed by a sabbath rest is also an important part of this discipline of dependence on God.

According to Need. There is also the significance of the fair distribution. In Exodus 16:17-18 we read:

The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. And when they measured it by the omer, the one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little. Everyone had gathered just as much as they needed.

Paul picks up on this in 2 Cor. 8:13-15 and takes seriously the implications of the story. Moberly suggests that Paul sees the ready and willing desire to share from abundance and necessity of provision for all in a “fair balance” or as the NIV puts it with “equality” as “embodying an enduring spiritual principle for God’s people.” (p. 105)

Exodus 16 is a powerful and multidimensional text with a long and powerful interpretative history and many lessons yet for us today. The point isn’t to apply “science” to the story, but to listen and understand.

Do the apparently inconsistent details in the Exodus account raise questions in your mind? If so how can they be resolved?

What promise or problem do you see with Moberly’s suggestion that the received narrative has been shaped by retelling?

What is the theological significance of the text?

If you wish to contact me, 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.

God vs. Sports (Josh Graves)

Last updated on: June 3, 2015 at 5:38 am By Scot McKnight

This post is by my friend and preacher at Otter Creek Church of Christ in Nashville/Brentwood, Josh Graves.

When I was a kid, I did not demonstrate a great deal of, shall we say, “academic potential.” In fact, I struggled through public school, under performing to such a degree one high school teacher said to me, “Graves, you have to try do this poorly.” For the record, I always had a sense I possessed emotional intelligence and my parents pushed me fairly hard . . . I simply wasn’t motivated. I showed signs of a high reading level but that rarely translated into the arena of academic performance. In college, all of this changed (mostly because I wanted to keep my basketball scholarship), but man was I a slacker elementary through high school.[1]

Somewhere in middle school, I started to read a great deal. I believe this was the genesis of my rebirth. I began to read sports autobiographies/biographies. As cheesy as it sounds, sports biospaved the way for me to later devour Martin Luther King, Karl Barth, N.T. Wright, Walter Brueggemann, Sarah Coakley, and Michel Foucault. In middle school, I devoured the stories of American iconic sports giants like . . .

Bart Starr.

Babe Ruth.

Wilt Chamberlain.

Dr. J.

Then I read about Sandy Koufax. Koufax’s book (aptly titled Koufax) blew my young mind. I was mesmerized by his precise detail and recollection of important moments in his athletic development.

At some point later in time (I was born in 1979 and thus didn’t appreciate Koufax until long after he had retired) a friend asked me if I knew about the time Sandy Koufax decided not to pitch in a world series game because said world series game fell on the most important Jewish holiday of the year, Yom Kippur. I told him I had no idea. This friend proceeded to tell me the story, still aghast, all these years later, that an athlete on the level of Koufax, could value his faith over his craft.[2]

I’ve heard rumors of parents today who would not dream of allowing their son to skip a little league tournament on a Sunday let alone . . . miss . . . The. World. Series. I could not get over Koufax’s guts and courage.

Barbara Brown Taylor tells a story about a friend (David) growing up in Atlanta and what he taught her about fidelity to God.

When I was a junior in high school, my boyfriend Herb played on the varsity basketball team. He was not the star player however. The star player was a boy named David, who scored so many points during his four-year career that the coach retired his jersey when he graduated. This would have been remarkable under any circumstances, but it was doubly so since David did not play on Friday nights. On Friday nights, David observed the Sabbath with the rest of his family, who generously withdrew when David’s gentile friends arrived, sweaty and defeated, after Friday night home games.

Following each Friday night game, David’s friends came to his house to describe the game in great detail. “Blow by blow” the Gentiles were allowed to speak and create worlds in David’s living room. Someone in the room asked if it bothered him to sit at home while his team “was getting slaughtered in the high school gymnasium.”

