Oh My God

I just saw the documentary Oh My God, which my friend Felix mentioned here a while back.  It’s about a film-maker who travels the world to ask people who God is.  You can watch the trailer on Felix’s page to get the gist of the movie.  I’ll just make three points about it:

1.  The illusionist David Copperfield said that he could probably replicate the “miracles” of the Bible, and yet he still believes in a higher power.  (Those weren’t his exact words, but that’s what I got out of what he said.)  That reminds me of Erich von Danicken’s statement that he believes in God, even though he argues that Ezekiel saw alien spaceships.  I’ve been watching Stargate SG-1, and its premise is that religions are based on aliens who visited earth. 

Does anything have to threaten my faith in God?  People may rip apart the Bible and inserts seeds of doubt about its inerrancy or reliability.  But why’s that mean that I have to abandon my belief in a higher power who made everything and everyone around me, and who loves me?

2.  There was a good scene about Islam.  A fundamentalist Muslim quoted a Quranic passages that said (according to him) that non-Muslims won’t go to heaven.  Then a moderate Muslim offered an alternative interpretation of that very same passage, saying that it said those who are closed to the truth—whether they be Jews, Christians, pagans, or Muslims—will not enter heaven.  His definition of “truth” may be a belief in God and morality, for he referred to the Quran passage that said that those who believe in God, including Jews and Christians, will go to heaven.

I liked this scene because it dealt with two interpretations of a specific passage of the Quran.  Usually, I hear the debate between fundamentalist and moderate Muslims expressed in terms of generalities rather than exegesis, so it was refreshing to get a taste of the latter.

3.  The documentary leaned strongly towards the view that we are all God, and we should help one another.  I have problems with reducing religion to that, as someone who has problems fitting in with people.  One reason I like the Bible is that it presents people who rely on God and his goodness, even as they are marginalized by humanity.  I think here of the Psalmist, the prophets (particularly Jeremiah, but also Moses), and Jesus.

The Koran

I finished the Koran a few days ago, and here are some reactions. Since the book is so big, I can’t really document every claim that I make with a specific reference, so please don’t put too much stock in what I have to say!

1. The God of the Koran is not as emotional as the God of the Old Testament, and its author does not rhapsodize about the love of God like the apostle Paul. He appears to be a cool, detached judge who wants people to do the right thing. I can’t say that the Koran lacks a God of love because it holds that people should trust him, and you can’t really trust a deity who is not good and loving. Moreover, like Judaism, the Koran appears to advocate a just society, one in which men take care of their divorced wives and help the poor and the vulnerable. I can respect and fear the God of the Koran, but can I love him? I find that difficult, especially since he doesn’t passionately proclaim his love for me.

2. The Koran is really big on the resurrection from the dead, such that it becomes its main topic near the end of the book. Apparently, a lot of people in Muhammad’s day (even the Jews the Koran criticizes) did not believe in the resurrection from the dead. But such a concept is important in the Koran, since one needs to be raised from the dead in order to be judged in the afterlife. And God as judge is perhaps the most salient theme in the book. The Koran rhapsodizes a lot about God’s power in creating the heavens, the earth, and human beings, but its aim in doing so is usually to convey a message of “See, God is powerful, so why do you say he can’t raise the dead?” I like to celebrate God’s majesty as creator, but it’s usually a bummer when that idea leads to God as a judge. I’d much prefer it to lead to God as love, or God as glorious, or God as lover of beauty.

3. I eventually got to the point where I didn’t meditate on my daily reading because it was the same thing that I’d read before: God can raise the dead, so he will judge you in the afterlife. I’m sure that religious people are gasping at this statement, for the last judgment is a very serious thing. Who am I to trivialize it as if I’m merely reviewing a book or a movie? That’s a legitimate criticism, and I should remember to take seriously the religions that I study. Still, while I acknowledge that judgment is good because there are unjust people in the world who need to be punished, I have problems with a God who scrutinizes everything I do. I think I arrived at the point where I acknowledged that I’m just not perfect, and I don’t beat up on myself every day on account of that. At the same time, the Koran’s path to salvation looks fairly manageable: do your devotions to God and help other people. Then, at the last judgment, God will weigh your good deeds and your bad deeds (as in Judaism) to determine if you go to a nice, pleasant afterlife (with good drinks and virgins, though I didn’t see the number seventy) or an ever-burning hell (which is paradoxically hot and cold).

4. God sends prophets to turn people from sin, but I can tell that Muhammad got pretty frustrated with people’s rejection of his message. At some points, God tells him to preach the word and not worry about other people’s reactions, something we also encounter in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Near the end of the book, there’s a recognition by Muhammad that he really can’t change the hardened sinner. And the subject of hardening appears throughout the Koran, which affirms that those who reject God’s message are only setting themselves up for further spiritual darkness. It’s kind of like many Christians’ portrayal of the Pharaoh of the Exodus (whom the Koran also sites as an example): he hardened his own heart by rejecting God’s message, so God sealed his hard heart and made it a permanent condition. That doesn’t entirely resonate with me, since I prefer a God who never gives up on anyone. But we see that sort of idea in the Bible (Isaiah 6; Jesus’ parables obscuring the truth; Hebrews’ statements about Christians who turn their back on Christ).

At the same time, when God hardens certain people’s hearts in the Bible, he often seems to have a beneficent end in mind. God hardened Israel and thereby enabled her destruction and exile, but maybe she needed that turmoil to become spiritually pure. Sure, she could have offered God a shallow and superficial apology accompanied by a short-lived reformation, as she did during the time of Josiah, but what good would that have done? She may have needed to be left in her sins so she could receive chastisement and become more spiritually fit for God’s purposes. Moreover, in Romans 11, Paul says that Israel’s temporary hardening will lead to the salvation of the Gentiles and ultimately herself.

5. The Koran’s interaction with the Bible and rabbinic traditions is interesting (to say the least). At some points, there is significant overlap, as when the Koran refers to God’s tests of Abraham (a midrashic theme) and makes statements that evoke Jesus’ parable of Lazarus and Dives (Luke 16:19ff.). At other times, its knowledge of the Bible appears rather skewed or indirect, as when it places Haman in the time of the Exodus. A colleague of mine speculates that Muhammad heard these stories from travelling caravans, which sometimes conveyed the Bible and rabbinic stories accurately, and sometimes did not.

Muslims who believe the Koran is inerrant have their answers, as Christian fundamentalists do for those who talk about the “errors” in the Bible. Some say that the Haman of the Exodus was not the same as the Haman in Esther, and others assert that the Book of Esther is just plain wrong about when it places Haman.

6. Like Romans 1, the Koran maintains that God’s creation and sustenance of the cosmos is evidence that he is the one true God. Those who reject Allah by worshipping idols, therefore, are rejecting God’s clear signs. Muhammad was probably speaking to people who believed in Allah and saw him as the creator, but they also worshipped idols.

But there are other signs: Muslim victory in battle, the Koran, etc. At one point, the author asks people to produce a sura if they think the Koran is simply of human origin. In these days, I don’t think that would be too hard, since there are a lot of literate people who can produce beautiful compositions. But was that as true back then? I don’t know. The author of the Koran made that argument for some reason!

Was God involved in the foundation of Islam? I don’t know. Near the end of the book, there’s a story about how certain warriors were uniting to destroy the Caba, and God sent down birds to defeat them (or so said the footnote). The Muslims had a miraculous victory! Should I give that account any credence? On one hand, it is probably proximate to the time of the battle, so I have a problem blowing it off completely, since people may not write something that is so blatantly untrue to their contemporaries. On the other hand, there are also medieval stories with miraculous elements, which historians don’t take all that seriously.

