Archive for the 'scripture' Category

Stackhouse’s Paradigm

Published
by
Mike
on June 26, 2007
in scripture
. 54 Comments

So here’s the problem: sometimes the Bible sounds egalitarian and sometimes (perhaps even more often) it sounds complementarian/patriarchal. How can a person be honest to both perspectives? That’s what Stackhouse is asking.

He presents a paradigm that makes the best sense to him of the varied evidence.

His first principle in the paradigm is equality. As he looks at the creation story and then especially the ministry of Jesus and the events of Pentecost, he concludes: “God originally intended women and men to be coequal partners in stewarding the earth, without role differentiation, and he has never rescinded that mandate. Indeed in God’s renewal of all things, in his great salvation plan to restore shalom, men and women will treat each other as they were intended to treat each other. We already see this renewed order in the inbreaking of the kingdom evident in the New Testament.”

But what about passages that seem to sit in contrast to that vision — passages that seem to be patriarchal? That leads to a second principle in the paradigm: some things matter more than others, or what Stackhouse calls “holy pragmatism.”

God works within human limitations. In the Old Testament, you just have to think of polygamy. “God is willing to forgo the achievement of secondary objectives in the interest of furthering his primary purposes, and he expects us to do the same.” (More on this later.)

The third principle concerns eschatology. “What . . . would our understanding of gender look like if we took the ‘already but not yet’ principle seriously? What if we were to expect, instead of one extreme or the other, an appropriately paradoxical situation: a slow and partial realization of gospel values here and there, as God patiently and carefully works his mysterious ways along the multiple fronts of kingdom advance?”

He asks us to observe what missionaries have always known: “Missionaries of every era and locale often have practiced this policy. There was no point in undertaking a quixotic crusade against a deeply entrenched social evil when the church was tiny and young. Better to grow the church and then permeate society with gospel values, with the long-term hope of ameliorating or even revolutionizing what was wrong.”

Why does Paul sometimes sound like he believes in male leadership and sometimes like he’s an egalitarian? According to Stackhouse (and I agree), it’s because of “prudent instruction as to how to survive and thrive” in the patriarchal culture of that day. But he also promotes “the egalitarian dynamic already at work in the career of Jesus that in due course will leave gender lines behind.”

Here’s the conclusion of this paradigm:

“When society was patriarchal, as it was in the New Testament context and as it has been everywhere in the world except in modern society in our day, the church avoided scandal by going along with it — fundamentally evil as patriarchy was and is. Now, however, that modern society is at least officially egalitarian, the scandal is that the church is not going along with society, not rejoicing in the unprecedented freedom to let women and men serve according to gift and call without arbitrary gender line. This scandal impedes both the evangelism of others and the edification — the retention and development of faith — of those already converted.”

More manana.

Finally Feminist

Published
by
Mike
on June 25, 2007
in scripture
. 77 Comments

I’m finally getting back to Finally Feminist by John Stackhouse.

After asking the question some of you are asking — “How can one be a Christian feminist?” — Stackhouse says this about himself:

“On the one hand, I am a white, middle-class, heterosexual, evangelical Christian man — and thus clearly not everyone’s idea of a feminist. Indeed, one might think that I would have a lot to lose in supporting the equal treatment of women in every sphere of life — whether one sees that loss as ‘legitimate authority’ or ’scandalous privilege.’ On the other hand, I am also a career academician, someone who has earned degrees from two secular universities, has held appointments at three more, and has had books published by the presses of yet two others. Someone with that sort of mainstream scholarly background can be expected to be a feminist, of course. But one might not expect such a person to be an orthodox Bible believer. In this book, then, I try to show how one can be both authentically feminist and authentically Christian. In particular, I try to show how the Bible, which has often been understood by both feminists and patriarchalists to be inimical to feminism, properly can be seen to support feminism in our time.”

