Some Notes on Greg Boyd's Crucifixion of the Warrior God Volume 2

Pretty much the same thing as my last post, just on Volume 2. Maybe I should note that these are just stream-of-consciousness initial reactions and hence won't be very polished and might seem too negative to some. But that should have been obvious from the previous installment! In any case, I actually really liked this volume as well, despite the numerous concerns listed below. Notes (again, mostly not very understandable without consulting the book at the same time):

General notes:
-Both volumes have been riddled with innumerable typos - spelling errors, incorrect words, missing words or letters, etc. The endorsements in the first volume contained a number of errors and it just went on from there. I don't know if anyone actually proofread the book or they just didn't care, but it makes it look very unprofessional and this book certainly deserves better than the distinct lack of care it received in this area.
-It's funny that Boyd doesn't seem to often like others using philosophical considerations to determine certain things unless they are his own and for his own conclusions.
-Still demands other interpretations "bear witness" to the cross, whatever that might mean.
-A real question: Non-violence. What is meant by "violence"? What is the scope of this non-violence supposed to be? Is the principle only supposed to apply between humans or are humans supposed to treat other livings non-violently as well? But which other living things? What about plants, fungi, or microbes? Some animals or all? If violence is simply doing harm to or killing a living organism, then we and Jesus would all be violent by necessity since this happens just be living.
-I'm still not entirely sure what "deep literalism" or the "Conservative Hermeneutic" from last volume are supposed to be. Especially when applied to stories when they are thought of as fictional/fables/etc.
-Boyd doesn't seem to see that non-order comes in two varieties - simply not-yet ordered and positively anti-order. So he tends to interpret all OT imagery of non-order as anti-order and associates it with Satan.