7. There are several chapters on war, which is presented as self-defense, or as the spread of social justice. The Koran really stigmatizes Muslims who don’t go out to fight God’s battles. We also see that sort of thing in the Bible, as when the Song of Deborah criticizes those who didn’t fight with their fellow Israelites (Judges 5). At the same time, Deuteronomy 20:8 allows those who are afraid to sit out of the war. In this case, the Bible seems to be more understanding of human foibles than the Koran. Usually, it’s the other way around, since the New Testament strictly prohibits divorce, whereas the Koran allows it, provided the man take care of his ex-wife.

8. The Koran’s depiction of Satan is interesting. According to the Koran, Satan was an angel named Iblis, who refused to bow down to Adam when God commanded all the angels to do so. A Harvard colleague of mine said a while back that Iblis was passionate for the glory of God and didn’t want to compromise that by worshipping a human being. But that’s not what I see in the Koran. Rather, Iblis thinks he (Iblis) is superior to Adam, since he is made of fire, whereas Adam is made of dirt. After his fall, Iblis aims to be a stumbling-block in the path of human beings. While people may worship Satan and his jinns in the here-and-now, the Koran maintains, these spirit beings will act like they don’t even know their worshippers at the last judgment. At the last judgment, it will be every man (and spirit) for himself, so we’d might as well trust God and not evil spirits who will ditch us!

9. I didn’t find a lot of wisdom in the Koran: how to live a successful, happy, and righteous life and overcome your sinful passions. I encounter more of this in other writings, since the Bible has wisdom literature, and rabbinic midrashim present Torah study as a cure for man’s sinfulness. But the Koran doesn’t seem to do this as much, for its message is “Be righteous, or else.” It tells you to go somewhere, but it doesn’t offer much guidance on how to get there. But I could be wrong on this, since more readings of the same book can easily produce a different impression.

America, Christianity’s Nutritional Value

Here are a few thoughts, before I go outside to enjoy this beautiful day:

1. I watched America last night. You know, there are some settings in which I actually like Rosie O’Donnell. I couldn’t stand her on the View or her own show, particularly the one in which she was grilling Tom Selleck for being a member of the NRA (heaven forbid!). That just screamed “self-righteous liberal”! But, on the movie last night, she was caring, humble, serious yet hip, patient in the midst of rejection, eager to listen. People called her “Dr. B.” She reminded me of a lesbian teacher I once had, who helped me overcome a learning disability when I was a child. And Rosie cares about the issue of foster care, since she has adopted a number of kids.

Rubie Dee was also on it. I mentioned her in my post, Queen vs. Roots: The Next Generation, but I wasn’t entirely sure who she was. Actually, she’s Mother Abigail in the Stand, a 1990′s miniseries based on Stephen King’s novel. “Folks around these parts call me Mother Abigail…” To be honest, I can’t recall ever seeing her play a young person. In all of the movies in which I’ve seen her, she plays an old lady: Queen in Roots: The Next Generation (which was in 1977!), Mother Abigail, Miss Harvey in America. She did a good job in her role last night, playing the sweet old lady who raised America.

I taped over the movie this morning, since I probably won’t watch it again. It was good, but there are good movies, and there are keepers. America reminded me too much of Antwone Fisher!

2. I was thinking of something my Aunt C. wrote under my post, Goodness: “Helping innocent children find hope (in Christ) in spite of their situations is something the government can’t do. Relying on the government to fix the problem is like eating potato chips. Might fill you up, but no nutritional value.”

Although Barack Obama and Aunt C. would probably disagree on a number of issues, he can see the same point. He states in Audacity of Hope: “…I also believe that when a gangbanger shoots indiscriminately into a crowd because he feels somebody disrespected him, we have a problem of morality. Not only do we need to punish that man for his crime, but we need to acknowledge that there’s a hole in his heart, one that government programs alone may not be able to repair” (215).

This morning at church, the priest was talking about Lent, saying that we give up certain things so we can learn to hunger after God. I wonder what exactly there is about God that I should hunger after? What about Christianity can fill me up and give me nutritional value?

Is it the belief that God is powerful? I don’t want to offend my Muslim reader, but that doesn’t always fill me up. The message that recurs over and over in my reading of the Koran is, “Do good, or the all mighty God will judge you harshly and throw you into hell” (my paraphrase). There are times when the Koran inspires me, as when it describes God’s power and glory in creating the heavens and the earth. But that doesn’t really fill me up at a deep, personal level.

Is it God’s love, or the hope of an afterlife, or the belief that things in this life will turn out all right, or the sense of purpose that accompanies Christianity, or the actual activity of doing good to others? What is it about God or Christianity that can nourish us?

A while back, I read a book called Society without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us About Contentment, by Phil Zuckerman. Zuckerman’s thesis was that people can be happy without religion, since there’s plenty of contentment in the secularist nations of Sweden and Denmark. The secularists there are not necessarily hostile to religion: they just don’t think about it all that often! They cope Stoically in the face of death and other adversities, and they are happy because of their friends and a political structure that guarantees them financial security.

Zuckerman’s book is valuable because it shows that nations without a firm religious belief are not necessarily moral cesspools, and that not everyone on the face of the earth asks religious questions about God, the meaning of life, and their place in the universe. Many are just content to plug through their day-to-day lives, thank you very much!

But I wonder something: Is the picture that Zuckerman presents an ideal that we should desire? Isn’t it shallow not to care about God and life’s meaning–to search for something deeper in life? Sweden and Denmark are probably not totally like the society in Brave New World, in which people go on their happy way, enjoying pleasures and medicating their pain with soma. But that’s the picture that enters my mind when I think about Zuckerman’s thesis, notwithstanding my realization that everyone encounters problems in life, even those in Sweden and Denmark.

I think about something I heard Lee Strobel say on the Bible Answer Man a couple of years ago, as he discussed a book that he and his wife wrote about their marriage. Basically, Lee’s wife became a Christian before Lee did. Lee remarked that their lives and their marriages were not bad before their conversion, but they were incomplete. He compared the situation to the difference between black-and-white and color television. In his eyes, there’s something richer that religion can add to one’s life. I wonder what it is.

Any thoughts and musings?

Prayer Morphs

For me, prayer can take a variety of forms. Sometimes, I comment on the text I am reading for an entire hour, or (more often) at some point during my prayer hour. This especially helps me when I’m in a particularly fowl mood, since it gets my mind off of myself. Plus, the words flow out better when there’s a bitter taste in my mouth!

When I’m in one of my loathsome giddy moods, however, I have a hard time sustaining a lecture on a religious topic. What I do in that case is to read the text over again. Right now, I’m reading the Koran, and my goal for my current daily quiet time is to read it twice. I read two pages for each prayer hour, and, at some point in the future, I will read all of those pages again. Often, my “catch-up” second reading can be twenty or thirty pages, and it’s helpful because it gives me more of a “big picture” look at the Koran as well as solidifies concepts that I may not have understood or even seen in my first reading.

I don’t always comment on the Koran for the entire hour. In many cases, the Koran seems to repeat the same information over and over: don’t associate compeers with Allah, evil-doers will burn in hell forever, etc., etc. I can only cover the same ground so much! But there are times when the Koran presents something different, such as a point of Muslim law, or a different understanding of a Bible story, or stories of prophets who are unfamiliar to me, or scattered statements that puzzle me and make me think. I usually encounter these things in my second reading.

There are prayer hours when I comment on the Koran, and there are other prayer hours in which I don’t discuss it at all. But I still feel like my daily quiet time on the whole is a serious treatment of the book–serious in terms of what I want to accomplish: reading the book and thinking about what I read, whenever such activity occurs. It doesn’t happen in every daily quiet time, but it happens in a lot of them.

What do I think about when I’m not meditating on the Koran? Events in my life. My plans for the day, week, or year. Personal growth. Spirituality. Politics. Religion. Movies. TV shows. My personal rants. I’m quite open and honest with God. Some may think this is appropriate. Some may not. Whatever people may think, it’s how I pray.