“No one makes me do this,” he said. “I’m a Jew, and Jews observe the Sabbath.” Six days a week, he said, he loved nothing more than playing basketball and he gladly gave all he had to the game. On the seventh day, he loved being a Jew more than he loved playing basketball, and he just as gladly gave all he had to the Sabbath. Sure, he felt a tug, but that was the whole point. Sabbath was his chance to remember what was really real. Once three stars were visible in the Friday night sky, his identity as a Jew was more real to him than his identity as the star of our basketball team.[3]

David loved being a Jew more than he loved basketball.

Sandy Koufax loved being a Jew more than being professional baseball’s best pitcher.

I have three sons: Lucas, Finn, and Oliver.

I hope they love God more than they love ____________ (sports, art, school, reading). But I also hope their love of God helps them perform better at ____________. That is, I hope they come to realize that all of these other aspects of life—sports, art, school, reading, etc.—are gifts of God.

Gifts to be honed, and worked at, and nurtured.

And these gifts are sacred.

But the gifts are never more important than the One who gives.

Sandy Koufax’s wisdom lives on. It took me longer than some to live this. Drink deeply from good books.

Josh Graves is the lead minister for Otter Creek Church in Nashville. He’s author of three books: How NOT to Kill a Muslim (2015), Heaven on Earth (2012), and The Feast (2009). You can follow him on twitter @joshgraves.

[1] My sister recently sent me an article from our high school newspaper in which I discuss my future plans to play basketball in college. Next to my name reads “2.6 GPA” . . . I worked hard to get that 2.6.

[2] http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2010/09/god-vs-the-world-series-sandy-koufaxs-yom-kippur-sacrifice/63094/ A tremendous retelling of these events.

[3] Barbara Brown Taylor in Leaving Church (Boston: Cowley Press, 2005), 136-137, italics mine.

Repainting Hell: Jeff Cook’s Closure

Last updated on: August 1, 2017 at 5:59 pm By Guest Contributor

Jeff Cook teaches philosophy at the University of Northern Colorado. He is the author of Everything New: Reimagining Heaven and Hell(Subversive 2012), and a pastor of Atlas Church in Greeley, Colorado. You can connect with him at everythingnew.org and @jeffvcook.

One thing I admire about Jeff Cook is his willingness to put his thinking on the line for others to debate, to affirm, and to question. That’s a sign of a mature thinker. Jeff and I don’t always agree but he’s a great conversation partner, and I think most of us would give him a big Bravo for his posts.

Repainting Hell: Justice

A number of theologians and scholars over the past century have questioned whether the church has understood hell correctly. The most widely held view has interpreted “hell” as “eternal conscious torment,” but this view is not as easy to justify through the scriptures or through reason as we might think given its prominence. Over the past month I have set out to present five philosophical ways of knowing hell is not eternal conscious torment.

Linked are the first four arguments from (1) Personal Identity, (2) The End of Evil, (3) The Desires of God, and (4) The Argument from Location. Benjamin Corey has picked up this conversation here and here, as well.

(Interesting to me, few if any traditionalist have taken time to respond to these claims, but we have had countless universalists jumping in to suggest that annihilationism only appears to do a better job than traditionalism. They’ve argued that annihilation is susceptible to the same problems as eternal conscious torment. Perhaps we will need to do another series on that in the future … )

Way Five: The Nature of Justice

A primary argument for eternal conscious torment is that it advances justice. As a sample of the many thinkers advocating this line of thought, I will highlight Randy Alcorn, who wrote, “When I think of Hell, I recall a man I met on a train out of Kiev, whose mother was the only one of twelve children in her family to survive Stalin’s enforced starvation in Ukraine. I think about Vek and Samoeun Taing, as they walked us through the Killing Fields, telling us of the atrocities committed against their families. Without Hell, justice would never overtake the unrepentant tyrants responsible for murdering millions. Perpetrators of evil throughout the ages would get away with murder—and rape, and torture, and every evil.”