On specific pages:
647-648 - Moves way too fast. Generally could be clearer. It seems like the crucifixion itself is being identified as identical with various other aspects of salvation or things normally thought of as consequences of it. So I'm not sure what's going on here or why. It's really hard to follow the line of thought.
650 - 'we must understand every divine accommodation to be a reflection of the self-emptying agape-love of the eternal triune God.' It's not clear what "self-emptying" means here, but is this principle so because every divine action is to be understood in this way? Or is this some special principle here? If the latter, why? If the former, it's not clear what use is going to necessarily follow without smuggling in one's own assumptions here. We'll see.
652-682 - Almost all of this is useless and irrelevant - just a chance to grind an axe against non-open theists.
652-663 - Why is this here? It doesn't deal with defenses of classical theism or responses to his "this is not enough" objection, etc. Also doesn't deal with views that only take parts of classical theism on board. For instance, transcending time and immutable yet also immanent in time, relational, and passible (since immutability and impassibility are definitely not the same thing nor is temporal change required for God to have a real relationship with us or be passible - x affecting y and x changing y are distinct in that changing is one way of being affected but not the only one). On another point, knowledge or experience of God is filtered not simply through Israel's moral beliefs but also its religious or metaphysical ones as well. Hence God's frequent modelling by Israel as a pagan god (that is, using pictures of models of God as used by ANE for gods in general). So accommodation in that sense pretty much guaranteed.
666 - A bit question-begging here it looks like...
667 - Boyd says we must "ground all our thinking about God from start to finish in the revelation of God in the crucified Christ as witnessed to in Scripture." Ground in what sense? Why? What about natural revelation? Similarly for "anchored". If we did this, he asks, would we ever think God was immutable? Sure - why not? Humans suffer and change. Christ was/is human - so he can too. In that sense, so can God. But God can still be immutable in his divinity. A lot of rhetorical, perhaps question-begging, questions here with not too much argument. Seems to confuse ordinary language with metaphysical interpretations thereof (specifically, Boyd's metaphysical interpretations, based on his own prior philosophical convictions - not coming directly from Scripture, despite his own insistence).
668 - Doesn't taking on a human nature mean a change? No, except in the creation.
671 - Not clear what "simple" means here. Looks like it should be more than "lack of parts" but this isn't explained. Also, not clear why an unchanging God "bridging the 'ground of being' with the contingent and ever-changing world" is supposed to be unintelligible. What's supposed to be so especially nonsensical about it? What does this "bridging" even mean anyway?
672 - 1st sentence. The "then" doesn't follow from the "if"!
673 - You can get about everything Boyd wants without jettisoning immutability.
674 - According to Boyd, the Bible is more interested in God's moral qualities than metaphysical, which makes the previous discussions even stranger.
680 - Again, confusing various issues with the issue of power.
686-687 - Some question-begging here, it looks like.
693-696 - Girard. I would like to sometime see some real evidence in favor of his stuff. Is it true?
722-725 - Parts of this seem a bit off. Partly because of a reliance on a bad translation of Galatians 3:24.
731-734 - I don't really see what the biblical evidence is that all these laws of passages were meant to be mere object lessons. Boyd quotes from a bunch of people who agree with him, but there isn't really any biblical evidence of convincing depth on display here. So why accept this as opposed to just saying "I don't know why this is here"? I guess relying on that mistranslation again? Other explanations seem to fit actual biblical evidence better. It seems right for some stories, though...
739 - "It follows that" - no, it really doesn't.
772 - The argument vs. immutability in terms of Jesus' feeling divine abandonment isn't very good. It wrongly associates it with Nestorianism (though, since Boyd seems to be leaning into monophysitism, I guess a more central orthodox view would seem more Nestorian). More unnecessary swipes at non-open theists, in other words.
894 - Confused - if the future exists and God knows it from eternity there is no fact of what they will choose eternally preceding it. That fact, if facts exist and have any location at all, is going to be located in my actually performing that action, not as some prior thing constraining or forcing it. Boyd treats such facts as if they were mere programs that somehow the universe is being made to run, which is completely baseless. What he's doing is, in a sense, smuggling his own views of the future into opponents' views and getting the obvious results from that. Why is this here?
908 - Says God restrains, takes options away, but this is supposed to be somehow non-coercive and not violating free will. That sounds good, but doesn't really elaborate enough to see whether what he says is in fact true. How God does this matters, but Boyd doesn't really say how. But we need to know how in order to be able to assess whether it is really noncoercive,etc. or not. He says his view is clear but it isn't - at least not here. Doesn't really address the objection, I think.
923 - Whether we can imagine something and whether it is true or false are two different things.
936-938 - Not really relevant. Guilt-by-association/appeal to supposed consequences not really pertinent. Issue is whether it's true.
965-968 - Argues based on different sources, ignoring his earlier dictum that he was going to deal with the final form of the text. The question is not what sources were like or meant but what does it mean as it is in fact now? What is the meaning with these put together as they are now? Literal hornet  argument not very plausible. No evidence that there was going to be a hornet annoying them so much they would leave of their own accord.
976 - Something's been bugging me and at this point it became clear. Despite his protestations that he is bracketing out historical-critical stuff and focusing on the story itself, he seems to me at least to be confusing the two. He wants to say the conquest was not God's idea. But that's a statement about what really happened - that there was a conquest and that God wanted something and that the Israelites misunderstood. But Boyd is saying he isn't talking about real life, just the story. In the story itself, however, Boyd wants to say it really was God's idea. But he's supposed to be talking about the story. But he's not. That's a bit disorienting.
979-980 - What God said vs. what was heard. Better, I think, and more in tune with inspiration is to distinguish what God said (which is something filtered through culture, etc.) vs. what God meant. Maybe he said "kill" (because that is the word the human author chose in rendering God's will) and meant something other than kill. So it's not that God didn't say that but his less violent meaning was communicated through a more violent human filter.
1001 - "I trust my treatment ...has demonstrated how..." No, not really.
1013-1014 - The identification of Job's accuser and the chaotic force of Sea is not completely convincing - he doesn't seem to appear as the foe here that Boyd thinks of him as.
1061 - Boyd says the "Aikido-like manner" God won on the cross "clarifies both how and why Jesus was punished for the sins of humanity." Maybe it does that with the causal "how", but otherwise I don't really see where Boyd's explained this.
1062 - Says Jesus submitted to being killed by powers/humans and this defeats the "kingdom of darkness" because it "manifested" God's love. How does that work? This isn't really explained - the connection is unclear. Further on, concerning subverting "the myth of redemptive violence", it isn't clear how this is relevant. Again, the issue is whether it is true that is relevant, subversion or no.
1063 - "I trust it is now clear" - no, not really. Nor is the line of thought in the next sentence. At the bottom, the "then" doesn't follow from the "If so", at all.
1067 - Seems to be saying that people who disagree with him about divine violence haven't "yielded to the Spirit." Ouch.
1069 - I'm not sure all these expressions really refer to Satan.
1072 - Not again...
1087 - Again, it's truth that's relevant here, not this stuff.
1157 - Agreed that Carson is "biased in a deterministic direction" in his interpretations, but it's also just as true that Boyd himself is also but in a non-deterministic direction. Actually, though Carson is clearly biased, of course, I think it's not as strong as Boyd thinks it is.
1158 - "I cannot help but see this 'tension' as a blatant contradiction" - well, of course. That's because of your philosophical views. It's not a formal contradiction. There are a lot of statements here about what Boyd cannot do. Surely the question is about the truth of what Carson is saying, not Boyd's personal inability to agree with, understand, or imagine something. It isn't clear how any of Boyd's inabilities here actually support his historical theories.
1211 - I see no reason to think we can't "be genuinely tempted" by something we believe we cannot do. It depends on what it is and why we think we cannot do it (whether it is prevented by our character but we are physically able vs. we are physically unable to do it, for instance). I might genuinely believe it is impossible for me to kill someone but then really want to kill in a certain situation and be sorely tempted by it, even while still thinking that I ultimately won't succumb. This is different from, say, being tempted to fly when I know I don't have the wings for it. One inability is present within my "action-producing system", the other without.