Yesterday, I did something different. I didn’t feel like reading, and I didn’t feel like lecturing. So what I did was breathe deeply and comment every now and then. I didn’t hear a profound message from God in the silence, but it was relaxing! And it was so different! I often feel like I have to be doing something or receive external stimuli. I have to talk, or read, or watch TV, or work, or play around on the Internet. Why can’t I just be? And breathe?

I’m not going to make this a legalistic requirement for my future prayer times. Maybe I’ll want to read or talk on certain days. But I’ll feel free to be and to breathe without guilt. Why should I always have to do something in prayer?

Elvis the Spiritual Seeker

Source: Cathleen Falsani’s Sin Boldly: A Field Guide for Grace (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008) 22-24.

For background on this series, see Falsani Series. Quotations are in italics.

Did you know the only Grammy awards Elvis ever won were for gospel recordings?…Offstage, Elvis, who was reared in an Assemblies of God church in Tulepo, Mississippi, spent hours singing gospel tunes with his entourage as a way to relax and, perhaps, self-soothe. According to what his daughter, Lisa Marie Presley, says in the audio tour Bubba and I listened to as we spent a couple of hours moving reverentially from room to room in Graceland, Elvis was a real spiritual seeker, especially later in his troubled life. He was always looking for something and read loads of books on religion and spirituality

…On [Elvis' desk] were several spiritually themed books, including a copy of Khalil Gibran’s The Prophet and Erich von Daniken’s Gods from Outer Space. I guess he still hadn’t found what he was looking for…Many people–many Christians, for that matter–might scoff at the idea that Elvis, with all of his overindulgences, addictions, and peccadilloes, also could have been a believer. I think Bubba and I both left Graceland with the bittersweet impression of Elvis as an incredibly gifted, tragically flawed man who lavished love and outrageous gifts on his family and friends, desperately tried to reconcile staggering fame with personal heartache, but in the end felt alone, empty, and lost.

Yet the faith that Elvis had as a child, and that Bubba and I share, promises that it doesn’t matter whether he could pull it together in the end. Grace fills that gap. While it’s true that you may lose your religion during the course of a lifetime, you never lose your salvation. Once you let Jesus in your kitchen, he just keeps on making peanut butter and banana sandwiches, and he never leaves.

These quotes really stood out to me, since I can identify and not identify with them at the same time. Like Elvis, I am somewhat of a spiritual seeker. Spirituality is a good, clean way for me to self-medicate. I look for spiritual autobiographies whenever I visit my public library, for I’m interested in how people find meaning as they cope with life.

And the books that I read are not always Christian. I read one about an orthodox Jew who rediscovered his Judaism through a “Jesus year” of intense exposure to Christianity. I recently read a book about a Jewish man who studied the dominant non-belief in Sweden and Denmark, as he asked the people of those countries how they dealt with tragedy and death in light of their lack of religious faith. Right now, I’m reading a book by a Japanese brother and sister, whose spiritual perspectives are quite different from one another. The brother is a financial wiz who writes self-help books, and the sister is a Buddhist nun who was ordained by the Dalai Lama. Their book relates how they have taught each other and grown in the process.

For my daily quiet time, I have read the Bible, but right now I’m reading other books as well. I am about two-thirds of the way through the Koran, and I have books of Hindu and Buddhist Scriptures lined up for my next projects. I still read the Bible every day, however, through a daily Bible reading plan that enables me to read the whole Bible in a year. And I also do my weekly quiet time, in which I study a chapter of the Bible. I’m listening to a sermon on I Samuel 19 right now!

What am I looking for? One thing is consolation. For what I mean by that, read my Joan of Arcadia post, Joan of Arcadia: Desolation and Consolation. I desire inspiration, inner peace, wholeness, and wisdom about how I should live my life. Another thing I seek is knowledge. I wonder what other religions teach, how people find fulfillment in life, and if other religions are necessarily all about self-fulfillment (something tells me that Islam may not be). Sometimes, my search really inspires me. Other times, it does not. But the search is worthwhile either way.

Am I shopping for a religion? I’m not sure. I really did not know much about other religions when I became a Christian, and I naturally assumed that Christianity was right and other religions were wrong. Right now, I wonder if that is indeed the case. Some (e.g., John Hick) claim that God is present in other religions. Is he? I don’t know. I’m not even sure if I can know, since we don’t directly hear the voice of God, but rather competing claims about what God does and thinks. But I can learn about other religions and see what I find.

Christianity still inspires me on some level, especially when it focuses on grace, God’s love, wisdom, and personal growth. When it gets into Jesus being the only way to salvation, however, I feel rather uncomfortable. I was eating at Taco Bell this afternoon, and there was a poorly-dressed elderly woman eating behind me, as she sucked up her sinuses and made me sick in the process. She said “hi” to one of the workers and asked how he was doing, and he replied that he was being bad. She replied, “But that’s why Jesus came to earth–for those who are bad.”

I’m not sure why her statement turned me off. Part of it may have been that my reading of the Koran and portions of the Bible instills in me the notion that God accepts those who do good, while he punishes those who are bad. “Maybe it doesn’t matter if one believes in Christ,” I have thought in the past, “as long he or she lives a fairly righteous life.” Yet, at the same time, I’m still drawn to God’s grace and forgiveness. The idea that Christianity is about what Christ has done for us rather than what we can do for God actually appeals to me. I guess my problem with the woman’s statement was that it was so Jesus-specific, and I didn’t find it inclusive of people on other spiritual paths. But I think I was wrong to belittle her Christian faith in my mind. I don’t want to become hardened and condescending.

I don’t entirely care for Cathleen Falsani’s statement about salvation, since it evokes for me the Armstrongite stereotype of Protestantism: that one can babble a few words about accepting Christ, go out and live in sin, and still be assured of salvation after death. That’s not exactly what I find in the Bible, which emphasizes righteous living and perseverance in the faith (e.g., Matthew 10:22; Colossians 1:23). Plus, I didn’t care for Cathleen’s reference to “peanut butter and banana sandwiches.” That sounded icky and corny to me, and she comes across as much more level-headed on her YouTube videos (e.g., here).

But I’d like to think that God recognizes and honors our thirst for him, even though we are complex, messy creatures who are mostly mixtures of good and bad. Abraham Lincoln may not have been the most orthodox Christian on the face of the earth, but he still felt a dependence on God. Elvis had his hang-ups and looked to drugs to self-medicate, but he still wanted to feel the love, grace, goodness, and healing power of God. Doesn’t that count for something? Can saving faith be a thirst for the divine?

I hope so, but there are still plenty of passages about the necessity of believing in Jesus for salvation (John 14:6, Acts 4:12, etc.). I can’t just blow those off and remain a Christian in good standing.

Inspiration, Toleration, Meditation

1. Yehoshua Amir, “Authority and Interpretation of Scripture in the Writings of Philo,” Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Martin Jan Mulder (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2004) 435.

“Here, apparently following the practice of the Delphic oracle of his time, [Philo] makes a sharp distinction between the soothsayer who, in the grip of the god, can only utter incomprehensible sounds, and the insightful prophet, who, using his reason to the fullest, ‘critically judges’ these sounds and extracts a reasonable meaning from them.”

Philo’s view of inspiration seems to be that God gives the prophet something, and the prophet does something with what God has given him when he communicates it to others. It reminds me of the view that God put the thoughts in the biblical authors minds, and they expressed those thoughts in their own words. “The Bible is thought inspired, not word inspired,” a Seventh-Day Adventist I knew once said in his church’s Sabbath School class. And he was expressing SDA doctrine, not just his own opinion! Such a view would explain why there is diversity of language throughout the Bible.