Before this, he’s already cleared the air a bit by trying to strip away many social pathologies often associated by Christians with all forms of feminism. He follows his autobiographical note with these words: “The noun feminist can mean several things, but this is what I mean by it: someone who champions the dignity, rights, responsibilities, and glories of women as equal in importance to those of men and who therefore refuses discrimination against women.”

Stackhouse goes on to describe his upbringing, raised not just in a Christian home but in a “Focus on the Family-type home.” Traditional, in other words. Dad as the formal leader.

In his congregation, the Plymouth Brethren, anyone was allowed to suggest a hymn, pray out loud, or offer an explanation of scripture. Everyone, that is, who was male. “I began to wonder why my mother, who was otherwise so esteemed as a leader in our church, remained demurely silent week after week and year after year while Mr. So-and-So rose to bore us once again with his meanderings through Scripture and Mr. Such-and-Such followed with his interminable prayer. When young Bill or even younger Bobby was encouraged to lead in the service while their mothers and grandmothers silently looked on, my wonder deepened.” (Can anyone else identify?!)

Through college and graduate school, he continued to meet women who were gifted in prayer, faith, scholarship, and leadership. The older arguments (that women are too emotional, irrational, illogical, or defensive) or the newer arguments (that the old arguments were wrong and shouldn’t have been made but that God just doesn’t want women to lead at church and home, though maybe in society, and we shouldn’t question him) lost steam as he faced the world of Spirit-filled women around him.

And in addition to that, he entered an egalitarian marriage. (I would contend that many, many Christians are actually in an egalitarian marriage, even if they’d never admit it.)

So, back to scripture he went, searching for a model for understanding gender issues. I’ll pick up there tomorrow.

Avoiding Counternarratives

Published
by
Mike
on June 20, 2007
in scripture
. 110 Comments

Thanks to Richard B. for this link: Luke Timothy Johnson and Eve Tushnet, a freelance journalist who is a lesbian, take different positions on the Catholic Church’s prohibitions against homosexuality. You may be surprised.

Here’s a statement from Tushnet: “But our human experience, including our erotic experience, cannot be a replacement for the divine revelation preserved by the church. We must be careful not to let it become a counternarrative or a counter-Scripture.”

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I’m going to spend a few days here working through John Stackhouse’s wonderful Finally Feminist: A Pragmatic Christian Understanding of Gender (Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology). It’s the book I’ve been waiting for, I think.

Stackhouse honestly shows that the Bible is both feminist and patriarchal. It has passages that sound complementarian and those that are egalitarian (for those who are familiar with this language). And he seeks to show why that’s the case.

Here are a few words from the end:

“We are happy to affirm for the record that men are not inherently superior to women, that male and female together are created in the imago Dei. But then we act as if males really are superior — superior as topics for Bible study, superior to lead in church and home, even superior to represent all human beings (as in the so-called generic language of ‘mankind’). Where are the women? More basically, where is the female, the feminine, the not-male in the Bible, in our churches and families, and in God? We must resist contemporary extremes such as lesbian marriages and goddess worship. We must resist the loss of rich biblical truth encoded in masculine language for God in the Bible and in traditional theology. But our fear of those losses must not keep us in a masculinist extreme. We must encourage more women to undertake careers in theological scholarship. We must hear women’s voices in our churches. We men must ask feminist questions along with our more standard lines of intellectual interrogation. We must pray for God to forgive us our sexist sins, heal our blindness, motivate our hearts, and open our minds. If the women are absent in biblical and theological studies, we are missing out on half of the Story.”

Richard Hays

Published
by
Mike
on April 20, 2007
in scripture
. 13 Comments

I got to sit across from Richard Hays at dinner last night. What a relief! When you have been so influenced by a scholar whom you’ve never met, there is the chance that you’ll disappointed by the person’s character.

But no disappointment here. The guy is so humble, so real. Loves to talk about baseball (Yes, he coached his son all the way up) and about Dylan. Plus, I’ve been working through his incredible commentary on 1 Corinthians and was ready with a few questions for him. (Check out what he wrote on 11:2-16 if you get a chance.)