Some Notes on Greg Boyd's Crucifixion of the Warrior God Volume 1

I like reading Greg Boyd but it's a bit of a love-hate relationship with his books that I have - they are generally good reads, very interesting, full of insight and creativity, clarity and faithfulness, but at the same time bad arguments, questionable assumptions, irrelevancies, and similar flaws. I'm now reading his massive two-volume Crucifixion of the Warrior God: Interpreting the Old Testament's Violent Portraits of God in Light of the Cross. I've just finished Volume 1: The Cruciform Hermeneutic. Through my reading, I've been taking notes of some (not all) of my questions or concerns as I go along. (So, to be clear, a question or concern at one point in the text doesn't mean it isn't answered later in the work - I mostly haven't seen this yet, but am hoping more get addressed in volume two). It's pretty much what I would have expected given my first sentence above and includes many (not so successful, in my opinion) seemingly needless attempts at connecting his open theism with the discussion. I should also note that there was a lot I did agree with, even sometimes when the arguments for what I agreed with were not good (a lack of good arguments doesn't always mean the conclusion isn't right). So without further ado, here are the notes I made on Volume 1 (unfortunately, this won't be very understandable without consulting the book yourself!):

General notes:
-There are way too many irrelevant accusations that various pieces of incorrect (or supposedly incorrect) theology are due in origin to classical theism.
-Much of the "proof" for some of Boyd's assertions in this book amounts to quoting other theologians. More biblical support would be nice.
-It's still not fully clear how the cruciform hermeneutic really is supposed to work. It looks suspiciously like it involves inventing meanings for texts you don't like rather than discovering the meanings they already have. But then the relevant passages would look like they are being retained in the canon in name only, contrary to what Boyd seems to want.
-It seems like in treating the cross as the center of his hermeneutic he is in fact choosing one aspect interpreted in exactly that way that can get the pacifist conclusion he wants, making it absolute, completely exhaustive without any room for further information or truths or contexts, etc. and can only be applied directly in the exact way he wants it to be. There are many weak links here.
-Claims often that opponents' views or methods "can't disclose how the Old Testament's violent divine portraits bear witness to the crucified Christ." But it's not clear what Boyd is demanding here, why we should think his particular demand (as opposed to other potential interpretations of such a principle) is the absolutely correct one, or what meeting it is even supposed to look like.