Some have problems with this idea. When I was at Jewish Theological Seminary, I took a theology class taught by Neil Gillman, and he was discussing the various ideas about divine revelation. For him, anything other than divine dictation made the Bible a solely human product. After all, if God gives the prophet an idea, and the prophet expresses it in his own words, then the prophet is adding his interpretation to the message as he writes or speaks it. Once you add that sort of subjectivity to the prophetic process, you don’t really know what’s from God! All you hear is God’s message as it is filtered through the prophet’s personal interpretation, which goes into the words and phrases that he chooses.

I guess this is the question about divine inspiration: Where does the divine begin, and where does the human element enter the picture? And people approach this subject in different ways. At DePauw, theologians told me that we read the Bible to see a pattern of what God is like. I guess what they mean is that we have to look at all of the portrayals of God and see what they have in common. Paul Hanson of Harvard does something like this in A People Called, and the message he sees in the Bible’s diverse writings is God’s commitment to social justice. For Hanson (as I understood him), the parts of the Bible that are “conservative” reflect their ancient Near Eastern context, whereas the liberating aspects are divinely-inspired. Jon Levenson calls this idea sola liberatia.

In the Bible itself, God speaks to human beings, and they write down or speak what God said to them. It’s dictation. How that jibes with the diversity in the Bible, I do not know.

2. Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1910) 829.

“…Tertullian [(second-third centuries C.E.)] enthusiastically and triumphantly repels the attacks of the heathens upon the new religion, and demands for it legal toleration and equal rights with other sects of the Roman empire. It is the first plea for religious liberty, as an inalienable right which God has given to every man, and which the civil government in its own interest should not only tolerate but respect and protect.”

When I was at DePauw, I took a class called “Foundations of Western Civilization,” which covered the Reformation. In one of our books, I read about a few thinkers around the time of the Reformation who believed in religious toleration. They were sick of all the religious wars, and they concluded that life would be better if people could practice their religion freely. As far as my history book was concerned, that idea was pretty revolutionary for that period! Luther and Calvin didn’t hold it.

In a Christianity class I took at DePauw, we were studying the trinitarian controversies of the fourth century. “They had to get this question figured out, since Constantine had become a Christian, and he wanted to know which viewpoint he should enforce,” my professor said. I guess that’s how it was in those days! People weren’t allowed to believe whatever they wanted about God. Faith was enforced by the state. Christians like to talk about the people who gave their lives for their belief in Christ’s divinity, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Arians also died at the hands of the state.

In light of all this, I’m surprised to encounter a third century figure who believed in religious toleration. Of course, he held this view when Christianity was a minority, persecuted religion, so maybe his commitment to it isn’t that surprising after all!

Some like to talk about how tolerant pagan societies were. “Polytheism is tolerant, while monotheism is intolerant,” I once heard a professor say. Granted, monotheism can be pretty intolerant, but it was polytheism that threw Christians to the lions. It reminds me of political correctness today: it upholds tolerance and diversity, except for those outside of a particular norm.

I was watching the Message today, a 1976 movie about the early history of Islam. There’s a scene in which the pagan leader of Mecca is talking to Muhammad and his crew, and someone asks him (the Meccan leader) if he believes in the one true God and Muhammad, God’s prophet. The African Muslim, Bilal, then says that we cannot force people to believe in God, since faith must come in God’s own time. The Meccan then confesses his belief in Allah and Muhammad.

I’m not sure if this accords with the Koran. The Koran is like Christianity in that it says one must either believe a certain way or spend eternity in hell. That’s even communicated in the Message, in a battle scene. The Muslim army shouts to the Meccans, “Our dead soldiers are in paradise. Your dead soldiers are in hell!” So much for God’s own time! If one doesn’t believe a certain way before death, then one goes to hell. It’s not as if a person has oodles of time, in that scenario, since people don’t know when they will die. As evangelicals like to say, “If you were to get hit by a car tonight, would you go to heaven or hell?”

One thing I somewhat like about Islam, though, is its focus on good works. I have a hard time choosing what to believe, but I can choose what I do. I can decide to act concretely in light of the notion that there is a God who cares about what I do and will judge me in the last day. On the other hand, in those days, belief mattered! If the Meccans were going to dump idolatry and all of the business that Mecca received from it, then they had better have some conviction that they were doing the right thing! They couldn’t have a “Well, there may be one God” mindset, since lots of money was at stake.

A final point for this category: When I was at DePauw, a professor told me about a priest in the 1960′s who said that Jesus didn’t force people to accept his religion. I think this was part of Vatican II, which embraced religious liberty and toleration. Was the priest correct? Yes, in a sense. I mean, Jesus didn’t have the political authority to force anyone to believe anything. He had to persuade people–through arguments, miracles, etc. At the same time, he did believe that the cosmic ruler of the universe punished those who didn’t embrace Jesus and his message, so he didn’t exactly think that God ran the world with a cosmic First Amendment.

3. “The Law,” A Rabbinic Anthology, ed. C.G. Montefiore and H. Loewe (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1938) 125.

“So God says to the Israelites, ‘I created within you the evil yetzer, but I created the Law as a medicine. As long as you occupy yourselves with the Law, the yetzer will not rule over you. But if you do not occupy yourselves with the Torah, then you will be delivered into the power of the yetzer, and all its activity will be against you.’ (Sifre Deut., ‘Ekeb, 45, f. 82b (R.T. p. 182; Hd. p. 103).)”

What is it about the Jewish law that undermines a person’s evil inclination? I have a hard time believing that laws about rituals and damages and slavery and divorce can make a person less evil–unless they relate to God’s holiness, or justice, or kind treatment of slaves and the wife who is put away. But I’m not sure if Jewish literature focuses as much on the latter. The Mishnah and (as far as I can see) the Talmud concentrate instead on how to keep the Law, not so much the Law’s meaning (though maybe the midrash touches on some of this). At the same time, there is a strong moral component of the Law, which the rabbis do acknowledge. Don’t kill, don’t commit adultery, don’t steal, etc. These restrain human beings from harming others.

Ambiguity, Education, Witnessing

1. Devorah Dimant, “Use and Interpretation of the Mikra in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha,” Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Martin Jan Mulder (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2004) 397.

“Judith 9:2-4[:] “The passage forms the opening part of Judith’s prayer. It summarizes poetically the biblical episode, as part of the argument advanced by the prayer. In this argument Dinah’s rape functions as the historical precedent, and as such forms part of the justification for the request addressed by Judith to God. The prayer retains the biblical emphasis on the violation of an Israelite virgin and her ensuing defilement, but omits the name of Dinah. The crime is ascribed to all the Shechemites (a view taken also by Jub 30 and Test. Levi), instead of Shechem alone. Such a sin is presented as a transgression of divine interdiction, read into the phrase ‘And this shall not be done’ (Gen 34:7). Consequently, the killing of the Shechemites by the sword of the sons of Jacob is seen as a just punishment prescribed by God. Moreover, the vengeance is represented as an act of piety and zeal for God.”

The Hebrew of Genesis 34:27 says something that a lot of English translations obscure. I’ll italicize the part about collective guilt: “The sons of Jacob came on the wounded and they plundered the city, which defiled (plural) their sister.” A professor of mine once said, “This is plural, so it indicates collective guilt. You don’t have to be in the 99th percentile of Hebrew knowledge to see this!” He was obviously frustrated with our lack of Hebrew knowledge!

But I don’t want to focus here on collective guilt, but rather on the various views on Genesis 34. It’s hard to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys. You may know the story: Shechem rapes Jacob’s daughter, Dinah, then speaks tenderly to her. He asks his father to get him Dinah so he can marry her. His father then offers Jacob a huge payment, and Jacob’s sons, Simeon and Levi, decide to deceive the Shechemites. They tell the Shechemites that they need to be circumcised before Shechem can marry Dinah. The Shechemites undergo this painful procedure, confident that Israel’s property will soon be theirs. While the Shechemites are in pain, Simeon and Levi swoop in and kill all the males. The other Israelites then plunder the Shechemites‘ property. Jacob is upset, for he says that Simeon and Levi have made him look bad before the Canaanites. But Simeon and Levi get the last word in the story: “Should our sister be treated like a whore?” (NRSV).

