A Chosen People!? (RJS)

Last updated on: May 7, 2015 at 6:10 am By RJS

The second chapter of R. W. L. Moberly’s Old Testament Theology: Reading the Hebrew Bible as Christian Scripture turns to an issue that raises many questions about Judaism and Christianity – the status of Israel as a chosen people. Two related, but distinct, questions are raised in this chapter – the first is the exclusive nature of the chosen, and the second is the hērem warfare of Deuteronomy and Joshua. These are both important questions, but the first can (chosen) get lost in the second (war). We will look at the questions in two separate posts.

The claim that Israel is a chosen people runs through the Old and New Testaments, especially the Old Testament. But this claim of particularity is disturbing for many. To illustrate the tension Moberly quotes Walter Brueggemann from a conversation with Carolyn Sharp:

You know, deep in the night, I think about the whole scandal of particularity: about the chosenness of Israel and the chosenness of Jesus and the chosenness of the Church. It’s kind of chilling to think that that’s how we’ve made our faith claim. I’m haunted by that stuff. (p. 42)

The question of hell is a part of this scandal of particularity. The chosen go to heaven, the rest go to hell, even (according to some) the child enslaved, beaten, used and abused to death. As one not among the chosen hell is a deserved fate. Hell is primarily a New Testament concept, rather than an Old Testament concept, but the scandal or blessing of particularity runs deep through the story.

The election of Israel begins with Genesis 12 when God calls Abram and is made explicit in Deuteronomy 7:

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession. The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

The election of Israel is grounded in a covenant with their ancestors and reflects a faithful love – as we hear in Deuteronomy 10.

To the Lord your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. Yet the Lord set his affection on your ancestors and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations—as it is today. Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer.

Moberly reflects on this election of Israel by God and the sense of wonder and devotion to God that it should bring to the people. God’s election of Israel reflects his love of Israel and this is an end in itself. “It is justified in the way that love is justified – and love is its own justification. … Fundamentally, however, love transcends rationalizations.” (p. 46)

Not an Instrumental Election. Christians often view the election of Israel as instrumental – to bring light to the nations and save us all. Moberly quotes Rob Bell and Daniel Block as examples of what he calls canonical or instructive re-readings or misreadings of the texts concerning the election of Israel.

Interestingly both Bell and Block … shy away from YHWH’s election of Israel as an end in and of itself by depicting such a notion pejoratively (“just so they’ll feel good about themselves”; “that he might merely lavish his attention on her as if she were a pet kitten or a china dish on a shelf”). It is curious that they are unable to here articulate the nature of love of one to another as a wondrous good, of value in itself, even though I imagine that they would have no difficulty doing so in other contexts. (p. 48)

God’s love for and election of Israel is not merely instrumental any more than a man’s love for his wife, a woman’s for her husband, or a parent’s for their children is instrumental. Do you really love your spouse simply to bring blessing to the world at large? The image of Israel in the prophets is not a disobedient employee, but an adulterous spouse. Moberly continues:

This may be connected to a failure also to think through the nature of the blessing that Israel is to mediate to others (on the common Christian reading of Genesis 12:3b). For should not reception of that blessing entail a realization on the part of people in other nations that God loves them for themselves? If not, then in what does the blessing consist? Even if that love brings with it a call to serve, that service is a corollary to being loved, not the core of being loved. So too, the Israelites are loved for themselves, prior to any impact for good that they may have on others. (p. 48)

As Christians we are also God’s chosen people, the body and bride of Christ. Is this another instrumental election? Or is it an election of love? Depending on your theology you may believe this election to be universal or not, but it certainly isn’t merely instrumental. Election should inspire wonder and devotion.

Is Election Tribal and Unjust? Moberly notes that the exclusive nature of Israel’s election has come under attack. To some it represents the failing of many religions. To think that one is particularly loved by God is a warrant for abuse and oppression. Put yourself in the place of the Canaanites, the Moabites, the Egyptians or the Philistines. Is the election of Israel just? Moberly brings a number of different scholars troubled by the exclusivity of the election of Israel into the discussion. He quotes David Clines “If you adopt the point of view of the Egyptians or the Canaanites, God is not experienced as a saving God, and the only words you hear addressed to you are words of reproach and threat.” (p. 50) From the point of view of the Native Americans dispossessed from the land or those under colonial rule around the world, the idea of a chosen people and manifest destiny presents a real threat and offers little hope.

Putting aside for the moment the issue of conquest and hērem (we’ll get to it in the next post), Moberly notes that Israel was the under dog, not the top dog. Much of the abuse of the concept of a chosen people comes from those in a position of power, using the Bible in a self-serving manner. This is not the posture found in the Bible. God gives his people victory “when they are small and weak and facing apparently overwhelming odds.” (p. 51)

The particularity of election is not an easy question – perhaps the embodiment of a vocation to be the people of God, if faithful, is a blessing to the nations and a conduit for the blessing of God. God does not shower blessings solely on Israel. Although we are told “Esau I hated,” yet God did bestow blessings on Esau. There is a complexity to the narrative of Scripture, and an underlying expectation that if the other nations did repent and turn to God he would show favor to them as well. (Consider the tale of Jonah for example. Or Ruth the Moabite woman who became the mother of Obed, grandmother of Jesse, great grandmother of David despite the fact that we read in Deuteronomy 23 “no Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, not even in the tenth generation.” ) This isn’t to attempt to poke holes in Scripture, but to note that God welcomed those who turned to him. This included Ruth a Moabite woman listed in the the genealogy of Jesus (Matthew 1).

The Mystery of Grace. Moberly concludes this section on election:

On any reckoning, however, the wonder of being loved is surely not other than the mystery of grace; it is non-negotiable as a fundamental element in Jewish and Christian faiths. … [T]he question of how best one should relate the particular concerns of divine love to universal concerns of divine justice is complex and resists easy answers. For the present, my argument is simply that divine election, insofar as it expresses the mysterious grace of God, is something without which neither Jewish not Christian faiths can survive in recognizable forms. For to lose this would be to lose the particular grace that gives faith its basic meaning and rationale. (p. 52)

The exclusivity of election is troubling, but the mystery of grace and the expansiveness of love inspire awe.

Is election inherently unjust?

Was Israel’s election “merely” instrumental?

Why was Israel chosen by God? What does this mean for election within Christianity?

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.

Tension in the Letter

Last updated on: May 3, 2015 at 7:15 pm By Scot McKnight

Any sensitive reader feels the tension in 1 Corinthians. Now some claim Paul is patriarchal and thinks only males are to be teaching and talking in the gatherings of the early Christians. They can appeal quite quickly to 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 or even more forcefully to 1 Corinthans 14:33b-36. Game, set, match.

But that conclusion for the one who reads the whole letter in the context of the Book of Acts and other letters of Paul creates some serious tension with other elements in the text. Lucy Peppiatt, in Women and Worship at Corinth: Paul’s Rhetorical Arguments in 1 Corinthians, lays out the opposing evidence that forces good readers to ask how the tension can be explained. Here is her simple, irrefutable evidence:

… the obvious reality that many of Paul’s fellow workers were women. In Romans the names Mary, Tryphaena, Tryphosa, and Persis are mentioned (Rom 16:6, 12). He was happy with women as leaders of house churches (Lydia in Acts 16:14-15 and Phoebe in Rom 16:1 [Nympha in Laodicea in Col 4:15]). We know of Priscilla and Aquila, who were both leaders and who both discipled Apollos in the faith (Acts 18:26), and Phoebe, who led a church at Cenchreae (Rom 16:1). Paul refers to his friend and coworker Junia as an apostle (Rom 16:7). Furthermore, he is clearly happy with women prophesying and praying in public in Corinth, and obviously approving of Philips four daughters, who were known as prophets (Acts 21:9).