On specific pages:
70-74+ - Seems to treat the lex talionis as an interpersonal principle - that is, how as a private individual to treat someone who harms you. So he thinks Jesus repudiates the lex talionis in the Sermon on the Mount. But the lex talionis in the OT is actually a principle of legal/judicial action, not of how to respond when someone hurts you. That's part of Jesus' point - whatever might be commanded here, don't take vengeance! But that's not a repudiation of the law itself at all! Boyd doesn't really say anything to argue that the lex talionis really was intended be a principle of personal vengeance, so this section seems to fail. A lot of what follows tends to rest on the success of this, so that's not great for his argument in the larger section. (What's really weird and cuts against what he says here is his agreement that Jesus is not interested in talking about political/legal/judicial stuff)
74-75 - Weirdly, Boyd rests his case against capital punishment or killing of any kind on a story about Jesus that he doesn't think is even canonical. (Later he keeps relying on this as if it was!) I'm not sure how that's supposed to actually support him argument-wise...
150-151 - A bad anti-predestination argument (where by "predestination" I mean the Augustinian-Calvinist variety). There are better arguments than this one on offer, so I'm not sure why he feels the need to offer this seemingly rather poor one. 1) relies on a certain criteria of meaningfulness for a concept such that in order for a concept to be meaningful, those using it have to have something to contrast it with (in some sense of "contrast" not fully explained); 2) assumes that the only possible contrast with the concept of divine love must be some kind of action; 3) assumes without argument that predestination to damnation must of necessity be included in any such contrast or there is no contrast at all; 4) so he concludes that if predestination happened, then the love of God is a meaningless concept. Each of his assumptions in 1-3 are open to serious question!
161-167 - The unity of Christ's life stressed here makes it harder, not easier (contrary to Boyd) to single out the cross as the single defining event. If they're all so interrelated and mutually dependent, etc. this becomes a much more difficult task.
167-170 - Says that the resurrection is not the center since it must be understood in light of the cross. But we could just as easily argue in the opposite direction - that the cross must be understood in light of the resurrection. The atonement must be understood in light of the new creation - means in terms of ends! The resurrection is what justifies the crucifixion. So again, not a great argument here.
chapter 5 - Claims that there are no exceptions to Jesus' commands of nonviolence. But does not give proof that Jesus was speaking about things like official administration of justice within a proper legal/judicial system, etc. After all, Boyd explicitly says elsewhere that Jesus wasn't generally concerned to speak of or to such systems!
226 - Claims that if God ever acted violently that would be hypocritical. But why? Government officials can say not to confine people but are not hypocritical when they put criminals in jail nor are parents hypocritical when they tell their kids that the kids are not allowed to drive the car. Differences in context, authority, position, attributes, etc. do make relevant moral differences!
269-273 - Assumes without any argument at all that issues of divine control and of divine power are pretty much the same. But why?
274 - Not clear what is meant by "wisdom" - weird, unconvincing argument.
384-385 - Odd reasoning in favor of applying the label "Might Makes Right" to the view that divine violence is correct even if we can't see it. The argument is really nonsensical, smuggling in divine power for no apparent relevant reason and making huge, unargued and unwarranted assumptions just to be able to stick a silly label on opponents. What on earth is this even in the book for?
386-387 - Another poor argument against the same view - this time that it would make "good" unintelligible. As if "good" was a purely descriptive word, where the description is what we happen to apply it to in our own human cases (de dicto, not de re) such that any deviation would upend it. But this is pretty implausible (and this sort of argument has been ably refuted elsewhere, so there isn't really much more to add here).
387-388 - Makes claims about competing views that are both unargued and unfair (and inaccurate for many opponents). Also doesn't distinguish between instrumental and non-instrumental value. For instance, sticking a needle in someone is bad in itself but can in some cases be instrumentally good (giving medicine, for instance). Additionally, here and throughout Boyd doesn't really seem to get that there is a distinction between good and right and also between evil and wrong. An intrinsically bad action (sticking needles) can be right in some contexts, for instance. In the same pages, doesn't distinguish between God intentionally hard-wiring our brains a certain way and them being that way through some other explanation (which is odd given that his own theological views actually require such a distinction).
389 - Confuses intuitions in favor of moral rules with intuitions for the exceptionlessness of them. My points just above likely apply here as well - intuition in favor of something always being bad is easily confused with intuition in favor of something always being wrong, for instance. Is it arrogant to think we can perfectly grasp every possible reason or kind of reason such that we can rule out all of them as even possibly justifying an action contrary to a certain moral rule (and carried out by a being very different in position, authority, context, etc. from us)? There is also here an irrelevant objection relating to the supposed "consequences" of opponents' views (as if views have consequences of any kind in and of themselves!).
389-390 - Confuses analogy with qualitative identity. Seems to think we can and do know all the relevant circumstances.
390-392 - More questionable historical diagnoses of unclear relevance. Again, confuses opponents' positions as having something to do with power or the use of it.
404-406 - Thinks that the progressive revelation view which features accommodation to engaging in violence is committed to the cross not being the ultimate revelation. But isn't that rather the point of the view - that the cross is the ultimate revelation and hence the progress and accommodation for earlier violence? That is, that the earlier is merely an accommodation, not ultimately revealing? Further on, Boyd thinks character itself is only how we will or act, which seems to me wrong (character produces will and action - it isn't reducible to it). That's fine if you're a behaviorist, but otherwise it doesn't work well.
406-408 - Assumes progressive revelation can only proceed from falsehood to truth. Why not some truth, then more? Or some ambiguity or unclarity to less? None of these require falsehood and it's weird that he mentions these and then seems to ignore those options.
497ish - Seems to sometimes be saying that it is only via the cross that we can uncover revelation in many OT passages. If so, how then were these passages revelation for its original audience before the cross? If not, what is being said here? What was the nature of OT believers' access to the revelation in the OT in these places?
498-502 - The "Indirect" vs. "Direct" revelation analogy between the cross and the Bible seems a bit strained - they don't seem very analogous here at all. To me, anyway, this seems to confuse rather than clarify.
504-509 - Wants an analogy between proposed exegesis and "prosopological" exegesis which is supposedly in the NT. But it's not clear whether such a thing is even present in the NT as opposed to something similar which uses Scripture in a related way but without it being an exegesis of it.