I didn’t know what to do with this story when I first read it. Who’s right, and who’s wrong? Shechem rapes Dinah, and that’s bad. Yet he loves her and is willing to do anything to have her, and that’s good. Simeon and Levi lie to the Shechemites, which is bad. Yet, they do so to uphold their sister’s honor, and that’s good. Not surprisingly, literary critics of the Bible disagree on the heroes and villains of this story.

In Genesis 49:5-7, there’s an explicit condemnation of what Simeon and Levi did: “Simeon and Levi are brothers; weapons of violence are their swords. May I never come into their council; may I not be joined to their company–for in their anger they killed men, and at their whim they hamstrung oxen. Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is cruel! I will divide them in Jacob, and scatter them in Israel.”

In the history of biblical interpretation, I see both sides, with the weight being on the anti-Shechem view. IV Maccabees 2:19-20 cites Simeon and Levi as people who did not manage their anger, with tragic results. This accords with IV Maccabees’ focus on the Stoic desire to suppress the passions. But I gather from James Kugel’s The Bible As It Was that most Jewish interpreters didn’t think much of the Shechemites. They thought Genesis 34 condemned Gentiles and intermarriage with them. Some sought to excuse or downplay Simeon and Levi’s deception, calling them “wise” instead of deceptive. There’s a widespread belief that Simeon and Levi executed God’s justice on Shechem.

Here’s a point that will appear unrelated, but which I’ll die back to Genesis 34 in the course of this post. One thing I love about Roots: The Next Generation is that Alex Haley goes out of his way to understand the different perspectives of his family and friends. Alex’s father, Simon, wanted to go to college, but his dad didn’t understand the value of education. He wanted Simon to be practical and work as a sharecropper. When Simon tells his mom, Queen, that his dad is ignorant, she slaps him, reminding him that some people lose hope when all they know is backbreaking labor.

Simon made a good life for himself through his education, and he told his son, Alex, that education is the key to a black man’s success. But Alex didn’t want to go to school. He hated school! Rather, he wanted to find his own way in the world.

Alex Haley is the one who wrote this story. Although he differed from his father, he understood where he was coming from. His story doesn’t make his father out to be the bad guy.

The same goes for the miniseries’ portrayal of Alex Haley’s relationships. Alex had a marriage which ended in divorce, since his wife didn’t like his focus on his writing career to the neglect of his family (in terms of not spending time with them). Afterwards, Alex had a relationship, which ended because he was obsessed with finding his roots, leading him to neglect his significant other.

Again, Alex is the author of this story. But he doesn’t portray himself as right and the women in his life as wrong. Rather, he acknowledges that they had a legitimate point of view. He thinks that he needed to search for his roots to find out who he was, but he admits that this journey made him somewhat of a jerk to people he cared about.

I had the same sort of thought about Desperate Housewives earlier today. In the last episode, Carlos went to work at a high-paying corporate job, rather than taking the job that he wanted, in which he’d work with the blind. He did so to please his wife, Gabby, who wants fancy things and had to sacrifice to take care of her husband when he was blind (see Time for Carlos to Sacrifice). Carlos looks pretty heroic, huh? One could assume that his desire to work with the blind was an example of self-centered idealism, and that he made the right choice to make more money for his family.

But not so fast! Now he’s away from his family a lot, and their daughters do not obey Gabby. When Gabrielle tells Carlos that he needs to spend time at home disciplining his little girls, Carlos responds that he doesn’t want his rare time with his daughters to be spent growling at them. He also reminds Gabby that she was the one who wanted him to take the high-paying job. “But I just wanted us to have a normal life,” Gabby responds. “Well, I hate my job, and the kids are out of control. We’ve got it!”

Did Carlos make the right choice? He made an understandable choice, but it was one with drawbacks. The same would have been true had he chosen to work with the blind at the community center.

Right. Wrong. It’s not always evident! There are plenty of stories with clear heroes and villains. Ayn Rand’s novels are like that, since they hardly ever portray the collectivists with redeeming human qualities. And the Bible has a lot of stories in which good battles evil. But there are times when the Bible presents moral ambiguity. One example is the story of Dinah in Genesis 34. And another is the chapter I read for my weekly quiet time this last Sabbath: I Samuel 14.

Is Saul good or bad? He inquires of God, only to interrupt the inquiry so he can chase after the Philistines. That’s bad, since it’s rude to God! Yet, he makes an oath that his soldiers will fast until they win, which acknowledges his dependence on God. And God may acknowledge this oath, since he doesn’t answer Saul once Jonathan breaks it. When the soldiers can finally get to eat and start consuming animals with their blood, Saul gets upset, since that violates God’s laws. He’s even willing to execute his son Jonathan to enforce the oath. Is Saul rash, foolish, proud, and heartless? Or is he pious and impartial? He can be interpreted both ways. It’s ambiguous!

What do we do with ambiguity?

2. Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1910) 784.

“The inspiring thought of Clement is that Christianity satisfies all the intellectual and moral aspirations and wants of man.”

Can Christianity satisfy human beings on an intellectual level? I remember reading in Ellen G. White’s Steps to Christ that the Bible can elevate the human intellect. And she has a point. Bible study leads people to contemplate deep questions, such as why we are here and where we are going. Half of the time, it can be quite a mental puzzle to comprehend what the Bible is saying! And there are plenty of fundamentalist-turned-atheists or agnostics who see value in their past years as Bible students, since Bible study taught them how to read and evaluate texts. They could also get lessons in anthropology, psychology, and religion from their reading of the Bible.

In my experience at DePauw University, there was a belief among some that being a Christian was antithetical to learning. When I was being interviewed for the Honor Scholars’ Program, my professor asked me: “You’re a Christian, so you think you already have the answers. Why would you want to study other writings?” An Honor Scholar inquired of me, “Why don’t you just stay home and read your Bible? Why are you here at a university seeking answers?”

On some level, these questions were rather arrogant. For one, education is not just a matter of learning new ideas and changing my mind in response to them. It’s a matter of economic livelihood! People go to college so they can survive and earn money in the real world! And second, it’s not as if these people didn’t have beliefs. They were atheists! They dogmatically proclaimed that there is no God. That’s pretty closed-minded, isn’t it? Why isn’t their belief antithetical to education?

Yet, they had a point. Why learn different ideas, if everything I need is in the Bible? When I asked my dad this question after my rough Honor Scholar interview, he said that we may need guidance from real life on how to flesh out the Bible. Jesus told us to love our neighbors, but how we go about that is a complex question. To answer it, we may need to examine the wisdom of the ages.

I was thinking this morning about how I loved my first year at DePauw. I read all sorts of books and encountered a broad spectrum of viewpoints: Plato, Aristotle, Iris Murdoch, Ayn Rand, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and (in my own time) C.S. Lewis. I should probably read some of their works to rekindle the romantic feeling I had at that time! But my first year at DePauw was not like my life today. I could read those works and still walk away as a solid Christian. Believe it or not, I could find continuities between them and my fundamentalist Christian faith. Plato focused on the spiritual, Ayn Rand discussed self-respect, Buddhism advised against clinging to the unreliable, etc. In Christianity, I found the answer to what these great thinkers were looking for.

Nowadays, while I’m still a Christian, my education has a more destabilizing effect on me. In college, I was essentially an Armstrongite, so I thought that God would offer everyone a chance to embrace him after their resurrections, whether or not they received Christ as their personal Savior before death. In my view, those who still rejected God would be mercifully extinguished in the Lake of Fire. So I could examine ideas in a stress-free environment.