This is the guy who wrote two books that have influenced me about as much as any I’ve ever read: The Moral Vision of the New Testament (named by Christianity Today as one of the hundred most important theological works of the whole 20th Century) and Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul.

At last night’s lecture, he gave these twelve marks of the practice of “theological exegesis.” (I know they take some unpacking. Would love to come back and do that later.)

1. Theological exegesis is a practice of and for the church.
2. Theological exegesis is self-involving discourse. (In other words, we don’t stand apart from scripture. We are seeking to have it pull us into its gospeled world.)
3. Historical study is internal to the practice of theological exegesis. (He has little patience for biblical study that seeks to do an end run around serious historical work.)
4. Theological exegesis attends to the literary wholeness of the individual scriptural witnesses. (As an example, we don’t want to produce one gospel by conflating everything. We want the four gospels we were given, and we want to hear their unique voices.)
5. Theological exegesis presses forward to the synthetic question of canonical coherence.
6. Theological exegesis focuses on the texts as testimony. (The implications here are staggering!)
7. The language of theological exegesis is intratextual in character. (We seek, therefore, to stay with the concepts, images, and vocabulary of scripture.)
8. Theological exegesis engages the Bible’s complex web of intertextuality.
9. Theological exegesis is committed to the exposition of multiple senses.
10. Theological exegesis will find aid, not hindrance, in the church’s doctrinal traditions.
11. Theological exegesis will produce fresh imaginative readings.
12. Theological exegesis must be done from a posture of humility before the Word, in the expectation that we will be transformed by the text.

For more, try wading into Echoes of Scripture. I’m heading back for more today.

I’m so grateful that ACU is willing to bring scholars like Hays here. A couple years ago it was Luke Timothy Johnson. Waiting now for N. T. Wright . . . .

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Did you happen to catch the Wineskins/Zoe interview with Randy Harris (by Greg Taylor)? Here it is . . . .

Tell me about the Spiritual Director Program. You mean I get to tell people what to do with their lives?

Randy Harris: The irony is we are training spiritual directors and none of us are really qualified to “direct” another life . . . the heart of the program is that we both pay attention so God does the direction.

You and the other directors are not spiritual gurus?

Randy Harris: We have a non-guru approach.

You sure look like a guru, your shaved head, the little glasses bit you do before and after you talk. I like how you put them away in your Johnny Cash black jacket during your final point of a sermon.

Randy Harris: (smiles and perhaps chuckles a bit) We end the program with a ceremonial shaving of the head and uploading of Gregorian Chants to each participant’s iPod.

Come on, can’t you be serious? Hey, speaking of iPod, what’s on yours?

Randy Harris: Can’t you stay on the subject? Fauré Requiem, Pie Jesu.

Give me a break. What else is on your iPod?

Randy Harris: “Raise your skinny fist like antennas to heaven” by Godspeed you! Black Emperor.

Now, I’ve heard it all.

Randy Harris: I also have “Spirit of Gregorian Chant.”

No ZOE music?

Randy Harris: I don’t think there is . . . a few by Rich Mullins.

I like Rich Mullins . . . but you really don’t stay up on Christian music if the newest things you have are Rich Mullins and Gregorian Chant.

Randy Harris: (stares)

What’s your favorite VBS song?

Randy Harris: “I’ve got the Joy Joy Joy.”

Fair enough. The Cope/Harris version?

Randy Harris: Is there another version?

We were supposed to be talking about the Spiritual Direction Program. Who’s leading this interview?

Randy Harris: (stares again, saying nothing)

So tell me, how do I know if this program is something for me?

Randy Harris: The best reason to enter the Spiritual Direction Program is if you are already engaged in spiritually directing people . . . and the best sign that you are doing that is if people seek you out for it. So the program is to develop a gift you are already exercising. People ask, “Am I called to be a spiritual director?” and I ask “Are people seeking spiritual direction from you?”