Before we continue with her statement just this observation. No one questions that women were prophets in the apostolic churches and that Paul knew it and approved of it. This to me is a clinching argument: Paul values prophecy above all gifts. Speaking the mind of God to the people of God is what Paul saw as the highest of gifts. So, Peppiatt continues:

Given the way in which he describes the gift of prophecy as being that which edifies the whole church, and given that he elevates the gift of prophecy above the gift of teaching (1 Cor 12:28 is expressed in terms of priority and precedence: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers), it would seem strange for him to implement a contradictory practice that women should stay silent. This poses an immediate problem for the verses on silencing of women.

There’s the tension. Isn’t it odd, you must agree, that he can tell women to be silent? How to explain it? If one simply appeals to hierarchy, or to patriarchy, one is dealt a self-defeating blow by the reality that women were prophets in public places (prophets don’t talk to themselves). Thus, we must have a different explanation for the silence in those two Pauline texts. What might that be?

Peppiatt’s conclusion is that (1) Paul’s relationship with the Corinthians has a long history and that the letter reflects conversations and correspondence between himself and them, and (2) 1 Corinthians 11:2-16 reflects that complex back and forth. It is not simply Paul speaking but Paul citing and responding and commenting and quoting and responding and their responding … and as I said in an earlier post, the one who read the letter to the Corinthians knew how to perform the letter just as the Corinthians knew exactly who was saying what because they, after all, knew their own communications with Paul.

Put another way, there is tension here and it might not be an inconsistent Paul but readers who are sensitive enough to Paul’s tension with some at Corinth who don’t like it that God has empowered women to prophesy, pray and teach. The tension can be resolved by positing citations in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. [I will develop her argument in later posts. Today I just want to observe tension and resolution through citation discovered by observing rhetoric at work.]

I quote again what I quoted earlier: this is Peppiatt’s reconstruction of who said what in 1 Corinthians 11:2-16.

The italics are words from those Corinthians with whom Paul is disagreeing:

1Cor. 11:2   I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions just as I handed them on to you.  3 But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the husband is the head of his wife, and God is the head of Christ.

4 Any man who prays or prophesies with something on his head disgraces his head,  5 but any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled disgraces her head—it is one and the same thing as having her head shaved.

6 For if a woman will not veil herself, then she should cut off her hair; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or to be shaved, she should wear a veil.

7 For a man ought not to have his head veiled, since he is the image and reflection of God; but woman is the reflection of man.  8 Indeed, man was not made from woman, but woman from man.  9 Neither was man created for the sake of woman, but woman for the sake of man.  10 For this reason a woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.

11 Nevertheless, in the Lord woman is not independent of man or man independent of woman.  12 For just as woman came from man, so man comes through woman; but all things come from God.  13 Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head unveiled?  14 Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is degrading to him,  15 but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering.  16 But if anyone is disposed to be contentious—we have no such [“no other”] custom, nor do the churches of God.

Single, Female, Missionary

Last updated on: May 5, 2015 at 11:09 am By Scot McKnight

I am sent a link to The Southern Blog, hosted by Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where Danielle Hurley asks herself the questions about single females who wonder if they are called to missionary work. She frames the questions and then answers them. First her framing of the questions:

So you’re interested in overseas missions? You aren’t sure, but have a sneaking suspicion that God has called you to a life of serving him overseas? Do you have a strong desire to live outside of America? Would you like to spend your short days living in light of eternity?

I dip into her answers, which begin nobly with the calling for all of us to focus on the great commission, and then I will pose our different way of doing things at Northern Seminary when it comes to such questions and answers. One of her emphases is distinguishing desires from callings.

Question 1: As a young woman, if you have a desire to make disciples outside of America, does it mean you are called specifically to overseas missions?

Maybe, but not always. A desire should not be misunderstood as a calling. It may simply be a feeling. This feeling may be from God, or it may be an impulse of your own heart. What is clear is what is revealed in God’s Word. Before looking at your specific calling, let’s look at God’s calling for women in general. According to God’s Word, God’s highest calling for most women is being a wife and mom (Genesis 2:18; Titus 2:4). As a wife, I am designed to help my husband be the best man he can be as he lives out his calling to make disciples. So this means that if I am married, I can be confident that I am following God’s calling when I support my husband in his calling. If you are called to singleness, you are still created to be a helper in a general sense to the body of Christ, but you are also able to maximize your giftedness in a unique, devoted way (1 Cor. 7:32-35). So if you are single, I would encourage you to find a ministry that you love with leaders that you can work under and help. Then devote yourself to helping them be the best they can be as they further the kingdom.

[She then explores singleness and missionary work and you can read the rest of the piece at the link above.]

Well, on this one there is likely to be some strenuous disagreement [Does “helper in a general sense” refer to helping male-led ministries? The same for “leaders that you can work under and help”?] and I could get into a lengthy discussion about women and ministry, but the whole answer she gives is framed by complementarianism, what a wife’s calling is, and motherhood — and singleness fits within that larger pattern of thought.

If I may be so bold, I speak now for Northern:

1. Not all are complementarians so not all (I mean Northern) would begin where Danielle Hurley begins. In fact, for the egalitarian or mutualist (my preferred term) the answers she proposes can irritate a different kind of calling not to mention a significantly different hermeneutic that turns the whole answer upside down. I have written about this both in The Blue Parakeet and Junia is Not Alone.

2. We would answer this by asking What is the Spirit of God leading you to do? What has the Spirit of God gifted you to do? What kind of recognition does your church give your perception of your calling? What kind of evaluations are you given by others who know you well? We don’t ask if you are female or male or if you are married or not. Nor — so far as I know — will you be asked to think about helping male-led ministries on the foreign field. We want to focus on God’s gifting, regardless of who has the gift. Galatians 3:28 and Colossians 3:11, not to ignore the wonderful stories of women prophets and deacons and apostles in the NT.

3. The history of missions — and I’m now talking in general about the 19th and 20th Century missionary movement, was heavily populated by women, many of them single (and heroic at times), who heard a call, who remained single and celibate, who entered into the discernment processes, who were approved and who went and served faithfully. I knew two (at that time) wonderful, godly, courageous single women who went off to the mission field and who returned “on furlough” to regal us with stories of God’s grace through their ministries, which included plenty of teaching. My father once told me one of them — I think her name was Grace Jepsen — knew more Bible and theology than anyone at our church.

That history of missions gives a different narrative into which we can insert these questions and provide answers.

Consider Melchizedek … and Adam (RJS)

Last updated on: May 5, 2015 at 5:39 am By RJS

The next chapter of John Walton’s new book The Lost World of Adam and Eve focuses directly on the question of historicity. Walton holds to Adam and Eve as historical individuals, although they are used primarily as archetypal examples in Scripture. Here he lays out his argument for historicity. But first … he considers Melchizedek. This example helps to highlight the complexity of the question and the nature of inspiration.

Melchizedek appears in three passages of Scripture – Genesis 14, Psalm 110, and Hebrews 5-7. If it were not for the last passage we, as Christians, would pay him little attention. First, in Genesis 14 in a rather enigmatic section he welcomes Abram back from a successful campaign to rescue Lot and his family who were taken in a raid on Sodom:

Then Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High,and he blessed Abram, saying,

“Blessed be Abram by God Most High,
Creator of heaven and earth.
And praise be to God Most High,
who delivered your enemies into your hand.”

Then Abram gave him a tenth of everything.

The reference in Psalm 110 is equally enigmatic:

The Lord has sworn
and will not change his mind:
“You are a priest forever,
in the order of Melchizedek.”

Although the Torah restricts the priesthood to a specific family line in the tribe of Levi, the royal priesthood connecting king and priest – common in the ancient Near East – is invoked through the example of Melchizedek. These two references led to diverse speculation in Jewish thinking – which we know from the Dead Sea Scrolls, the writings of Philo, and other sources.