Nowadays, things aren’t so clear-cut. So many religions make exclusive claims, and they threaten people with hell-fire for not embracing them. Christianity does so to non-Christians. Islam does so to Christians who believe in the Trinity. And neither religion necessarily excludes eternal torment in hell. That doctrine comes from somewhere in the sacred text–either directly or through interpretation! I want to say that all religions hold that we should live a good life, so maybe we should focus on that, but then my Christian side slaps me across the face and says, “What are you talking about? Salvation is not by works! People have to believe in Christ, or they go to hell.” Suddenly, Christianity looks narrow-minded and dogmatic, in that it dismisses the wisdom of non-Christian people and belief systems. And I find that other religions are attractive in areas where Christianity is not, even as Christianity appeals to me in parts where they don’t. So I don’t know where to go, or what to think. I’m conflicted!

Before, I could find consistency between Christianity and learning new ideas. Now, I see conflict.

There were a few exceptions, though, and they happened today. I was thinking about the Koran, and my mind turned 10:18, which states that other gods can’t do people harm, or bring them gain. I thought about how people tried to please the gods, since they believed that they (the gods) could hurt them if they were not appeased. My mind then went onto Galatians and Colossians. In Galatians, Christians are doing the law to make God happy, almost like they’re slaves of a harsh task-master. They’re acting as they did when they were pagans, only now they’re worshipping the true God! In Colossians, Christians practice asceticism out of respect for the Gnostic sub-deities. But Paul tells the Galatians that they are free sons of God, not slaves to weak and beggarly elements. In Colossians, “Paul” says the Christians don’t have to please a bunch of sub-deities, since Christ is the fullness of the Godhead.

The Koran also talks a lot about relying on God in battle, not one’s own strength. That’s another message in Galatians! Whom do we exalt: ourselves and our own power, or God? When we try to keep the law in an attempt to earn God’s approval, we act as if God’s indebted to us, and we assume that we can become righteous through our own fleshly activity. We exalt ourselves. But when we receive God’s free forgiveness through Christ, and we bear spiritual fruit through the Holy Spirit, the one who gets the credit and glory is God.

So the Koran actually affirmed my Christian beliefs today.

3. “Man’s Nature and God’s Grace,” A Rabbinic Anthology, ed. C.G. Montefiore and H. Loewe (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1938) 87.

“‘They that turn many to righteousness are like the stars forever’ (Dan. XII, 3). As among the stars there is no enmity, so too among the righteous…Who are greater, they who love, or they who cause [others] to love Him? Surely the latter…And as the number of the stars is uncountable, so is the number of the righteous uncountable…(Sifre Deut., ‘Ekeb, 47, 83a (H. oo. 105, 106)”

You know, I’m ordinarily quite hostile to evangelical statements about witnessing. “You have to tell people about Jesus.” “You should make people want what you have.” “You should be attractive to people, since that can win them to Christ.” “You need to be people’s friend before you can tell them about Jesus.” People who say these things make no attempt to understand those who are shy, or socially-awkward–people who have difficulty making friends. Zilch! Zero! Zack! I hope those happy-clappy evangelicals read this and become convicted to the core of their being!

But I don’t feel that sort of hostility when I read Jewish statements about witnessing. I think the reason is that they talk about honoring God with one’s life. There’s a rabbinic story about a rabbi who returned a lost and valuable item to a Gentile, influencing the Gentile to praise the God of Israel. “This Jew could have made money off of this, but he returned it to me!,” he thought. One does not have to engage in manipulative apologetics, or be something one’s not. Rather, one can do everyday acts of kindness: smile to someone, give to the poor, return a lost item, etc. I’ve done some of those things, and I’m not Mr. Popularity! One doesn’t have to be popular in order to witness.

Jews acknowledged the sovereignty of God when they prayed, or kept the Sabbath, or refrained from unclean meats. By doing the Torah, they were confessing to the world their belief in God’s supremacy.

Yet, this rabbinic passage doesn’t talk about God’s supremacy. It mentions influencing others to love God. The rabbis saw God as good, humble, and loving–as tough, yet fair. Who wouldn’t want others to love this sort of God?

But the Daniel passage talks about turning people to righteousness. Some of my relatives are practically universalists, so they don’t see any point in launching a major work to convert people to Armstrongism. In their eyes, most people won’t convert to it anyway! “But you can be a preacher of righteousness,” they say. I’m not sure if I agree with them on universalism, but who doesn’t like righteousness? Wouldn’t it be great for everyone if people simply did the right thing?

The rabbinic passage also states that there are a lot of righteous people out there. I’d like to think that the majority of people are good-at-heart, and, indeed, there is a good side to them. But the Bible asserts that most people are bad. God only saved eight people when he sent the flood. Jesus said that few would follow the righteous path, which is straight and narrow (Matthew 7:14).

On my Christian dating site, a gentleman once said he believed that there will be more saved people than unsaved at the last judgment. (Believe it or not, this guy’s as die-hard conservative as you can get!) I admire his belief in God’s unbounded generosity towards all his creation. But the Bible doesn’t exactly present that picture, at least not as my friend conceives it. Sure, it says that there will be a great multitude in heaven (Revelation 7:9), but, overall, it has a scenario in which the righteous are very few, amidst a world that’s predominantly evil. So I’d like to agree with my friend, but, alas, the Bible points in another direction!

Abraham’s Justification, My Justification, God as Father

1. Devorah Dimant, “Use and Interpretation of the Mikra in the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha,” Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Martin Jan Mulder (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2004) 394.

“Abraham–’found faithful when tested’–the formula used of Abraham also in Sir 44:20 LXX, and is composed of an allusion to Gen 22:1 ‘God tested’…and to Neh 9:8 ‘you have found his heart faithful to you’. The second part of the verse is a slightly altered reproduction of Gen 15:6 (influenced by the formula applied to Phinehas in Ps 106:31).”

Genesis 15:6 states, “And [Abraham] believed the LORD; and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness” (NRSV). In Romans 4, Paul applies this to Abraham’s justification at a specific point in his life: In Genesis 15, God promised that Abraham would have children, Abraham believed God, and God considered Abraham to be righteous on account of his faith. Paul points out that this all occurred before Abraham was circumcised, meaning that God does not declare people righteous on account of circumcision.

Many Protestants conclude that all one has to do for God to consider him or her righteous is to trust in what Christ did on the cross. As Paul says in Romans 4:5, “But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.” As Luther says, Christians are snow-covered dung: they are sinners, yet God accounts them as righteous when they accept his free gift of salvation.

James, however, appears to interpret Genesis 15:6 differently. In James 2:21-24, he states: “Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, ‘Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,’ and he was called the friend of God You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” James seems to associate Abraham’s justification with his willingness to sacrifice Isaac.

There are all sorts of interpretations of Genesis 15:6 in the history of biblical interpretation. I Maccabees 2:52 goes with the akedah view: “Was not Abraham found faithful when tested, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness?” In medieval times, the Jewish exegete Rashi went with the Pauline interpretation. Nachmanides, however, said that the verse means Abraham believed God and accounted God as righteous, meaning the passage wasn’t about Abraham’s justification at all, but rather Abraham’s praise of God. Some maintain that Genesis 15:6 was not a specific incident but rather a summary of Abraham’s life: throughout his life, Abraham believed God, and God considered his faith righteous.

What’s interesting is Psalm 106:30-31: “Then Phinehas stood up and interceded, and the plague was stopped. And that has been reckoned to him as righteousness from generation to generation forever.” This is referring to the incident when Phinehas killed a man who was with a Midianite woman (Numbers 25). God then grants Phinehas a covenant of eternal priesthood.

Apparently, deeds other than believing God can be accounted as righteousness. That makes me wonder: when Genesis 15:6 says that God accounted Abraham’s faith as righteous, does that mean God is declaring Abraham righteous apart from works? Or does it mean that God was pleased with Abraham’s faith and reckoned it as an act of righteousness: When Abraham believed, God put a checkmark in the “good” column? Abraham could still earn marks in the “bad” column, however. Suppose he did not circumcise himself or his family? Genesis 17:14 states, “Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.” And what if he chose not to sacrifice his son?

2. Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1910) 744.

Hegesippus (second century C.E.) “felt perfectly at home in the Catholic church of his day which had ascended from, or rather never yet ascended the lofty mountain-height of apostolic knowledge and freedom.”

I’ve been reading something like this throughout Schaff: many of the early church fathers did not understand justification by grace through faith alone. Rather, they focus on avoiding hell by doing good works. I’ve wanted to comment, but I usually find something more interesting in Schaff that I write about instead. Today, however, I had pretty slim pickings.

I’m not going to comb through the early church fathers right now, but my impression is that they indeed did believe that Christ’s blood brings forgiveness of sins to those who have faith. But it doesn’t stop there for them. Barnabas thought that alms could also atone for sin. Clement and the Shepherd of Hermas warn believers that certain sins could lead them to hell.

There’s one lady who witnesses to me every now and then: She says that one can know he or she will go to heaven by accepting Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. When I told her that I go to a Latin mass, she responded that she used to be a Catholic, but she was never sure that she was saved. After all, Catholics say that committing a mortal sin can lead a believer to hell, provided he doesn’t repent!

I admire and envy her sense of peace. And I can see some scriptural basis for it. Paul says in Romans 4:5: “But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.” This passage seems to say that one doesn’t have to do good works to be saved; rather, one has to trust the one who justified the ungodly. And when a person has that kind of trust and assurance, he or she can truly love (Galatians 5:6). I’d rather my love flow from my assurance and peace rather than love in order to be saved. It’s a difference between running down-hill and climbing up-hill!

The problem is that Catholics aren’t getting their views on mortal sin from nowhere. Paul says in I Corinthians 6:9-10: “Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers– none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.” Galatians 5:19-21 has, “Now the works of the flesh are obvious: fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these. I am warning you, as I warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.”

If people are saved by trusting in Christ’s sacrifice apart from works, then how can any sin disqualify believers from the kingdom of God? Yet, Paul issues such a warning. When Paul says that people are justified by grace through faith, apart from works, does he mean that’s how they become Christians, not how they maintain their salvation? Is he talking about how people get into the door–by receiving God’s free grace? Even Catholics affirm that God’s the one who gets the ball rolling–with his undeserved grace!

3. “God’s Love for Israel,” A Rabbinic Anthology, ed. C.G. Montefiore and H. Loewe (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1938) 62.

“‘The Lord is my helper’ (Ps. CXVIII, 7). The matter is like two men who come to the judgment seat, and they are afraid of the judge. It is said to them, ‘Fear not, let your hearts take courage.’ So Israel will stand at the judgment before God, and will be afraid because of the Judge. Then the angels of the service will say to them, ‘Fear not, do you not recognize Him? He is your fellow-citizen, as it is said, ‘It is He who will build my city’ (Isa. XLV, 13); and then they will say, ‘Fear not the Judge; do you not recognize Him? He is your kinsman, as it says, ‘The children of Israel, the people related to Him’ (Ps. CXLVIII, 14). Then they will say, ‘Do you not recognize Him? He is your brother, as it says, ‘For my brethren and friends’ sake’ (Ps. CXXII, 8). And even more, He is your Father, as it is said, ‘Is not He thy father’ (Deut. XXXII, 6). (Midr. Ps. on CXVIII, 7 (242b, 10)”

I haven’t checked out the scriptural references to see what exactly the rabbis are doing with them, but there are two points I want to highlight: First of all, this appears to be another example of a rabbinic grace passage. Luther could have said the same thing, only he would have added stuff about the incarnation and Christ being our brother! At the same time, there are other rabbinic passages that do not exclude works from consideration at the judgment. One can perhaps reconcile those with this one by remembering the rabbinic statements that God has both mercy and justice, or that God will purify certain Jews in Gehenna before they can enter eternal bliss, or that God will give his people the benefit of a doubt (see Cursed Soil, Fellowship with God, Weighing Deeds). Put together, these passages convey the message that both works and grace will play a role in the last judgment.

Second, this passage affirms that God is the Jews’ brother and father. I’ve heard Christian sermons and read Christian books claiming that Jews in Christ’s time did not call God “Father.” That’s why they say Christ was so radical when he opened the Lord’s prayer with “our Father.” But the rabbis believed that God was the father of Israel, and there is scriptural basis for this view. God calls Israel his firstborn son (Exodus 4:22-23). Moreover, there are biblical passages in which God can be like a father to individuals, not only an entire nation:

Psalm 27:10: “If my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will take me up.”

Psalm 68:5: “Father of orphans and protector of widows is God in his holy habitation.”

Psalm 103:13: “As a father has compassion for his children, so the LORD has compassion for those who fear him.”

Proverbs 3:12: “for the LORD reproves the one he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.”

I’m not sure if Islam has the same sort of idea. The Koran emphatically denies that God has a son (4:171), but that’s usually in response to the Christian idea that Jesus actually is God, or the (fictitious) rabbinic view that Ezra and the rabbis were divine (9:30-31). I’m not sure if it sees God as a father in the sense that he loves and takes care of people as a father would his children, although, of course, it is quite clear that Allah is compassionate! When I was at Harvard, I heard a Christian speaker tell us about a Muslim who converted to Christianity when she heard its concept of God as a father. Could she have found the same idea in her own religion, or does Islam primarily conceive of God as a righteous autocrat and judge?

Aram and Edom, Levitical Ministers, What’s God Want?

1. Benjamin Kedar, “The Latin Translations,” Mikra: Text, Translation, Reading and Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Martin Jan Mulder (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2004) 309.

“First one may mention those blunders of the translators that can be explained only from the Hebrew. The [Old Latin] has Edom for Aram (2 Chr 20:2)–correctly rendered ‘Syria’ by the LXX and Vg–due to a confusion of the Hebrew letters Res and Dalet that especially resemble each other.”

In my post, Code-Words, Justin on Eternal Punishment/Immortal Soul, Destabilizing, I referred to scholars who believe that the Syriac Peshitta substitute “Edom” for “Aram” (Syria) to avoid offending the Syrians, in whose midst some Jews lived. That’s a strong possibility. But could it be possible that it did so because, like the Old Latin, it misidentified a Resh as a Daleth? It can happen! A reader may think that he sees a bump behind the Resh, making it a Daleth. Or perhaps the manuscipt he’s using has a Daleth. One problem I have with the deliberate-substitution-to-avoid-offending-the-Syrians view is that the Bible only shows that the Syrians used to be Israel’s enemies, and even that is mixed. Sometimes, the Syrians are the Israelite’s friends, or at least they’re not hostile. Would the Syrians get offended if they heard the Israelites saying that Israel and Syria were enemies at some point?

At the same time, history has implications for the present. How we present certain people in the past can seriously offend people today. So the deliberate-substitution-et al. view still makes some sense.

2. Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1910) 646.

Clement (first-second century C.E.) “represents the Levitical priesthood as a type of the Christian teaching office, and insists with the greatest decision on outward unity, fixed order, and obedience to church rulers.”

Armstrongites have maintained that their ministers are Levites. Sometimes, they used a racial argument, for I’ve heard that Herbert Armstrong claimed actual descent from the tribe of Levi. At other times, they appealed to New Testament authority. When Paul is telling the Corinthian church that he deserves to receive payment from them, he appeals to the priests of the Old Testament: “Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in what is sacrificed on the altar?” (I Corinthians 9:13). Some interpret this to mean that Paul equates the ministers of the New Testament with the Levites of the Old.

What’s at stake here? Primarily tithing. The Torah says that the Israelites should give tithes to the priests and the Levites. Sometimes, the whole “ministers are Levites” spiel can degenerate into the absurd. A relative of mine told me a story about a couple that brought fruits and vegetables to the church. The minister demanded that he have the first pick, since he was a Levite and didn’t have an inheritance. My relative thought, “You dummy! Which of us here does have an inheritance?” To their credit, the couple said that the minister could have the first pick, but they weren’t going to bring any more fruits and vegetables to church. And, predictably, the minister told them they had a bad attitude. On well!