Teaching About the Bible, Not Just Its Content

I've been thinking about writing more about apologetics, maybe book length.  One major topic, though, I'm thinking of working on is that of the Bible itself.  I'd like to see more education in churches about the Bible.  Not just what's in the Bible but its nature, origins and prehistory, ancient context, etc.  That is, we should have more that is not just about the content of the Bible but the Bible itself.  There are many, many myths and misconstruals floating around about the Bible among more moderate to conservate Christians, Evangelicals, and also Fundamentalists.  And I don't mean "secular" or "liberal" myths either - I mean myths perpetuated largely by traditional, orthodox-leaning Christians.  (To give a couple examples: the idea that every command in the Bible is a timeless moral imperative and the Bible is basically a life handbook; the idea that there cannot be any reasonable doubt about the exact text or meaning of a passage; the idea that absolutely everything ought to be taken as completely literally and describing exact historical, scientific reality and conforming to, say, modern scientific-writing genre conventions, etc.)

The trouble is that many take these myths to be integral to the Christian view of the Bible and to the faith as a whole and when these bubbles get popped, their world comes crashing down and they must either remake their views of the Bible or reject the faith entirely.  I have personally known several people who left the faith because of these myths when they could not handle their dismantlement.  And these were very intelligent people; they were simply dealing with the destruction of what they had believed and likely taught to believe for most of their time as Christians.