By the time we get to Hebrews 7, these Jewish traditions are mixed into the consideration of Melchizedek. The author of Hebrews is not drawing his information on Melchizedek solely from the Old Testament; he is also interacting with the traditions known to his audience. It is the Jewish profile of Melchizedek, not just the canonical profile, that informs his comparison. He need not accept their beliefs, but he is demonstrating that Christ’s position is superior to the position in which they have placed others. He therefore relates not only to the Melchizedek of history, but to the Melchizedek of Jewish imagination. … The point for the author of Hebrews is not to argue the validity of his audience’s belief one way or another but to use their beliefs for a comparison to Christ. (p. 98)

Clearly there is far more involved here than a simple question of historicity. The argument doesn’t actually depend on the historicity of Melchizedek at all. Although some may argue that the giving of the tithe in 7:4-10 should have historical basis, not merely literary basis for the argument to work (and Walton appears to feel this way himself), I disagree. Melchizedek may well be a historical figure, but the strength of the argument in Hebrews doesn’t depend on this – or on the ancient understanding of reproduction that Levi was in the body of his ancestor.

Another example is found in the book of Jude where reference to a well known literary fact is separated from historical fact.

This is the path typically followed in the interpretation of Jude 14: “Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about them.” Even very conservative interpreters consider this a reflection of a literary truth, not a historical truth. None of them seriously considers the Enoch from the book of Genesis to be the author of the intertestamental book of Enoch. (p. 100)

If the book of Jonah is, in fact, satire rather than history as many interpreters believe – then the references to Jonah in the New Testament are references to a literary truth rather than a historical truth. But this does not diminish the impact of the statements made by Jesus concerning Jonah and three days in the fish. Walton doesn’t mention this as an example – and I don’t know his position on the book of Jonah – but it is an example that occurred to me as I read the chapter (see Satire or History? for more discussion of Jonah).

What does have to do with the question of Adam and Eve? As Melchizedek has a significant “after-life” in Jewish literature, so to do Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve, however, receive far more attention in Genesis then does Melchizedek, so there is more canonical basis for the subsequent literature. Nonetheless Walton asks if Paul could be interacting with a literary Adam rather than a historical Adam.

If Paul is interacting with a literary Adam and Eve, it is with Adam and Eve as described in Genesis 2-3. Paul’s points about Adam and Eve center on sin and death (Rom 5), Adam as dust of the earth (1 Cor 15) and that Eve was deceived (2 Cor 11, 1 Tim 2).

Though these find significant elaboration in the Jewish traditional literature, they all have their rooting in the Old Testament text. As a result they cannot be dismissed as simply reflecting Jewish traditions with which Paul was interacting. (p. 100)

Walton does not find what Paul or his audience believed about Adam and Eve or Melchizedek or Enoch to be significant. What he does find significant are the elements that Paul made the foundation of his teaching – and this he sees as centered in the Fall.

Why believe in a historical Adam and Eve? Walton sees two primary reasons for believing in a historical Adam and Eve, one textual and one theological. The textual reason is the genealogies. Adam is included in the ancestor lists of Genesis 5, 1 Chron. 1, and Luke 3. In the ancient world genealogies included real people. They may be organized politically rather than by lineage ties, they may refer to groups rather than individuals, the lifespans may not be accurate, but “genealogies from the ancient world contain the names of real people who inhabited a real past.” There can be legendary, literary, and political elements to the organization – but the people listed actually existed once upon a time. Thus Walton sees no reason to doubt that there once was a person, referred to as Adam in Genesis 2-3 who actually lived. “By putting Adam in the ancestor lists, the authors of Scripture are treating him as a historical person.” (p. 102)

The theological reason concerns the centrality of the Fall in the New Testament (it plays no further role in the Old Testament).

The New Testament views the reality of sin and its resulting need for redemption as having entered at a single point in time (punctiliar) through a specific event in time and space. Furthermore, Paul correlated that punctiliar event with a corresponding act of redemption: the death of Christ with its resulting atonement – also a punctiliar event. … [T]he punctiliar nature of the redemptive act is compared to the punctiliar nature of the fall, which therefore requires a historical event played out by historical people. (p. 102-103)

The theological significance of Adam and the Fall will come up again in later chapters – including one contributed by N.T. Wright. Walton concludes “the question of the historical Adam has more to do with sin’s origins than with material human origins.” (p. 103)

Do you find Walton’s reasoning convincing?

What questions or counter points would you raise?

(Any comment that impugns John’s motives – e.g. “he has to believe that because he works at Wheaton” – will be summarily deleted. Deal with his arguments and reasoning, pro or con.)

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.

Are Women meant to wield society power? (by Katelyn Beaty)

Last updated on: May 5, 2015 at 5:23 am By Scot McKnight

ARE WOMEN MEANT TO WIELD SOCIETAL POWER? (A response to “Males and Their Friends,” by Alastair Roberts)

The following is an adapted excerpt from the forthcoming book Co.Creators: The Christian Call for Women to Work (Howard/Simon&Schuster, summer 2016). Katelyn Beaty is print managing editor of Christianity Today magazine, where she co-founded Her.meneutics in 2009.

Today when we hear the word patriarchy, we think of something like this definition from sociologist Allan G. Johnson, author of The Gender Knot:

A society is patriarchal to the degree that it promotes male privilege by being male dominated, male identified, and male centered. . . . positions of authority—political, economic, legal, religious, educational, military, domestic—are generally reserved for men.”[1]

In other words, patriarchy today is a negative term for societies set up, intentionally or otherwise, to socially, politically, and economically benefit men, simply because they are men. The Patriarchy has become one sharp, hashtaggable shorthand for everything wrong with a society that oppresses, ignores, and justifies violence against women.

For some Christians, though, patriarchy is a society that reflects the created order of God, who intended for men to lead not as harsh dictators but as gentle loving fathers and husbands. The word patriarch comes from the Greek pater, meaning “father,” and arkhein, meaning “to rule”—similar to the word paterfamilias, a father or older male who governs an extended family. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are often called the patriarchs of Israel, and today the word is still used for bishops in the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic churches.

“Christianity is undergirded by a vision of patriarchy,” wrote Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, in 2006.[2] In a paper for the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Moore notes that the language most Christians use for the Godhead is irreducibly male, as are the recipients of the covenants and promises of Israel. He writes that Scripture’s big picture “trajectory” actually leads to patriarchy. It’s a “loving, sacrificial, protective leadership of human fathers, in the home and in the church (Eph. 3:14–15; Matt. 7:9–11; Heb. 12:5–11),” Moore writes.

While he doesn’t explicitly state it, it’s hard to imagine that Moore wouldn’t extend this vision of “loving, sacrificial, protective leadership” to the rest of society, beyond home and church. If men’s leadership images the Godhead and his work in the world, then a society in which women lead, at least in any significant or systemic way, would seem to contradict the created order.

More recently, writers like Alastair Roberts [featured recently on this blog] point to men’s natural “agency,” generation of power, confidence, and physical strength to argue that God “intended for men to wield the majority of creational and societal power.” Roberts exposits Genesis 1–3 this way:

The man was created before the woman and was created for the immediate purpose of taming and cultivating the world, bringing order to the creation. . . . The task of naming the creation—notice that naming is a task of the first three days—is particularly entrusted to the man. Man is also typically more physiologically and psychologically equipped for and oriented towards this.

By contrast, prior to the Fall the woman seems to be placed under the tutelage of the man. It is the man who is held particularly responsible for upholding the moral boundaries and order of the garden.

In Roberts’s telling, Adam typifies all men, Eve typifies all women, and the Garden typifies the world.

It’s a world in which the life work of Alice Seeley Harris would have seemed strange, unnatural, and even unwomanly.

PROPHETIC PHOTOS

Harris was born in 1870, at the height of the Victorian Era. The British Empire was enjoying innovation, industry, and prosperity in every sector of society. Queen Victoria was one of the few women who wielded public authority on account of the monarchy, and ruled the largest empire the world had yet seen. India, Australia, South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Canada, and Malaya (now Malaysia) were all jewels in the crown of the Empire.

But though this crown sat on the head of a woman, British culture, like ours, rested mostly on the achievements and cultural power of men. Pervasive in the Victorian Era was the notion of “separate spheres”—that women were naturally suited to oversee the private sphere of home and family life, while men were naturally suited to oversee the public sphere of economy activity and civic leadership. To be sure, the idea that “a woman’s place is in the home” can be traced to ancient Greece, traditional Judaism, and historic Christianity. But it became enshrined as moral and spiritual fact in Great Britain by 1850, as it would in the United States in the same century.