Schaff seems to be referring to I Clement 40-41 (in the BibleWorks version). I’m not sure if Clement is equating the ministry with the Levitical priesthood, as much as he’s saying that God established an order. That was the case in the Hebrew Bible, and it’s also the case in the New Testament. For Paul, there may be an analogy between the Old Testament priests and the ministers of the church, but that doesn’t amount to an equation. Paul also likened himself and other ministers to an ox that treads out the corn.

I may read the Catholic Catechism at some point. I wonder if it equates the Old Testament and New Testament priesthoods?

3. H. Loewe, “Introduction,” A Rabbinic Anthology, ed. C.G. Montefiore and H. Loewe (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1938) lxxxii.

“We are not bound by the utterance of every single Rabbi who is mentioned in the Talmud…There is a great difference between the authority which Christians ascribe to the Gospels and that which Jews assign to Rabbinic literature. Nahmanides, in 1263, did not hesitate to proclaim that a Jew was at liberty to reject haggadic interpretations, though, naturally, he allowed to Haggadah great ethical value.”

Ever since I’ve done my daily quiet time outside of the Jewish/Protestant canon, I’ve wondered about the basis for religious authority. Can I get anything out of the Deuterocanonical writings and the Koran, if I don’t believe that God inspired them? Part of me says “yes,” the same way that I get good lessons from Joan of Arcadia and Desperate Housewives, even though they’re not divinely-inspired (as Desperate Housewives‘ mainstreaming of homosexuality demonstrates). But part of me says “no,” since they make clear claims about God, and I’m not sure if I can trust them, if they’re not divinely-inspired.

Maybe I can acknowledge that they testify to their experience. Perhaps, but people can misinterpret their experiences. Plus there’s the question of whom I should believe. Jesus in John 8:24 says those who don’t believe he’s I AM (God) will die in their sins. My impression as I read the Koran is that it consigns Christians who believe in Jesus’ deity to hell (Sura 5:72-73–see Does Islam Believe Jews and Christians Are Saved? and The Anonymous Muslim, as well as the comments). One source says we go to hell for not believing in Jesus’ divinity, and another says the opposite. Which is right? And how do we know?

What is God’s view on how we can please him? There are Old Testament passages that emphasize repentance and doing the right thing. Isaiah 1:16-18 states: “Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. Come now, let us argue it out, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool” (NRSV). Ezekiel 18:27-28 has, “Again, when the wicked turn away from the wickedness they have committed and do what is lawful and right, they shall save their life. Because they considered and turned away from all the transgressions that they had committed, they shall surely live; they shall not die.” In these passages, the path to atonement is doing good and not evil.

But Paul says that belief in Christ is essential to salvation. He doesn’t even think that a person can do good apart from Christ! “For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law–indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God” (Romans 8:7-8). You want to know where hard-core evangelical exclusivists get their idea that good non-believers will go to hell? (Of course, they’d deny that they’re actually “good”). One source is Paul.

Islam, Judaism, and Christianity base their soteriologies on something in Scripture. Islam and Judaism continue the Hebrew Bible’s trajectory that repentance and good deeds lead to atonement, which means non-Christians can be saved. Christians, however, focus on the Hebrew Bible’s claim that God needs to circumcise people’s hearts and actually make them subservient to God’s law (Deuteronomy 30:6; Jeremiah 31:32-33; Ezekiel 11:19-20; 36:24-28). Who is right? I have a hard time thinking, “Oh, I can get something edifying from all of these views.” This is a crucial issue. It relates to whether one spends eternity in heaven or hell (assuming eternal torment)!

What does God want, and how can we know?

Crossley on Early Christianity’s Growth

In my post, Why Did Christianity Grow?, I discussed Philip Schaff’s explanations for the growth of early Christianity. Doug Ward and Steph recommended that I read Rodney Starks’ Rise of Christianity, and Steph also suggested James Crossley’s Why Christianity Happened. I’m almost done with Crossley’s book, which refers to Stark quite a bit.

Crossley says that Christianity spread through networking: people became Christians because people they knew were Christians. He appeals to studies that demonstrate this to be the case with other marginal movements, such as the Moonies in the 1970′s. And he also has biblical support. In Acts, the church seeks to convert entire households, not just individuals (e.g., Acts 16:15). Paul preached in influential cities where news could quickly spread through social networks. And Paul expressed hope that a believing wife would convert her unbelieving husband (I Corinthians 7:16).

Crossley maintains that the Jesus movement originally wanted Gentile converts to observe the Torah. While there were many Gentiles who were eager to embrace Jewish customs (as Crossley abundantly documents), other Gentiles were not as enthusiastic. These “friends of the friends” of the Gentile Christians were tied to their Gentile customs and deemed Judaism to be rather strange. And not all the members of the households were as happy as their heads when they became Christians. For Crossley, this was why the Jerusalem conference said Gentiles didn’t have to obey the Torah: there were many Gentiles coming into the church who did not want to.

Crossley’s scenario addresses questions I have had. First, if Christians’ sinful nature is dead, why does Paul have to exhort them to stop being bad and start doing good? Part of the reason may have been that not everyone in the church was gun-ho for Christianity. Second, some have argued that Gentiles were attracted to Christianity because they wanted God without the Torah and circumcision. I asked in my post how this could be the case, if Krister Stendahl is correct that Gentiles were enamored with customs of the orient, including Judaism. Crossley’s answer is that some Gentiles were more than willing to embrace Jewish customs when they became Christians, but others weren’t as enthusiastic.

My mind turned to a couple of things as I read Crossley. First of all, I thought of a book that I looked through a few years ago: Richard Rice’s Believing, Behaving, Belonging. Rice is a Seventh-Day Adventist, and he notes that his church has mostly focused on getting people to believe and behave in a certain way. But he found that, once people feel like they belong to the church, right belief and conduct usually fall into place. I don’t really care for Rice’s “convert people to Adventism by being nice to them” subtext, but his point overlaps with Crossley’s argument: relationships are an important factor in the beliefs a person accepts.

I also think of the movie, The Rapture. Mimi Rogers plays a loose woman who has lots of casual sex, until she converts to Christianity. Her conversion disappoints her boyfriend, played by Moulder from the X-Files. “You’re trading what we have for something that’s not even there,” he tells her. But she sticks with him, and, in the next scene, Moulder, Mimi, and their daughter are all sitting together in church as a family. Moulder’s hair is shorter, and he wears a nice suit. He holds hands in prayer with his wife and daughter every night. And he’s the boss at his company. He even tries to reach out to an alcoholic employee, which shows he’s now a loving person. Why the change? Did he see a miracle? No. He became a Christian because his wife was one.

I wondered how Crossley’s scenario would work in terms of evaluating the Armstrongite movement. Did it grow through networks? On some level, yes. One of my relatives converted to it after talking with someone he knew from work, who happened to be in the movement. But that wasn’t the case with everyone. Several people joined because they listened to Herbert Armstrong’s program on the radio, and something about it drew them in.

There may have been a variety of reasons that the early Christian movement grew. Networks most likely played a role. Attraction to the belief system was probably another factor. And I’m not willing to blow off miracles as a possible explanation, since Paul refers to them in his letters (II Corinthians 12:12; Galatians 3:5). Also, I wonder if people would join a movement as stigmatized and persecuted as Christianity, solely because people they knew happened to be in it.

Is there an apologetic motivation underneath my points and inquiries? Probably. But apologetics have their weaknesses, since there are religions other than Christianity that gain converts while undergoing persecution. And the Koran talks a lot about “signs,” meaning religions other than Christianity may appeal to miracles.