Now, most good Evangelical biblical scholars will reject most of these myths, and often explicitly, but that just doesn't often make its way down into the church pews.  Instead, most people's first brush with thinking about the Bible itself outside of these myths and outside well-worn cliches comes in the form of, say, the "facts" presented in the Da Vinci Code or some disturbing bit of modern biblical scholarship.  It's all very sad and, in my mind, completely unnecessary - there are people out there who are having serious doubts about the Bible and hence their faith precisely because of what we aren't (and, sadly, sometimes what we are) teaching them.

More on Ephesians 5 and Principles of Interpretation and Application of Scripture

It's commonplace for Christians to take the Bible as speaking directly to them - to individualize and personalize whatever is written and read it as addressed particularly to me in my current context (however wide or narrow I may take that). In this, Christians have a lot in common with the early Rabbis (and later ones, I believe) and certainly with certain strands in Paul and the rest of the New Testament. How we read in this way and how we take into account the fact that the human authors of the Bible did not, generally, have me in particular as their direct addressee, will differ, however. In what way we take the Bible to be addressed to me in particular is very important and has ramifications for the theological and ethical interpretation of the Bible. In my opinion, the Bible is addressed to me in particular in that the Holy Spirit uses the Bible to speak to me - words that were not originally addressed to me and perhaps with a different meaning are reused by the divine activity within me to address me in my particular situation. This, I think, retains both the freedom of God to speak to my current situation in Scripture while also retaining the integrity of the Scripture's original meaning. A lot of people, however, do maintain this sort of distinction in practice and treat Scripture as if in its original meaning it was speaking directly to me personally.

Another problem is to confuse description and prescription. Pastors must often appeal to this distinction when our favorite Bible saint obviously acts not-so-saintly, but otherwise the distinction unfortunately tends to get ignored. That the early church is described in Acts as doing things a certain way (or not doing it, as the case may be), for instance, does not tell us necessarily whether that is how we are to do things - i.e., description is not prescription. Telling us that something is happening a certain way (or will happen or did happen) is not the same as telling us that things should be thus and so or that we should do such and such.

The Ephesians 5 passage on wives and husbands, which I discussed in my last post, is a nice case to look at in regards to both the above problems. This passage, as hinted at in the other post, is a flashpoint in the gender wars going on in Evangelicalism today. On one side are the Egalitarians, who uphold things like women's ordination and functional equality in the home (anti-patriarchal, in other words). On the other are the Complementarians, who (at least for some of them) are against women's ordination and uphold things like patriarchal household structure as a Scriptural norm to be followed.

Ephesians 5, I maintain, is actually a difficult passage to use for either side, despite its current wide use. As argued previously, it first of all does not contain a single command for wives to submit - it merely says that they are or will do so (in other words, it describes but does not prescribe submission). But what about the whole "the husband is head of the wife" thing? Well, there's a big debate here over the meaning of "head" in Greek (kephale), which some Egalitarians argue always or almost always lacks any connotation of hierarchy (unlike the word for "head" in Latin, Hebrew, or English, all of which have exactly that connotation). Let's set that debate aside, however, and simply assume for the moment that the Greek word has the same meaning as the English one and here indicates a position of leadership or power over the household. What then?

Well, notice that the language here is actually on its surface at least descriptive, not prescriptive. Paul says, "the husband is the head of the wife as Christ of the church," but does not say "the husband should be the head of the wife as Christ of the church." That does not mean Paul did not think the latter or did not mean for us to believe it, just that he did not go out and write it, which makes it more difficult to argue that this is some kind of norm for the Christian family just from this passage. What Paul says, however, is also consistent with the thinking that, though the husband is head of the wife, that is not how things should be and that such an arrangement should be avoided where possible (ceterus paribus, of course).