Apparently Alice did not feel restricted to the domestic sphere when she married John Hobbis Harris in 1898. Alice had been working at a London post office while training to be a missionary, one of the few professions of the time that allowed women to travel the world. It was the century of foreign Protestant missions, spurred by the Second Great Awakening and trailblazers such as William Carey in India, Hudson Taylor in mainland China, David Livingstone in southern and central Africa. Women, even single women, would join their ranks in unprecedented numbers in this century, bringing with them education and reform to many poor communities.

The year they married, the Harrisessailed to the Belgian Congo, a region in Central Africa then controlled by King Leopold II of Belgium. Since 1885, Leopold had claimed the Congo Free State (CFS) as his personal property, ostensibly to make straight the path for the gospelto take root in its basins and rainforests. Instead, Leopold turned the CFS into a labor camp to exploit the region’s rubber and ivory supplies. It was grueling work that took the lives of an estimated 10 million Congolese.

This is the brutalitythat Alicefound when the Harrises arrived in the Belgian Congo. That brutality would arrive at her mission’s doorstep one day, when a man named Nsala appeared holding a small package. Here is how journalist Judy Pollard Smith imagines it, based on Alice’s records:

I could see that the young man at the front of the group was particularly devastated. His face was twisted in anguish. His friends led him forward by his elbows toward me. . . . The young man sank onto the porch and I thought he may collapse. He was carrying a small bundle bound about in plantain leaves. . . . Their eyes were fixed steadily on me as I unwrapped the parcel. I opened it with greater care than was usual because I was not sure what I was in for, given the way they looked at me with such burden etched on each face. To my own horror out fell two tiny pieces of human anatomy: a tiny child’s foot, a tiny hand.

Nsala had carried the remains of his 5-year-old girl, killed by officers with the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company, to the missionaries.

And in response, Alice did something remarkable. She asked Nsala to pose, then took a photograph of him sitting on the veranda, staring down at the severed hand and foot of his child. The year before Alice and John had left for Africa, Kodak had debuted its Bulls-Eye camera, which could process photographs without a darkroom. Alice began using one to document Congolese who had been beaten and maimed by officers, first sending photos back to the magazine of their host agency, the interdenominational Congo Balolo Mission. Within five years, Alice’s photos had circulated beyond the magazine, composing the Harris Lantern Slide Show, which was shown throughout England and eventually the United States. Ordinary citizens who had assumed Leopold’s rule was civilizing and beneficial were faced instead with the irrefutable carnage of colonialism.

After returning to England in 1905, Alice and John joined the Congo Reform Association, formed to draw attention to the plight of Congolese living under Leopold’s rule. One person who was directly and profoundly affected by Alice’s photos was Mark Twain. In 1905, he wrote a satirical first-person essay in the voice of Leopold, who despairs, “The Kodak has been a sole calamity for us. The most powerful enemy indeed . . . the only witness I couldn’t bribe!” Some editions of King Leopold’s Soliloquy include reprints of Alice’s photo of Nsala.

The campaign against Leopold’s rule in the CFS grew to a global hum, and by 1908, control of the Congo had finally fallen to the Belgian government. Alice, of course, worked within a vast network of journalists, explorers, and other missionaries laboring to ensure that Leopold’s violence was on display for the world to see. But the power of her photography is incontrovertible. As one UK journalist notes, “The fact that Leopold lost his unfettered control so soon after Alice’s photos were made widely available to the public in Europe tells its own story.” Today Alice is remembered as one of the first to use photography to campaign for human rights. Within a few decades of Alice’s campaign, Dorothea Lange would capture the exodus of migrant laborers moving to California, challenging the Depression-era agricultural policies.

INVITED TO CULTURAL POWER

“We live in the world that culture has made,” writes Andy Crouch in Culture Making. It’s a culture that comes to us indelibly marked by Alice Seeley Harris, whom we remember not only as a woman doing apparently unwomanly things, but chiefly as a woman serving Christ, adding streams of his truth, love, and mercy to the flow of human history. She’s one of the many women whose missionary work became the single greatest factor in determining the rise of democracy in the Congo, South Africa, and China. In one of the most amazing stories Christianity Today magazine has published, journalist Andrea Palpant Dilley surveyed the explosive findings of sociologist Robert Woodberry. Over 10 years, using a complex series of tests made to account for other factors, Woodberry found that

Areas where Protestant missionaries had a significant presence in the past are on average more economically developed today, with comparatively better health, lower infant mortality, lower corruption, greater literacy, higher educational attainment (especially for women), and more robust membership in nongovernmental associations.

To be sure, Harris never had to ask for a flex-time arrangement with her supervisor or find a secluded corner of the office building in order to pump breast milk. She was taking her photos more than 50 years before the United Kingdom passed an Equal Pay Act, following on the heels (heels no higher than an inch, mind you) of the US Equal Pay Act of 1963. She and John would have received financial backing from sponsors back home, enough to cover only the simplest of living expenses. Mentoring, the boardroom’s male-female ratio, and retirement planning—Alice would have known none of the complexities of women working today.

But Alice and her photography get at a deeper, eternal truth about our work. Whether you work full-time or part-time or not at all; whether you are a college student and figuring out what you want to study, or are a stay-at-home mom raising little ones, or an empty nester searching to make the most of your last years, this is a truth for you: God has invited you, his image bearer, to weave your story into the larger story of the world that culture has made. It’s a world that appears, by nearly every worldly account, to be sustained by men but is ultimately sustained by God, who is also bent on redeeming it. And one of the ways he intends to redeem it is to invite his redeemed image bearers to shape and reshape culture through their work. Simply because you bear the image of the Creator, you are made to create; because you bear the image of the Ruler, you are made to rule. When King David marveled that God “crowned [mankind] with glory and honor,” that God “made them rulers over the works of your hands; you have put everything under their feet,” David is talking not only about rulers, or men. He is talking about you.

I’m writing this book because I believe every woman is called to make something of the world—to take the basic elements of time, resources, and community and create something good. It’s there in the first pages of Scripture: God, the ultimate creator, invites Adam and Eve to join him in spending their days fashioning a world where humans and the whole creation flourish. But somewhere between the Garden and today, many Christian women have been alienated from the gift of work. Neither the secular world nor the Christian world has really helped women rediscover it. Books like Lean In encourage women to ask for the pay raise or speak up in meetings, giving (relatively privileged) women some tools to integrate work into the rest of their lives and labor for corporate gender parity. But very rarely is it explained what those tools are for, what we are building with the tools beyond our own, small professional kingdoms.

Meanwhile, the US church has enjoyed a renaissance of reclaiming the goodness of professional work. These conversations are a welcome departure from the sacred-secular divide that has dominated Christian understandings of vocation. But too often, Christian conversations about work are led by men and directed toward men, giving the impression that work is a gift mostly for men. It remains the case that the faith-at-work movement is led mostly by men and therefore assumes a distinctly male life trajectory.

This book, I hope, invites many more women to discover the responsibility and privilege of tending our world. At this point, you have probably surmised that I don’t believe men alone bear the cultural responsibility of tending our world, the one that God is redeeming. This doesn’t mean that differences between men and women aren’t real or aren’t important. It just means that those differences are no hindrance to taking up the imago Dei responsibility to “work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men” (Col. 3:23). I hope this book helps you discover the gift and joy of work.

[1] Johnson, Allan G., The Gender Knot: Unraveling Our Patriarchal Legacy (Temple University Press, 1997), p. 5.

[2] http://cdn1.russellmoore.com/documents/2005ETS.pdf

The Significance of the End: Death, Judgement, Heaven and Hell (RJS)

Last updated on: April 28, 2015 at 6:11 am By RJS

The last couple of chapters in John Polkinghorne’s book The God of Hope and the End of the World deal with the four last things (death, judgment, heaven, and hell) and with their significance. There is something of a divide within the church … between those who preach hell, fire, and brimstone and those who find such ideas part of a barbaric past we’ve out grown. Now this is a caricature of course, but there is a tendency to either overemphasize coming judgment or to dismiss it altogether. John Polkinghorne counters: “Those of us who adopt the more balanced stance of an inaugurated eschatology will not be content with a neglect of the Four Last Things.” (p. 124) His penultimate chapter is structured around these four things.