Alcorn goes on in the same post to reject the annihilationist view because “annihilation would not satisfy God’s justice … If it were true, annihilation might itself raise a serious moral problem, for it suggests that our sins are not so grievous and the consequences for committing them are painless, or at worst exist only for a limited time.”

So, What is Justice?

In the New Testament, the word for justice and righteousness are the same (dikaiosuné). When speaking of the creation, justice is the state of being “right”. The image is one of reality being set correctly in line with God’s teleological purposes. Justice is a description of creation as it ought to be.

Now, to say eternal conscious torment advances justice means this punishment some how brings about the teleological purposes of the Creator. Hell then is a tool for repairing the damage done to God’s creation and putting reality right.

The question then is: Does the interpretation of hell as eternal conscious torment bring about creation as it ought to be? Does the creation of an indefinite state of torment solve the problems of sin, death and rebellion at work in God’s world?

Let’s get technical for a moment.

Punishment are a common tool for creating justice. A punishment may be initiated for: Retribution (the punishment is imposed to satisfy an offended party), for Deterrence (punishment inflicted to deter both the punished and the rest of society from acting in a certain way), forRehabilitation (punishment is meant to reform the offender’s behavior), for Incapacitation (offender is separated from the rest of society to prevent further damage), for Reparation (repayments are made to the victims), or for Denunciation (a public rebuke is voiced to reinforce moral standards).

The most common argument for eternal conscious torment are, like Alcorn’s, retributive (though Josh Ryan Butler and others have argued for hell as incapacitation, and many argue for value in the threat of eternal conscious torment as a deterrence).

So is eternal conscious torment a “just” retributive punishment? Let’s look at three failed attempts by popular scholars.

(1) Retribution and Math

Dante envisioned hell as a set of circles each becoming more graphic the worse one’s sins in life. Some of the damned would suffer slightly, where the true tyrants–as acorn argued–would suffer more. Interestingly enough, this view does not stand mathematically.

Math gets real interesting when you bring in infinite quantities. For example:

Infinity multiplied by infinity equals infinity: ∞ x ∞ = ∞

But notice, infinity multiplied by one also equals infinity: ∞ x 1 = ∞

In fact, an infinite amount multiplied by any positive whole number will be infinite, and this has huge implications for Eternal Conscious Torment.

The problem for the argument made by Alcorn and Dante is that given eternity, everyone will suffer an equal, infinite amount. No matter what one’s sins or the imposed level of torment, the slothful and genocidal will all enjoy an equivalent amount of torment.

As such, the Killing Fields and Russian Gulag illustrations Alcorn pressed actually showcase how unjust an infinite hell is, for those who sins were not stained with blood (let’s say the tabloid gossip) shall suffer the same amount as the genocidal butcher. If eternal conscious torment is aiming at retributive justice it fails to dish out the punishment in fair amounts: everyone thrown into the traditional hell would suffer the maximum punishment no matter what sin they committed.

(2) Damage to God

Now a thinker like John Piper offers a way out. He thinks those going to hell all commit the same sin. He writes, “If infinitely valuable glory has been spurned and the offer of eternal joy in God has been finally rejected, an indignity against God has been committed so despicable as to merit eternal suffering.”

A few thoughts:

First, this means that those going to hell are not being punished for any heinous act they have done in life, but only for the sin of “rejecting God”. This does not seem to square with the many passages in the scripture that imply hell is the punishment for specific kinds of sins (ex. Matthew 5:22).

But secondly, given God’s power and goodness, I would contend it is impossible to actually hurt God. Being omnipotent and omni-benevolent, God cannot be harmed. As Socrates argued no evil can affect a good person, and an all-powerful being can only be injured if that all-powerful being allows such damage. In this light, CS Lewis observed, all the trash we throw at Christ either slides off him or turns to glory.

Here’s hook: by condemning souls to eternal torment, Piper’s God would be punishing souls for actions that had absolutely no effect on him.