Note also that we ought to avoid the problem noted in the first paragraph of this post. Paul uses the present tense to describe male headship. But, of course, Paul wrote in the first century, not the twenty-first! Which means, Paul is not even necessarily describing the current state of things but rather the way things were in the first century (and perhaps in an even smaller context than that even - he probably did not have in mind Native American societies, for instance, in his description - though, on the other hand, he may indeed have intended his description universally - unfortunately the text is not specific enough to tell for sure). In first century Asia Minor, his intended addressee, the male was indeed the head of the household. Both Jewish and Gentile cultures here were thoroughly patriarchal, after all. It is a mistake, then, to see a translation like "The husband is head of the wife" and automatically assume that Paul is saying this about our current time. Maybe he meant it as an eternal truth, but maybe not - the text does not obviously specify the former, in any case. At the very least, Paul is making an observation about the state of affairs in their cultures, but it's not easy to go beyond that. Even if, then, Paul did in fact mean male headship to be prescriptive rather than merely descriptive, that would not tell us directly whether or not it is prescriptive for us today (rather than being so only for those cultures to which Paul was directly speaking).

Take some of the other passages in the same series: Paul commands children to obey parents and slaves their masters. In the first instance, we think this is still a good arrangement and prescriptive generally across the board. In the second, nowadays, we tend to think that it addresses situations where slavery is socially accepted but is compatible with thinking slavery to be wrong. Similarly, the wife passage may be taken either in the same way as the children passage or in the same way as the slave passage - is female submission to male headship an eternal arrangement or just a way to deal with an unjust situation which is systemic in a particular culture (in this case, patriarchal dominance)?

Ephesians 1:1-14

Something I wrote on the beginning of Ephesians for our Young Marrieds group at Cornerstone, obviously drawing a lot on N. T. Wright:

Ephesians 1 is the introduction to the letter, which contains both the standard sections of greetings (1:1-2) and thanksgiving (1:3-23 – though some scholars think this section goes all the way through chapter 3). Like many of Paul’s letters, the introductory material also tells us about the theme of the rest of the letter, with 1:3-14 a thanksgiving to God for all that he has done for the church and 1:15-23 a prayer that the church may know all of this. Chapters 2-3 will elaborate further and the rest of the book will apply this information to how the church should conduct itself in light of all that God has done.

1:3-14, like much of Paul’s writings, draws on, highlights, and presupposes Paul’s basic story of God’s dealings with humanity culminating in Christ. If we want to understand this section fully, we need to know something of that story. The story begins with a good creation which is subjected to corruption, death, chaos, disorder, and evil as a result of the first man, Adam, the representative of humanity, and his sin against God. Adam experiences, then, what Jews would have seen as a kind of exile much like what they experienced when they were cast out of the Promised Land as a result of their own disobedience to God. This exile – the Fall – resulted in estrangement between God and humanity and animosity and estrangement within humanity as well. Sin, death, and curse have entered the world in and through humanity.

God’s rescue operation to set everything right again was to start a new humanity (the Hebrew and Greek words for “person” or “man” – ’adam and anthropos – can refer either to an individual or to humanity as a whole, as in 2:15) not subject to corruption, sin, and death and free of the curse and to set them in a new creation which is also free of these things, where all things are united under God and his rule. Instead of starting over, though, the new humanity and new creation were to be formed by rescuing the old humanity and old creation. The beginnings of this new Adam, this new humanity, were seen in the exodus and God’s redemption of Israel from their own exile in Egypt, bringing them into their inheritance as children of God. They were God’s chosen people, the beginning of God’s new humanity and new creation, tasked to be a light to the other nations so that they too could become part of the new Adam instead of remain in the old, and the Law was given as the covenant charter establishing the relationship like the commandment given to Adam long ago.

But like Adam, Israel failed and suffered curse and exile and looked forward to a restoration/ new creation/ new exodus/ full return from exile and all its effects, which would mean nothing less than the restoration of all creation and a new age, God’s kingdom, of God’s will reigning over and in all things. “Forgiveness of sins” for Israel would mean, then, restoration for both the nation and the world – and this comes through the blood of a sacrifice, Jesus acting much like the Passover lamb of the exodus (1:7, 14).

Jesus comes as the climax to this story. Jesus, as Israel’s perfect king, is the representative of his people before God. He takes on Israel’s task as its representative king and fulfills the Law and undergoes the spiritual exile, punishment, and curse due to all in order to again redeem his people from bondage, but this time to sin and death (and Satan and all the spiritual powers and oppressors), like Israel from Egypt, and, like Israel, bring them into their true inheritance, God’s kingdom in a restored world (again, 1:7, 14).