So, to get into the program then hope someone will seek you out won’t work, right?

Randy Harris: Right.

Can we talk about the Growing Deeper Spirituality Program now?

Randy Harris: The program is for people going about the business of Christian life and asking, “Is this it? Is this what I signed up for?”

You mean someone who’s at a point of searching for something more in God?

Randy Harris: Yes, the church has been thinking about these things for two thousand years. We’re trying to recover what the church has learned about how to have a spiritual life.

Give me an example.

Randy Harris: Well, it’s like playing chess and ignoring hundreds of years of chess move theory.

You could say the same thing for Poker or some other pastime that people actually play more, but that’s beside the point.

Randy Harris: Yes, it is beside the point. It’s the same way with any game or sport-there is a body of knowledge that you access and practice to become a better athlete, and in the same way, we are seeking to tap into a long history of spirituality that helps us deepen our own life with God.

How to Encourage a Weary Church

Published
by
Mike
on April 18, 2007
in scripture
. 26 Comments

I searched for words yesterday to describe the horror of what happened at Virginia Tech, but couldn’t find them. My response these days to such wickedness is to pray the Lord’s prayer and trust that heaven is breaking into this world — often in silent, hidden ways.

- - - -

My braindead status continues. I have about enough creativity for preaching and barely enough for teaching (Hebrews yesterday). Barely. But I come to my blog and there’s nothing. Sometime I’ll have to look over the past four years and see if that’s always been the case as the spring semester draws to a close. I remember one spring when I was worn out David Wray said, “Around here we don’t accept resignations in April.” Wise words. The summer comes — along with rest, rejuvenation, and reading.

- - - -

Assuming Hebrews was written to exhort (13:22) a weary congregation to endure (10:36 - “You need to persevere”), it’s interesting to follow the writer’s strategy. In this book filled with journey imagery (my favorite imagery of spirituality), he makes these moves: (1) he points them to Jesus, the guide (2:10) and forerunner (6:20) in the journey; (2) he guides them through scripture (passages like Psalms 2, 8, 95, and 110); and (3) he calls for intense community.

Still not a bad strategy. Don’t you think?

Small Issues and a Guiding Gospel

Published
by
Mike
on April 2, 2007
in faith and scripture
. 29 Comments

Yesterday, I finally finished preaching through those three chapters on meat sacrificed to idols in 1 Corinthians 8-10. It took four messages (one of which Jerry Taylor preached). Here’s what I love: Paul knew that very often the deepest gospeled instincts of a people are not found in the big issues but in the smaller ones — the ones with a bit of gray area that need nuancing.

A family would make a sacrifice on behalf of some god or goddess at a Corinth temple. Some of the meat would be burned up at the moment of the sacrifice; some would then be used to serve a meal at the temple for the family and their friends; and then whatever was left could be sold by the priests at the city market.

So there were two questions: Could the Christians eat at the meals in the pagan temples when invited? and Could they buy the meat in the city market and eat it in private homes?

The questions could have been answered in a paragraph. Except that for Paul this was a perfect chance to discuss deeper themes of the gospel. Like:

- How love trumps knowledge;
- How a weaker brother or sister is someone for whom Christ died (8:11);
- How he himself is an example of choosing not to always use his rights on behalf of others (9);
- How the communion meal sets a direction for our lives;
- How love also trumps freedom;
- How Christians can receive the gifts of this life since all belongs to God the creator (quoting Psalm 24 in 10:25f);
- How the ultimate point of Christianity is to follow the cross-formed way of Jesus Christ (11:1)

Whew! All of that to say:

No, you can’t eat those dedication meals at the pagan temples. (We know there is no such thing as another god/goddess. But you have to flee idolatry, in whatever form it takes.)