Now, has “the offer of eternal joy” been rejected? Yes. Does it “merit eternal suffering”? This is hardly clear. Pausing, let us ask what would be the just punishment for rejecting the only life available? If one chooses not to embrace “life” would not the proper response be to grant their wishes as the annihilationist argue?

(3) Infinite Consequences

William Lane Craig argues something similar to Piper. “The refusal to accept Christ and his sacrifice” said Craig, “seems to be a sin of a different order altogether. For this sin decisively separates one from God and His salvation. To reject Christ is to reject God Himself. And this is a sin of infinite gravity and proportion and therefore deserves infinite punishment. We ought not, therefore, to think of hell primarily as punishment for the array of sins of finite consequence which we have committed, but as the just due for a sin of infinite consequence, namely the rejection of God Himself.”

Again, Craig is suggesting immoral actions are not the target of retributive punishment (as many biblical text argue), but that it is the singlesin of “rejecting God himself” that holds an “infinite gravity.”

Notice again, we have the mathematical concept of an “Infinite” value to consider here. I would suggest that Craig is giving power to human beings which God alone possesses. Consider: How can a finite creature move the levers to produce an effect of “infinite gravity”? That sounds like heavy lifting. How would one establish such power in a human person?

More importantly, only an omnipotent being could commit acts of “infinite consequence.” Because God alone is omnipotent—and could conceivably erase any consequences of human actions—this argument fails. Unless one is all-powerful, one cannot perform an act that has infinite gravity and proportion.

Ending with Justice

There are countless other phrasings of the justice argument for eternal conscious torment worthy of consideration and I would welcome those lines of thought in the comment section, but to close I would return to God’s target in his actions: his desire for justice.

The Father, through Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit, aims at reclaiming his world from the power of sin and death that his children might dwell with him in the age to come. Any theory of hell must make sense in the light of the New Creation.

Because Jesus will “renew”, “restore,” “reconcile,” “unite all things in heaven and on earth,” because he will “liberate creation from its bondage to decay,” because Christ is the “heir of all things” who is making “all things new” and because the “Father has placed everything in his hands”, we anticipate Jesus Christ enacting now the palingenesia—the second genesis—the new creation, right in the middle of this one.

Hell as traditionally conceived simply does not fit into this picture, and as such it has no place in our theories about the future plans of the resurrected Son of God.

As I have argued over the past month, eternal conscious torment cannot make sense of a human soul’s existence over time, it does not line up with the desires of God prior to creation, it does not make sense of the nature of justice, it cannot be found on the map of a Christian cosmology, and it fails to end the effects of evil in God’s good world. For these reasons and others, it is time for Christians to reclaim the biblical picture of death as the final state of the wicked. Because God is love, because his anger endures for a moment but his mercy endures forever, we should reject the traditional view of hell.

Are Scientists Really Split on Evolution? By Austin Fischer

Last updated on: May 28, 2015 at 11:23 am By Scot McKnight

Evangelicals, Scientists, and the “Evolution Split” (by Austin Fischer)

As a pastor in the heart of the evangelical south, few topics are more difficult and divisive to address than those surrounding evolution. Those of us committed to the idea that there is no fundamental conflict between honest faith and honest science (and how could there be?) finds ourselves tiptoeing through a minefield, staying faithful to Scripture while interacting with a rapidly changing world. And of course the only thing more difficult than tiptoeing through the minefield is leading a whole community of people through the minefield with you.

In my tiptoeing, I’ve come to a realization that might be helpful for others doing their own.

In the minds of many of our people, scientists are, more or less, split over the theory of evolution (by which I mean the general theory that humans have evolved over time and didn’t instantly appear as is 6000 or so years ago). They probably couldn’t assign any percentages to what they think the split is and probably haven’t thought about it that much. Rather, they vaguely perceive that some scientists believe in evolution and some don’t.