Death. Death, in Christian thinking, is an evil to be overcome. It is a darkness that is accepted in the light and hope of the resurrection. Polkinghorne points out that even Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane experienced a reluctance in the face of mortality. Humans were not created immortal, but there is a bitterness to mortality that accompanies a broken connection with God.

As self-consciousness dawned – itself a process as difficult to envision as it is certain that it happened – there would surely also have dawned a form of God-consciousness. The episode that theologians call the Fall can then be understood as a turning away from God into the human self, by which our ancestors became curved in upon themselves and alienated from the divine reality. This was not the cause of physical death but it gave to that experience the spiritual dimension of mortality. Self-conscious beings could anticipate their future death, but at the same time they had become divorced from the God who is the only hope of a destiny beyond that death. (p. 126)

This life lived is significant, and we should make every effort to be “right with God” and to proclaim and teach the gospel. Polkinghorne does not think, however, that an “iron curtain comes down at death” with no subsequent opportunity for repentance. The mercy of a God will surely allow “those who, through circumstances beyond their control, have never truly heard the gospel of Christ, or never had a real opportunity to respond in to its call in this life” a chance to respond. (p. 128)

Judgement. Judgement is and will be real, something we should fear and something we all face. (Image: Michelangelo’s interpretation in the Sistine Chapel) Polkinghorne makes three points concerning the judgement to come.

One it that God is a holy God whose kingdom is the realm of moral purity. … The Cross of Christ is the measure of the costliness of divine forgiveness. Sin is no trivial matter, but it is in fact a deadly matter. … [J]udgement is no superficial matter nor one of mere conventionality but the recognition of the nature of reality. (p. 128-129)

The stern images and warnings in Scripture should be taken seriously.

The second point is one with which some may take exception. Polkinghorne suggests that we shouldn’t assign people unambiguously to the company of the blessed or the company of the damned. We are neither wholly sheep nor wholly goat.

Perhaps judgement is a process rather than a verdict. Perhaps its fire is the cleansing fire that burns away the dross of our lives; its suffering the consequence of the knife wielded by the divine Surgeon who wounds to heal. Perhaps judgement builds up the sheep and diminishes the goat in each one of us. (p. 130)

This isn’t “testy rejection by an angry God” but includes exposure and purification of his people.

The concept of judgement as the painful encounter with reality, in which all masks of illusion are swept away, is powerful and convincing. It is also basically a hopeful image, for it is only in the recognition and acknowledgement of reality that there can reside the hope of salvation. It has some resonances with a different image used by Paul:

… If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire. (1 Corinthians 3:11-15)

It is in the purging fire of judgement that there lies our hope for purification and redemption. … Properly conceived, judgement is the divine antidote to human sin, just as resurrection is the divine antidote to human mortality. (p. 131-132)

No cheap grace for Paul, nor should there be for us.

Finally, judgement isn’t simply something between individuals and God.There is a systemic and social dimension to sinfulness and Polkinhorne agrees with Miroslav Volf that judgement will also have a social and corporate dimension. He quotes Volf: “If sin has an inalienable social dimension, and if redemption aims at the establishment of the order of peace … then the divine embrace of both victim and perpetrator must be understood as leading to their mutual embrace.” (p. 132)

Heaven. Heaven will be greater than we can imagine, but Polkinghorne believes (and I agree with him) that it will continue to involve process and time and an unfolding of our being. It is simply impossible to begin to imagine a timeless eternity. The essence of our being, as God has created us, is growth.

The life of heaven will be lived in the presence of the divine reality, but the exploration by finite creatures of the infinite riches of that reality will be unending. (p. 132)

Polkinghorne quotes a similar hope from Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 335-395) and then continues:

The first stages of this eschatological journey will surely involve that encounter with the holy reality of God that we have called judgement, together with the associated cleansing from those many unrealities with which our lives have been laden. This purgative process will be an indispensable preparation for the more profound engagement with the life of the holy God that lie beyond it. If this is right, some revalued and re-expressed concept of purgatory seems to be an essential component in eschatological thinking. (p. 133)

This isn’t purgatory as in some punishment for transgression from which we can buy time off through indulgences. It is more of a training and shaping to be God’s people.

Polkinghorne also emphasizes the ongoing importance of the human individual in God’s sight. Some egoless state or preservation of humans in the memory of God doesn’t do justice to the biblical teachings. And he answers the question “Will I see my loved one again?”

Since human relationships are constitutive of our humanity, and central sources of human good, one can reply unhesitatingly, ‘Yes – nothing of the good will be lost in the Lord’. In fact, what can at best be only a partial good in this world will be redeemed to become a total good in the world to come. Human hope is a community hope; human destiny is a collective destiny. Fulfillment lies in our incorporation into the one body of Christ. (p. 136)

The church is not for this world alone.

Hell. In Michigan we know precisely the distance from Paradise to Hell – 338 miles, traveled in 5 hours and 6 minutes without traffic according to Google maps. More seriously, hell is the hardest of the four last things to deal with. The existence of Hell is hard to stomach. Polkinghorne wanders through a number of ideas … hell, annihilation, and universalism.

The image in Dante’s Inferno (Image: Botticelli’s 1480’s version) is not one Polkinghorne finds consistent with Scripture or theology. He is convinced that those consigned to hell will be those who have condemned themselves to hell through a “resolute choice to exclude the divine life from their lives.” (p. 136) He sees it as a place of boredom rather than torture and never ending punishment. He also sees some persuasiveness to the notion of annihilation – where those outside of the divine presence fade away into nothingness. He continues: “It is hard to know what to think, just as it is similarly hard to know whether the universalist hope, that in the end and in every life, God’s love will always be victorious, implies though there is, so to speak, a hell, ultimately it will be found to be empty.” (p. 137) Perhaps God’s love for all is the ultimate power in human existence.

Polkinghorne suggests that perhaps it is better that we don’t know much about hell. Certainty of universal salvation encourages a reliance on cheap grace. Certainty of eternal punishment seems beyond comprehension and raises questions of its own, like why did these people exist anyway? Sometimes the appropriate answer is simply that we don’t know for sure.

The significance of the end. Eschatology is not something we should brush off and ignore. We may not have all the answers, but the story is meaningless without an end. “Eschatology is the keystone of the edifice of theological thinking, holding the whole building together.” (p. 140)

Polkinghorne summarizes what he sees as a viable eschatological expectation with four propositions (p. 148-149):

(1) If the universe is a creation, it must make sense everlastingly, and so ultimately it must be redeemed from transience and decay.

(2) If human beings are creatures loved by their Creator they must have a destiny beyond death.

(3) In so far as present human imagination can articulate eschatological expectation, it has to do so within the tension between continuity and discontinuity. (He elaborates a bit – there must be enough continuity that we truly share in the age to come, and enough discontinuity to end suffering and mortality.)

(4) The only ground for such a hope lies in the steadfast love and faithfulness of God that is testified to by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Christian belief must not lose its nerve about eschatological hope. A credible theology depends upon it and, in turn, a Trinitarian and incarnational theology can assure us of its credibility.

This is a fine short book on Christian hope. It runs through a number of important ideas and Polkinghorne speculates on a number of these from his perspective as Christian, scientist, Anglican priest, and scholar. Christian eschatology and the significance of the end is too important to be brushed off or given over to speculations of novelists who glory in entertaining tales of destruction.

What importance does your church put on the four last things?

Are these important topics?

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.

American Evangelicals and the American Apocalypse

Last updated on: April 22, 2015 at 8:22 pm By Scot McKnight

I was nurtured in the kind of American faith that was utterly convinced that the Rapture or the Second Coming — in essence, Judgment Day — was coming soon, if not very soon, and it was a good thing to be on the right side, which we were. While our pastor did not regal us with ramped apocalyptic sermons we had an annual revival that more often than not opened on the tense theme that tonight could be the night. So, get right with God now or it could be … doom and gloom for ever and ever.