Yes, you can eat meat from the city markets that may have come from the temples in private homes. (But, don’t do it if it will destroy a weaker brother or sister — meaning not someone who’s “offended” at your actions but someone who might actually be on a slippery slope. The meat itself might transport them back to an earlier time in life when they experienced the ecstasy of the pagan temples. They might head down a path of darkness as they recalled the powerful experiencing of the temple with their mystery and the pleasures [women and boys] lurking in the darkness, offering to heighten experience for a price.)

So today I’m wondering: in what ways do our smaller issues indicate that we are a gospeled people?

Invoking the “Weaker Brother” Argument

Published
by
Mike
on March 5, 2007
in scripture
. 56 Comments

Last week I worked through Paul’s amazing passage on food sacrificed to idols in 1 Corinthians 8-10. In some ways, it seems like he could have answered the pertinent questions in just a paragraph. Can Christ-followers buy meat in the Corinthian market area that had been sacrificed at a temple and then eat it at home? And, can they, when invited, join in the meals held at the temples by those who had brought sacrifices to Apollo, Venus, or some other so-called god or goddess?

But it took three whole chapters to answer it because Paul was interested in much more than those two questions. He was interested in the kind of community commitments being formed among the Christians in Corinth.

So, he insists that love trumps knowledge. In other words, just because someone knows that the meat can be eaten with a clean conscience doesn’t settle all situations, because there were weak brothers and sisters whose consciences weren’t so sure.

He isn’t talking about people who’d be upset that their narrow understandings were being violated. He isn’t speaking about them being offended. He’s addressing a very real possibility of falling away. They had come out of paganism. They remembered well the mystery and ecstasy of those pagan temples; they could recall the thrill of the celebratory meals; they still had powerful memories of the way moral restraint was often lifted in that environment (including all the women and boys who were available as prostitutes).

One smell of that meat — meat that they thought was associated with these other gods — might lead them down a road to their old lives. The “strong Christians” (not a term used in this section, but rather found in Romans 14) might know that it isn’t a package deal; but these weaker brothers and sisters might be caught up into the whole scene of idolatry.

It’s important to know what he’s saying. And equally important to know what he isn’t saying. This passage has been used far too many times to endorse the position of the person with the most rules and the most narrow way. It has nothing to do with that (in most situations).

Here are a couple insightful comments I came across.

First, from Richard Hays, who’ll be speaking at ACU next month:

“The ’stumbling block principle’ is often erroneously invoked to place limits on the behavior of some Christians whose conduct offends other Christians with stricter behavioral standards. For example, it is argued that if drinking alcohol or dancing or dressing in certain ways might cause offense to more scrupulous church members, we are obligated to avoid such behaviors for the sake of the ‘weaker brother’s conscience.’ The effect of such reasoning is to hold the entire Christian community hostage to the standards of the most narrow-minded and legalistic members of the church. Clearly, this is not what Paul intended. He is concerned in 1 Corinthians 8 about weaker believers being ‘destroyed’ by being drawn away from the church and back into idol worship.”

And then this from N. T. Wright (of course!):

“Sometimes people from a very narrow background, full of rules and restrictions which have nothing to do with the gospel itself and everything to do with a particular social subculture, try to insist that all other good Christians should join them in their tight little world. But in a case like that the rule-bound Christians are in no danger of having their consciences damaged. They are not being ‘led astray.’ They are quite sure of their own correctness. Paul is dealing with a very different case.”

Thursdays

Published
by
Mike
on February 1, 2007
in preaching and scripture
. 46 Comments

Thursdays.

For a couple decades now, Thursdays have been the day I’ve tried to devote to preparing and writing a sermon. Life’s not that smooth, of course. You can’t always protect one day. And really the sermon begins much earlier as ideas are worked over. But still, Thursdays have typically been the day when all that comes together.

When I was young, I had a kind of formula for working through a text and coming to a sermon. That’s a good thing, I think. It’s why sports always begin with fundamentals.