There are numerous reasons for that perception, but I won’t examine them here except to note that a benefit of thinking that way is you feel you don’t really have to take evolution seriously because “lots” of scientists don’t.

What I want to briefly focus on is the reality of the situation in regards to what scientists think about evolution. Surveys on such things are notoriously difficult because there is so much nuance surveys simply cannot take into account. For example, which scientists do we survey? All scientists? Do we survey meteorologists? If so, why? That’s not their field and so surveying them in regards to evolution is about as helpful (maybe less) as surveying a Hebrew scholar as to his beliefs on modern ecclesiology.[1]

But setting that aside, most surveys I have seen—no matter which scientists are polled and what the exact question is—put the percentage of scientists who affirm evolution hovering around 90 to 99%. [For example, there was a poll in 1987 in which only 700 out of 480,000 US earth and life scientists gave credence to rejection of evolution.[2] Or there was a 1991 Gallup poll in which 5% of US scientists affirmed creationism.[3] A 2009 Pew poll found that 97% of scientists believe humans evolved over time.[4] The recent Pew poll has 98% of AAAS scientists affirming humans evolved over time.[5]]

But here’s where it gets interesting. According to a recent Pew survey, only about 65% of the general US public understands that.[6] In other words, around 30% of the public thinks scientists are “split” over evolution. There is a popular misconception that scientists are split over evolution. I could not find a place where the survey examined this constituency, but I would venture that a high percentage of these people are evangelical.

This raises a difficult ethical dilemma.

Suspending all judgment on what we should think about evolution, how should we (pastors) handle the widespread misconception among our people that scientists are split on evolution? What is our responsibility? What serves our people best? Do we continue to let them hold to the misconception (or maybe even encourage it) if we feel it bolsters our position? I see that happening a lot.

I can’t help but feel that no matter where we fall on evolution, we are doing a great disservice to our people when we perpetuate the myth that scientists are split on evolution. We are building a house of cards. Scientists are not split on evolution. You can massage the numbers all you want but you can never in good conscience call it a split.

Where do we go from there?

These are delicate matters and much can hang in the balance. But Jesus said he was the truth and so I don’t think perpetuating well-intentioned urban myths in the name of faith is a viable strategy. If you want to go the route of radical scientific skepticism and suggest a conspiracy among scientists to subvert religion with evolution, that’s fine (I’ve heard crazier). If you must, call scientists conspirators and enemies of the faith.

But don’t say they’re split on evolution.

[1] And on this point, most surveys show that support for evolution is higher among those who specialize in fields that would make them “experts” on the issue.

[2] Martz, Larry; McDaniel, Ann (1987). “Keeping God Out of Class (Washington and bureau reports)”. Newsweek (Newsweek Inc.) CIX (26): 22–23.

[3] http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_publi.htm

[4] http://www.people-press.org/2009/07/09/section-5-evolution-climate-change-and-other-issues/

[5] http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/29/chapter-3-attitudes-and-beliefs-on-science-and-technology-topics/

[6] http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/29/public-and-scientists-views-on-science-and-society/

Willard and a Gentle Apologetics

Last updated on: May 29, 2015 at 6:16 am By Scot McKnight

Today I want to conclude this brief series on Dallas Willard’s view of apologetics in his new book, The Allure of Gentleness. And this means some random topics at work in this fine new book.

First, the disconnect between some who believe in Jesus but not God.

Many Christians, in their heart of hearts, also believe that their faith is just another superstition. They really do. That is why I often say that I know many people who believe in Jesus, but don’t believe in God (12).

Second, knowledge and truth defined:

I define knowledge as being able to deal with things as they are on an appropriate basis of thought and experience (13).

The traditional view of truth has always been that truth, knowledge, and reality are not matters of what you or your group think; the task of truth is to come to correct terms with what is actually there, regardless of how you or others may view it. The earth is round, you have to have gas in your tank to make your car run and money in your account to buy things, you are degraded by doing what is morally wrong, you will face judgment after death and an eternal destiny of a certain nature, regardless of what you may or may not think about such th ings (18-19).