At one of the deepest levels — far beyond what I perceived at the time — our apocalyptic faith provided for us an all-encompassing story and explanation of where we were and where history was headed. Apocalptic, then, is a meaning-giving narrative that locates everyone in the story. We knew where we fit and where others fit into that narrative. Yes, it was a metanarrative.

That topic became an intense intellectual curiosity for me in my college days and I swung from the kind of Pre-Rapture scenario one found in folks like Salem Kirban or Hal Lindsay to a more analytical approach that got me into plenty of intellectual scuffles with friends and pastors. I found Robert Gundry’s post-tribulation rapture approach, if not compelling, at least far more reasonable.

Then it all seemed to die down into a post-apocalyptic evangelical movement where I was located in seminary days and early teaching days. While Tim LaHaye’s and Jerry Jenkins’ books seemed to drive up interest in apocalyptic evangelicalism, it never caught fire the way it did in my earlier days.

How important is apocalyptic thinking to American evangelicalism? What’s your belief: Is it central, integrated but not central, or peripheral?

Enter Matthew Avery Sutton, American Apocalypse: A History of Modern Evangelicalism (Belknap/Harvard, 2014). Like Molly Worthen (Apostles of Reason, see here), Sutton isn’t simply repeating the standard story, and if these two recent scholars mark the future for studying evangelicalism, the old story is soon in for some serious revisioning. Worthen contends that while the Reformed folks control the evangelical institutions and powers, there are other just as important themes/groups: the holiness-Wesleyans, the Anabaptists, and the Restorationists. Now a confession: more and more I’m convinced “evangelicalism/fundamentalism” as a movement is inherently political and often enough more political than theological or ecclesial. Sutton confirms my confession; Worthen less so but at least what she calls the reformed flank is quite political.

Sutton offers another serious challenge to the Marsden-Carpenter line of thinking, which argued that fundamentalism was at work in the public sector, it fell into silence, and then arose again after WWII with Carl Henry and became evangelicalism. (This is the story I have myself believed for a long time.)

Sutton offers five correctives to the standard story, which I have time enough for today, but I begin with his categorical terms:

Evangelicals are Christians in the Reformed and Wesleyan traditions. (He’s with Worthen more or less.)

Radical evangelicals are the Wesleyan holiness and Higher Life Reformed traditions who aggressively incorporated apocalyptic ideas.

Fundamentalists are white, Anglo-American radical evangelicals who in the 1910s formed a distinct interdenominational apocalyptic movement.

Marsden understood fundamentalism through temperament: an evangelical who is angry with someone; Sandeen understood it through the lens of millennialism and apocalyptic. Sutton favors Sandeen over Marsden. But his approach develops four counter measures to the ruling story:

1. World War I brought tension between radical evangelicals and their more liberal counterparts. Apocalyptic entered in an intense way.

2. The Scopes trial had little impact; Bryan was not a fundamentalist and did not deal much with personal conversion; the trial did not lead to a retreat.

3. Sutton thinks, therefore, there was far more continuity in the 20th Century than discontinuity. Fundamentalists never retreated. [I’ve heard this but never seen it argued much.]

4. The politics and tactics of WWII fundamentalism and postwar evangelicalism were very much the same. There was an attempt to distance from the prewar fundamentalists but “priorities of prewar fundamentalists and postwar evangelicals remained far more alike than not” (xiv). How so?

They held remarkably similar views on issues of the state, the economy, women’s roles, African-American civil rights, organized labor, and popular culture. The principle change in the postwar era was one of effectiveness, growth in numbers of adherents, and public image. Their ideology and agenda remained consistent (xiv).

At the heart of the movement — fundamentalism-evangelicalism — was apocalyptic:

Fundamentalists’ and evangelicals’ confidence that time was running out defined who they were, how they acted, and how they related to those around them. This conviction inspired their production of a distinct religious culture and a distinct form of Christian cultural engagement that has impacted the world in profound ways. But how evangelical ideas will influence the twenty-first century is not yet clear. While evangelicals’ apocalyptic convictions have waned somewhat in the United States, the belief that the end is nigh is rapidly spreading through the Southern Hemisphere. What this means for the future not even the most prescient evangelical prophets can see.

Women and Worship: Corinth

Last updated on: April 22, 2015 at 6:46 am By Scot McKnight

In her very important new book Women and Worship at Corinth, Lucy Peppiatt contends there are no fewer than six reasons to examine afresh the passages in 1 Corinthians about women in worship.

Before I get to her reasons, I want to post six slogans in 1 Corinthians — that is six lines that even the NIV puts in quotation marks as lines expressing the views of others. How does one detect these kinds of slogans or the rhetoric of the Corinthians in a letter that does not say “Now I’m quoting something from someone else”?

Discernment occurs through literary and theological sensitivity, and after reading these slogans or expressions (or even claims in full sentences or more) you may well be saying to yourself, “Yes, I think these are slogans etc and I’d like to see how people discern them.” Here are a few largely indisputable slogans and then six reasons Peppiatt provides for finding insertions of what others are claiming — more than slogans — in other passages in 1 Cor 11-14.

I want this to be clear; Peppiatt sees more than simple slogans at work in 1 Cor 11–14; she sees the rhetoric of others turned against them by Paul. (See here for her reconstruction of the text with their terms in italics.)

1Cor. 6:12   “I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything. 13 You say, “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both.” The body, however, is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.

1Cor. 7:1   Now for the matters you wrote about: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.”

1Cor. 8:1   Now about food sacrificed to idols: We know that “We all possess knowledge.” But knowledge puffs up while love builds up.

1Cor. 8:4   So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that “An idol is nothing at all in the world” and that “There is no God but one.”

1Cor. 10:23   “I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but not everything is constructive.

1Cor. 15:12   But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

How do we detect the use of what others are saying in a letter of Paul? She gives six reasons:

1. The confusion of the texts.

Making sense of these passages for any reader, scholar or otherwise, is hugely challenging, and they absorb the commentators with their exegetical possibilities and puzzles. They are riddled with inconsistencies, contradictions, and confust ing messages and are marked by serious textual and exegetical problems. Yet, despite a plethora of problems with the text, theologians, biblical scholars, and churchmen and women alike continue to hold doggedly to the notion that these verses in their entirety reflect Pauls views. The bewildering corollary to this is that those who hold these views begin by admitting their own and everyone else’s inability to make sense of the passage under consideration, then go on to outline the astonishing array of interpretations of the terms used within the passage, before finally offering their own interpretation of how it might possibly be read as a coherent whole (5).

Others give up trying to make sense of Paul and simply state that he must have been confused himself, and still others—in relation to the women passages—just accept (either cheerfully or disgustedly) that Paul was blatantly patriarchal or possibly just a misogynist (5).

2. Paul’s overall message to the Corinthians. [The principle here is theological vision and consistency and coherency.]

… the call to Christlikeness should be lived out by taking the lower part and preferring others (6).

In the light of these observations, we need to be clear, therefore, about what precisely Paul might be saying in chapter 11, for example, if we think that he is now suddenly concerned with establishing or maintaining boundaries based on the glory of men to guard both men and women from “shame” in worship. S Similarly, we need to give coherent reasons for why he encourages women to pray and prophesy in public worship while simultaneously telling them to be silent. These are some of the themes that emerge in this book (6).

3. Paul’s wider thought. [Eschatological inauguration in the here and now.]

My premise, therefore, is that Paul’s eschatology not developed as a longed-for future hope to be realized with the return of Christ, but that the coming of Christ into the world, and the gift of the Spirit, has already radically changed human relations in the here and now (7).

4. A discernible pattern.

The first is the obvious “breaks” in the text where we know that there is a shift in thinking, or where Paul appears to be contradicting himself. The second is the use of the rhetorical question (8).

5. Where the logic leads… If we follow the logic of these passages, where do we end up? Do we end up where Paul says we should? or at something like Colossians 3:11 or Galatians 3:28?