But as I’ve aged, I feel less like I’m doing something to the text and more like scripture is doing something to me. So much of my sermon preparation is mulling: reading the words slowly again and again . . . praying through the words, soaking up the words of gospel that they proclaim . . . letting my imagination run free as the sermon begins to appear as a journey. (In my earliest days, the sermon was like classic oratory — complete with intro, points, and conclusion. Now it’s a journey — a journey with that has a specific beginning and a specific ending but with many bends along the way. [Sometimes, of course, that journey comes with intro, points, and conclusion!])

There’s still the hard work. But even that is part of the mulling. As I translate the text (NT) from Greek and as I read through my Spanish testament, I usually don’t think I’m gaining any special insider’s knowledge. But it forces me to slow down and to dwell on words and phrases and images. It allows me to ask questions: What difference does this make? How do these words speak words of good news? Do they sharpen our understanding of discipleship, of community, and of mission? Do they call for change? How do they point to Jesus?

The older I get, the more I realize what people don’t need and what people really DO need: the good news that the reign of God has broken in through the life, death, resurrection, and presence of Jesus in our midst. A new day has come. Hope abounds.

Tony Campolo wrote a book called It’s Friday But Sunday’s Comin’.

Someday maybe I’ll write a preaching book called It’s Thursday But Sunday’s Coming.

- - - -

I’m feeling in the minority right now. No governor or senator from my state has yet announced a presidential bid for 2008.

- - - -

The “Letters to the Editor” section of the Abilene Reporter-News has been quite active since the city council voted to ban smoking in all restaurants and bars. Most of the rhetoric has been libertarian concerns (the government shouldn’t tell anyone, including business owners, what they have to do) vs. communitarian concerns. It’s been very interesting.

Small Differences

Published
by
Mike
on January 2, 2007
in politics and scripture
. 8 Comments

Sigmund Freud was onto something when he coined the phrase “the narcissism of small differences.”

The people we are closest to are the ones with whom we often have our fiercest battles.

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Here are the pieces I wrote in 2006 on “The B-I-B-L-E” (for those who are new readers):

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

#6

#7

#8

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From David Gushee:

“When I started getting interested in politics and national affairs, I once again was brought up short by the claims of Jesus. To affirm that Jesus Christ is Lord is to acknowledge that no political leader, party, flag, nation, or ideology can share lordship over my life. The one who confesses Christ alone as Lord cannot simultaneously affirm utmost loyalty to another idea or person.”

“I Am of Christ”

Published
by
Mike
on October 30, 2006
in scripture
. 71 Comments

“I am of Christ.”

That sounds like such a nice descriptor. Others may claim to be of Paul, and others of Apollos (two influential teachers in Corinth) — but I am of Christ.

So why does one have the feeling that Paul didn’t have warm feelings about those who made that claim (1 Cor. 1:12)? Because there were schisms in the church in Corinth: maybe within the house churches, maybe between the house churches, perhaps when they all came together. And behind the schisms, there was a lot of pride at work and a dearth of love.

There were fracture lines appearing, partly because they were attached to their teachers in unhealthy ways (but ways that would have been familiar in Corinth).

But others, dripping in pride and exclusivism, were only “of Christ.”

That resonates with me. Because for part of my life I took pride in not being of Wesley or Calvin, of Luther, and certainly not of the Pope. Just a Christian.

The desire to be “just a Christ-follower” can be very healthy. But it must not become a source of separation from others whom we don’t deem to be just as pure; and it should not ignore the fact that we’ve been influenced by many men and women and of faith. None of us is completely objective. None of us is reading scripture without bias. None of us finds our place in the family of God by being perfect–either in living or in biblical interpretation.

As I lived in those words of Paul last week, it reminded me of how subtle and dangerous spiritual pride is. It is so well disguised, masquerading in costumes of restoration and humility.

Beware anytime there is a church or a group that thinks it has cornered the market on spirituality, interpretation, or missionality. Let us follow the leading of God’s Spirit as he helps us live for the sake of the world; but let us recognize that there are many, many other followers of Jesus who may worship differently, talk differently and think differently.