Third, apologetics needs to turn more inward:

We need to emphasize that point strongly, because the great problem facing the gospel of Jesus Christ is not the doubt that is outside the church; it is the doubt that is inside the church. We need to be able to deal with doubt lovingly, helpfully, and especially without ever scolding or shaming anyone for doubting. We must allow people to be who they are and then be able to meet them where they are (25).

Fourth, we need to be better thinkers:

What’s key here is that the best answer to philosophy and vain deceit is good philosophy and good thinking in the Spirit of Jesus Christ (41).

Fifth, the aim is not to be Right:

That’s why so many churches have “Grace” in their name. Not many people want to go to “Right Church,” but we’ll gladly go to “Grace Church.” I’ve been to Right Church you may have been there too—it’s a tough place. There are a lot of dead people at Right Church, because life comes by grace (47).

Sixth, a brief response to the question of why God is not more obvious:

If you’re going to do apologetics in a way that is helpful for yourself and others, you’re going to have to explain why God is not more obvious than he is. One of the reasons I often give to people is that if God showed up in his full glory, we could all just kiss our free will good-bye (65).

Seventh, God’s omniscience and omnipotence:

I get a lot of resistance to the idea that God can choose not to know things, because people are concerned about God’s omniscience. But let me tell you that God’s omniscience does not overwhelm his omnipotence. God does not have to know anything he does not wish to know. His omniscience refers to his ability to know everything, just as his omnipotence refers to his ability to do anything he wishes. God’s omnipotence does not mean that he is always doing—or that he ever does—everything he can do. In the same way, he does not have to know everything he can know. He is capable of not knowing whatever he does not wish to know—should there be any such thing (66).

Eighth, on hell:

God did not create hell because he’s mad, he wants to see people suffer, and he enjoys torturing them for eternity. The only reason there is a hell is because God makes provision for what people want, and hell is simply the best God can do for some people (69-70).

Ninth, on Jews:

We need to spend some time thinking about the Jews as a people. There are no people on earth like the Jews. They owe their existence for millennia up to the present to God alone and to the truth that God gave to them in their history and in their laws, which have been incorporated into a book. The highest iteration of God that has ever been given to humanity is in the Old Testament. And the New Testament, once you understand the Old, is simply a natural consequence (99).

Finally, the ultimate apologetic is a person filled with Christlike character:

The ultimate apologetic is the life of the individual who is living out of the resources of the kingdom of God (143).

Which includes an interactive relationship of talking to and listening to God.

Many kinds of objections have been raised about the idea of God speaking to us. For example, many people feel that this is a threat to the authority of the scriptures. No, it is a threat to the authority of the scriptures to teach and to act as if God does not speak to individuals, because it is the clear teaching of the scriptures that he does speak. Read John 14. Read the book of Acts. You will see that he does. Scripture stands as an objective historical measurement of what God will say. It’s important to remember that no communication that God ever gives to anyone will ever conflict with scripture, but he also needs to say a lot of things to you that aren’t in scripture (152).

Is Faith Unintelligent? (Donald Nwankwo)

Last updated on: May 23, 2015 at 12:46 pm By Scot McKnight

By Donald Nwankwo, newly ordained Deacon in the Anglican Church.

“I don’t live by faith. I live smart,” I overheard someone say in a group conversation. I recently heard someone else comment on a TV show: “I wonder why Christians choose to live by a book written thousands of years ago. They need to get real with the times!” Have you come to wonder why, in some circles, a scientist’s professional commentary might be suspect simply on grounds of having a vibrant faith life? In a world that is increasingly reinforcing the necessity for intellectuality and reason (which is good!) there seems to be this subtle, but growing, tendency to view faith and religious belief as incongruous with intellectuality and objectivity.