6. Historical reconstructions. Peppiatt’s honesty is admirable: her work, like everyone else’s, requires some historical reconstruction, and is not full of certainty.

So although we may not shy away from the study of historical data and the process of historical reconstruction, we need to handle historical reconstructions judiciously on the grounds that there is a substantial amount of speculation, prejudice, wish fulfillment, and subjectivity involved in reconstructing the situation in Corinth.

I come back to the slogans above: the logic used to discern those slogans is the same logic she uses to discern the rhetoric of the opponents in 1 Corinthians 11-14. Are you willing to listen to this kind of argument?

Is there not a potent irony at work: That those who already know where Paul must end up (hierarchy) are silencing an interpretation that might be listening more carefully to the original silencing by Paul himself?

Archetypal Adam (RJS)

Last updated on: April 21, 2015 at 6:37 am By RJS

Today’s post turns again to John Walton’s new book The Lost World of Adam and Eve, before digging in I would like to mention a conference coming up this summer. The BioLogos foundation is holding a conference on Evolution and Christian Faith in Grand Rapids MI, June 30-July 2, 2015. John Walton will be one of the speakers, and the format should allow ample opportunity for conversation and questions. At this conference we look forward to sharing a rich time of learning, fellowship, and worship with scientists, pastors, and teachers. I intend to be there, although not as a speaker. The speakers will include theologian Oliver Crisp, historian Ted Davis, biophysicist Ard Louis, New Testament scholar Scot McKnight, biologist Jeffrey Schloss, paleontologist Mary Schweitzer, pastor Leonard Vander Zee, and Old Testament scholar John Walton. Registration is now open; register by May 1 to receive the early bird rate of $150. A 50% discount is available for clergy and students and some travel assistance is available. Registration includes lunches on 6/30, 7/1, and 7/2, and dinner on 6/30. An additional dinner will be held on 7/1 for a (small) additional price. For more information: Evolution and Christian Faith Conference, the registration page includes a click through link to the actual registration form.

Back to Walton’s book:

The next three propositions (#’s 8-10) in John Walton’s book The Lost World of Adam and Eve defend his proposal that the importance of Adam and Eve in the text and story of scripture is archetypal. This doesn’t preclude a historical Adam, and in the next post on the book we will discuss Walton’s proposition 11 concerning historicity. Today, however, I would like to focus on Walton’s argument for an Adam and Eve as archetypes.

Genesis 2 is not making a claim about the material origins of humanity. Genesis 2 describes Adam as formed from dust.

Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

The Hebrew word translated “formed” does not necessarily imply material creation. Walton looks at the use of the word in scripture. A few examples will illustrate the breadth of meaning: Our days are formed by God (Ps 139:16), God forms a swarm of locusts (Amos 7:1) and Israel is formed by God as a people (multiple references in Isaiah and Jeremiah). The word translated as formed could as easily be translated prepared, ordained, or decreed.

Walton also argues that dust isn’t the material of human creation but an indication of mortality. “For dust you are and to dust you will return.” Humans were not created immortal or there would be no need for a tree of life. Immortality is a divine gift. It never was human nature. This is consistent with Paul.

If people were created mortal, the tree of life would have provided a remedy, an antidote to their mortality. When they sinned they lost access to the antidote and therefore were left with no remedy and were doomed to die (i.e. subject to their natural mortality. In this case, Paul is saying only that all of us are subject to death because of sin: sin cost us the solution to mortality, and so we are trapped in our mortality. (p. 74)

The Bible also tells us that all of us are formed from dust. “For he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust.” Ps 103:14 Formation from dust isn’t unique to Adam. All of us have the breath of life that comes from God. Isaiah tells us “This is what God the Lord says— the Creator of the heavens, … who gives breath to its people, and life to those who walk on it” (42:5). The breath of life isn’t unique to Adam. The language describing Adam is not unique to Adam – he is an archetype, an original or typical example. He is not created from dust and breath while his descendants come “naturally.”

Eve is not formed from Adam, rather the man is split into two – male and female. Iain Provan makes a similar point in his book – the earthling is split into male and female (See the post Who Are Man and Woman?). The word translated as rib is better translated as side (as in a side of beef). “The text is referring generically to the corporate human race that is ontologically gendered.” (p. 80) Marriage restores the original union. “Woman is not just a reproductive mating partner. Her identity is that she is is ally, his other half.” (p. 81) This isn’t to speak against singleness (after all Paul and Jesus were single). Walton holds to a historical Adam and Eve and in accord with this view he suggests that Genesis 2:21-24 describes a vision that Adam had impressing upon him the fact that woman is his other half – this is the purpose of the “deep sleep” that God caused to fall upon him.

Ancient Near Eastern accounts of human origins. There are a handful of creation accounts that have been found in ancient Near Eastern texts, Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, and Egyptian. Walton briefly considers eleven texts. Genesis is not an imitation of these, and its message is quite different from most of the other texts. Yet these texts provide insight into the genres and literary forms in use in the surrounding culture. This can provide insight into the context and the message of the Genesis account. (The image to the right is of a tablet in the British Museum relating one episode of the Epic of Creation where the gods are celebrating Marduk’s victory over Tiamat. 7th century BC)

The available texts focus on humanity’s place or station in the cosmos (mortal composed of dust, clay, blood and tears of gods) and/or on humanity’s role or function in the cosmos.

A variety of functions is evident in the texts and can be summarized in the following categories:

Function in the place of the gods (menial labor; Mesopotamia only)

Function in service to the gods (performance of ritual, supply of temple; Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Gen 2:15)

Function on behalf of the gods (rule, either over nonhuman creation or over other people; role of the image in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Gen 1)

We can therefore conclude that in the general ancient Near Eastern cognitive environment, the interest of all of the accounts currently available to us is to elucidate the role of humanity through archetypal depictions that fall into the few paradigmatic categories that we have listed. (p. 90)

In all of these accounts “materials mentioned in the creation of humans have archetypal significance … and are characteristic of all humanity.” (p. 91) The Genesis account isn’t a copy of any of the other texts. It doesn’t relate the same story. However “it remains rooted in the same cognitive environment.” (p. 91)

The New Testament interest in Adam. This will come up in more detail later in the book, but here Walton simply makes the point that the New Testament is more interested in Adam and Eve as archetypes than as biological progenitors. Aside from the genealogy in Luke 3 all of the references to Adam and Eve are found in the letters of Paul. Some of the references Walton classes as referring to an individual (e.g. sin and death entering through one man in Romans 5:12 – although death enters through the banishment from the tree of life, not from a loss of intrinsic immortality). Other references use Adam and Eve as illustrations (e.g. 2 Cor. 11:3 and 1 Tim. 2:13-15). Still others consider Adam as an archetypal representative – all are embodied in the one and counted as having participated in the acts of that one. Romans 5:12-14 includes this use of Adam, as does 1 Cor. 15:22.

“as in Adam all die, so in Christ will all be made alive.” Our status as being “in Adam” treats Adam as an archetype, although still a historical figure.” (p. 93)

And Walton summarizes:

First Corinthians 15:48-49 brings the discussion to the point Paul has been making throughout the passage:both Adam and Jesus are archetypes with whom we are identified. … In 1 Corinthians 15, then, we can see that Paul is treating Adam as an archetype representing mortal humanity. This use is similar to what was proposed for Genesis 2 since the archetypal connection to dust was human mortality. Paul has followed the lead of Genesis here. (p. 94)

It isn’t the formation of Adam that is treated archetypally, it is the fall that is important. Adam was mortal (of the dust of the earth 1 Cor. 15:47), but other than this the New Testament isn’t concerned with his material origins.

Walton’s major claim here is that Genesis 2 is not particularly interested in the material origins of humanity. The message of the text is a deeper theological and archetypal message. This lack of concern with material origins is a general feature of the Bible and of the ancient Near Eastern context of the Israelites. God is responsible for creation, and for the creation of humans, but exactly how – material scientific questions about creation – weren’t on the mind of the authors, editors, or audience.

What is the purpose of the creation account in Genesis 2?

Does it make sense that the emphasis is on mortality, male and female as a team (two halves of a whole), and role (to work and care for God’s garden) rather than material formation and origin of humankind?

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.

More From Iain Provan on “Dangerous” Religion (RJS)

Last updated on: April 16, 2015 at 6:10 am By RJS

We recently finished a long series on Iain Provan’s new book Seriously Dangerous Religion. The final post (Dangerous or Not? … We Can’t Ignore Joshua) touched on an issue that concerns many in discussions of the Old Testament. I outlined Provan’s approach as I saw it in the book and offered some thoughts of my own. Today I have a response from Iain Provan on this topic. Although he offered this response to be posted, he won’t be available to participate in comments.

(The images in today’s post are of paintings by Nicolas Poussin, ca. 1625-1626, depicting his view of Joshua’s conquest of Canaan.)

Dear RJS:

I’ve been following with great interest your posts on Seriously Dangerous Religion for the last several months, and all the comments they have generated. I want to thank you very much for your thorough and accurate reporting on the content of the book – I feel very well represented!

Now that your posts are concluded, I wonder if I could enter the discussion on the point that is the focus of the final one? In this post, you say that “a valid case can be made that The Old Story is intrinsically dangerous if it actively teaches and encourages violence and warfare.” I do agree with this sentiment. So the question is: does the Old Testament do such things? It certainly describes violence and warfare in the ancient world – but does it actively teach and encourage us to engage in these activities? After all, there are many actions described in the Old Testament that cannot reasonably be taken by the alert reader of Scripture as intended for our imitation (e.g. David’s adulterous actions with respect to Bathsheba). This includes many actions commanded by God – since the alert Scripture reader knows that God commanded ancient Israelites to do many things that are not required of the Church (e.g. to engage in animal sacrifice). So we need to be discriminating in our judgments when it comes to questions of “teaching” and “encouragement.” My own judgment with respect to herem warfare very much agrees with your own: “We are not called to purify the land or to establish a holy kingdom by force.” That is absolutely correct, in my opinion.

The question of whether ancient Israel was ever called by God to do such a thing is another matter, and I think that it will help with clarity if we consider it separately. My conviction here is that our biblical authors certainly thought that ancient Israel was called to do such a thing at one point in its history. But here it is very important to read carefully and to note what these authors do say about this, and what they do not. In spite of what modern readers quite often claim (and this includes some of your respondents), the biblical authors evidently do not think that Israel was called to conquer and settle Canaan because of the race or ethnicity of the previous inhabitants, or because Israel had some kind of right to the land and the previous inhabitants were simply and inconveniently “there,” in the wrong place and at the wrong time. Our authors explicitly tell us, to the contrary, that in the events of the conquest and settlement, the Canaanite peoples were experiencing the justice of God, on account of their longstanding wickedness (Genesis 15:16; Leviticus 18:24-26; Deuteronomy 9:4-5) – just as the Israelites themselves in the period of the later monarchy are also driven out of the land on account of their longstanding wickedness. For the biblical authors, the war in Canaan as God’s (and not the Israelites’) war. The Israelites are only God’s vassals, summoned to help him fight against wickedness (e.g. Amos 2:9; Psalm 78:53-55).

Perhaps we should like to argue with our biblical authors about these claims; but at least we should recognize that this, and not something else, is indeed what they propose. It will not help the conversation if we begin by misunderstanding them. If we then advance to the argument itself, it interests me to know how we shall establish that, in fact, these claims are false – that, in fact, God was not bringing justice on the Canaanites for their long-term wickedness, but that something else was happening instead. What is the argument to be, on this point? That God cannot bring justice on wicked cultures in the here-and-now, but must wait until the eschaton? Or what? We need to be clear on this point. It will not do just to say that “this idea is dangerous because it has, in the past, and might in the future, encourage some people-groups to attack others.” The biblical authors do not tell us about these events in order that we can generalize from them about how we can recruit God to our own bloodthirsty schemes. Indeed, Scripture as a whole never does generalize from them, as it does from the Exodus, about the ways of God in the world. They are understood, within Scripture itself, as highly unusual events (which is indeed why I did not spend much time discussing them in my book – they are not considered in Scripture to be “normative”). Yet the question remains: did God (unusually) once bring these people-groups to justice in this way or not? The biblical authors claim that God did. What are the grounds for dismissing this claim?

And then, thirdly, there is the question of what, exactly, ancient Israel was called by God to do with respect to the Canaanites – not the “whether” question, but the “what” question. This is an important question that has not received as much consideration as it deserves and needs. Modern readerly attention tends to be drawn quickly to the herem language in answering this question, and to passages like Joshua 10:40-42 that give the impression that the conquest of the land of Canaan was complete, and that all the original inhabitants were wiped out. Yet the predominant way of referring to the conquest of Canaan in the Old Testament is in terms of expulsion, not killing (e.g. Leviticus 18:24-28; Numbers 33:51-56; 2 Kings 16:3)— just as the Israelites, later, are said to have been expelled from the land because they sinned in the same way as the Canaanites (2 Kings 17:7-23). Further, there are clearly many Canaanites still living in the land in the aftermath of Joshua’s victories – people who are not ultimately even expelled from the land, much less killed (e.g. Judges 1:1-3:6; 2 Samuel 24:7; 1 Kings 9:15-23). Clearly, then, there is something very strange about the language of Joshua 10 (and associated passages). Indeed, as Lawson Younger has helped us to see (Ancient Conquest Accounts: A Study in Ancient Near Eastern and Biblical History Writing, 1990), we are likely dealing here with the kind of hyperbolic language that is fairly typical of ancient Near Eastern conquest accounts in general – with ancient literary conventions governing descriptions of conquest and battle that should not be pressed in a literalistic manner. To press them in such a manner is immediately, in fact, to create enormous tension between what they apparently say, and what other Old Testament passages say about such important matters as distinguishing combatants from non-combatants in warfare (e.g., Exodus 22:24; Numbers 14:3), and not holding children, in particular, morally accountable for wrongdoing, or allowing them to be caught up in the consequences of their parents’ wrongdoing (Deuteronomy 1:39; 24:16—in the very book of Deuteronomy that speaks about the Canaanite wars). A particular absurdity that arises from such a literalistic approach is that Deuteronomy 7:1-3 must then be read as speaking of God “driving out” the current inhabitants of the land, then urging the Israelites to “destroy them totally” (herem), and then prohibiting intermarriage with them!

We are dealing with very important matters here. I hope that this short response has at least clarified what I think about them, and what it is that I read the biblical authors as thinking about them. I am very grateful to have had the chance to write. I shall also be grateful, however, if readers of both the Old Testament and my own humble attempt to explicate it in Seriously Dangerous Religion do not so dwell on these things that they neglect the many matters that our biblical authors consider to be much more centrally important. People like Richard Dawkins display a purpose in such a focused neglect. Perhaps the only thing worse than this is neglect with no purpose at all. There are many other aspects of the OT tradition that deserve our attention, and which RJS herself has done an admirable job of articulating over the last few months.

Thanks Iain.

I found this response thought-provoking. I may have to pick up Younger’s book from the library and give the issue of ancient literary conventions more thought. Clearly the context of the original authors and audience should play an important role in proper interpretation of the text. I have a habit of listening to scripture on my commute and as I’ve listened to the Old Testament several times through, the apparent inconsistencies have stuck out. Things like: “destroyed completely” … but don’t intermarry with them, not to mention the judgment on the Moabites – followed very shortly by the inclusion of a Moabitess (Ruth) in the lineage of David and thus of Jesus! It makes sense that these apparent inconsistencies are not “errors” but the result of what would have been considered by the author and audience to be appropriate hyperbolic language following literary conventions of the day.

Now I can focus the discussion on a few questions.

What role should the literary conventions of the ancient Near East play in our interpretation of scripture?

Is it the general idea of judgment that causes problems with the passages in Joshua, or is it the idea that God decreed judgment on innocent bystanders?

Is there a difference between judgment on Israel, devastated and sent into exile, and the judgment on other groups (Canaanites or others)?

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.

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