So many people who hold to biblical convictions and the exercise of faith in God, but who also care about reason and rational judgment, can sometimes feel this covert social pressure to cross back and forth an imaginary bridge between a ‘realistic world’ and a ‘religious faith world’. They are invariably asking questions like, “How can I practice faith without seeming unintelligent to the onlooker?” Else, they are wondering how best to get the critic to understand, in some logic commonly accessible to both them and the critic, what and why they believe.

This might only get worse in some societies, not because faith is unintelligent, but because more and more people know less and less about religion, and how matters of faith cohere with practical life. There have been times when critics of the Christian faith had some idea of religion and so could critique what they, at least, knew some of. A different generation of critics has emerged – people who dislike religious faith from the outside, but actually know little about the spiritual life, not even from a general standpoint. Said differently, more and more people may now lack the right kinds of mental tools to generally reason through matters of faith.

When something does not make sense to any person, there are at least two possibilities. One, the logic of that concept, per se, may just lack rational consistency and coherence. In this case, it is a problem with the concept itself. Or else, the person critiquing may not actually have enough of the necessary background awareness to grasp (or follow) the logic within the realities of the very concept they are questioning. In this case the problem is with the inquisitor and their methodologies.

This is not to say that the logic of any religious belief is correct as far as they have a premise and can posit some inferences. That would be religious pluralism. [Reason itself has already determined that two variant viewpoints cannot be both correct]. But it is to say that when people have some repository of awareness of the premises of the spiritual life combined with the broad knack for analytical objectivity, then they have better footing to effectively employ their reasoning within the framework of the subject matter. So when the reasonability of faith practice comes under question within the broader society, we need to step back (as a person of faith) and ask: “Is it a problem with the internal logic of my faith as I believe it, or a problem with the other’s attempt to grasp that logic but without any background mental references?”

Let’s picture an investor in the stock market. Imagine also that he moves into a community where people know mostly of hard currency and physical markets, but very little about stocks. His neighbor considers this stock investor unreasonable: “After all, stock is not real money,” he argues, “since they are intangible and do not stand up to the primary tests by which we tell what counts for money/legal tender. You cannot walk into Walgreen’s, hand them your dividend slip and walk away with a gallon of milk.” In this sense, it does not stand to the ‘test’ of money as a tangible/physical medium of exchange in the same way as coins and bank notes do. But the investor is busy working out how much money they might lose bypassing a promising stock deal given all the strong market trends and indications. To subject stocks to the physical test of legal tender (money) is to miss the point. In fact, it demands so little of stocks in light of what they stand represent in the bigger world of the financial market. To the neighbors, the stock guy is foolish to trust all those numbers that seemingly exist only on a bunch of paper. However, that is really not as a result of the internal incoherency of the workings of stocks, but only because in this case, his community members lack the mental tools to grasp the logic of stocks within the bigger framework of the money market.

But in any case, this imaginary stock investor still lives with their predicament in their environment. They hate being perceived foolish by the non-believers (in stocks) around them. However on the other hand, they also understand how foolish it is to turn around and disbelieve what they have come to know and experience of stocks.

That, right there, is what I refer to as the paradox of faith (socially speaking). In the face of apparent foolishness of faith, the one who has truly experienced God in the life of faith knows how unreasonable it is not to believe. Back to Scriptures, almost every person of faith I have read about in Scripture was a clear thinker. After all, their narratives are replete with chronicles of people wrestling through matters of faith, options, considerations and choices. If they wrestled, they could not have been thoughtless. And all too often, those narratives unfold a realization of the sensibleness of believing and acting accordingly, at times equally portrayed by the eventual demonstration of the folly of their (or others’) choice to disbelieve.

The question is not whether believing is reasonable, but whether we keep our spiritual sensibilities vibrant so as to reasonably believe. To do this, the Scriptures and the prayerful study of them (and within a worshiping community of fellow believers) are indispensable.

Who said, "We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God"?