Jesus, as representative, is the true Israel, the new Adam, God’s chosen, so that whoever joins him and his people thereby becomes part of that chosen people – Christ was chosen and predestined and hence, since he represents his people and what is true of him as representative is true of them too, they also take part in that chosenness (they are God’s chosen people, his Israel) and in that glorious destiny as part of God’s new humanity (see 2:15) – the advanced guard of God’s making all things new and uniting it all under himself in Christ (thus removing the animosity of the divisions between such things as Jews and Gentiles, as in 2:11-22; 3:6) – see 1:4-5, 9-14. We were chosen or predestined “in him” or “in Christ”, a phrase which indicates that what is being said of someone is said of them in virtue of their belonging to Christ’s people as one of his followers – that is, as a member of his church.

That new creation and that kingdom of God, in Christ, has come with all its blessings – though now only in principle and in part and not yet in its fullness. Hence, Paul speaks of the church as having these blessings “in the heavenly realms” (1:3 – see also 2:6-7) – “heaven” talk often in Paul and the New Testament being used to indicate the present realities of God’s final reign over all creation, where earth and heaven are finally joined forever. Paul wants the church to see itself in terms of this story and its place within it as the new humanity made of Jew and Gentile under Christ as its representative, redeemer, and king.

Warren on the Purpose-Driven Life: A Short Historical Write-Up

The following ended up sounding more negative than I intended, since I really did like the book and thought it served FBC well years ago when the church went through it:

Rick Warren is undoubtedly one of the United States’ most influential pastors and one of the public faces of mainstream Evangelicalism. He and his church have had a huge impact on congregations across the country – and now across the world – through their ministries, in particular through the book The Purpose Driven Life and the small group curriculum/church extravaganza that it is designed to be paired with. The main goal of the book is to engage people in the task of living out God’s purposes for them on this earth in place of some other purpose or purposes that might be pursued instead. It aims to inculcate a sense of direction and of purpose that can be lived into and used to order the various priorities, desires, and goals one might have in day-to-day living that vie for volitional control within one’s mind or will. An orderly, energized, focused life is the ideal goal to be imperfectly pursued in a process of spiritual self-formation.

There are, of course, criticisms one could make of the book. It definitely is not meant to address every person in every circumstance where they might be at and does not show any awareness how particular uses of language may alienate some female readers, as it has in fact done in at least some instances. Nor does it do a perfect job with its use of (often very paraphrastic translations of) Scripture, though at least some of that can be chalked up to audience and format, which does not allow an in depth exegesis of particular verses in their contexts and a subsequent exposition based on this. At least from a critical view, of course, some of the uses of the Scriptures do not really support or say what he is using them to support or say. In Warren’s defense, however, it is hard to find a pastor who does not fall into this from time to time, particularly when speaking on such a popular level. There are certainly pastors who are also very good exegetes, but they are a minority and I do not think we should expect pastors to all be so (though that would be very nice indeed), since not all are given such gifts or talents. It does do a good job of portraying the sort of unsophisticated use of the Scriptures that we can work to improve and show by both example and explicit teaching how to go beyond.

As a kind of how-to manual for self-formation, of course, people are likely to criticize it for not being something else they would rather have. Such books, for instance, always have the danger of being too self-focused, a danger that Warren admirably does in fact try to ameliorate with his constant call to focus on God and others and to live as a member of a community of faith, though this is admittedly at times lost in a focus on one’s own self-interests (the rewards one can get, for instance, from God for being faithful). This, of course, is just a symptom of American Christians’ often not-so-successful struggle to get out of the bonds of individualism and self-focus that are practically bred into Americans and into their perceptions of religion and the Christian life. We want to know how something will benefit us and how it relates to us and focus on ourselves as the center and focus of our own spirituality or religious path. Religion is a consumer affair, like everything else in our culture.

This brings me to one of my biggest pet peeves about this book and about American (and much other) Christianity as well, which is the focus in parts on “going to heaven” when we die as if that was the great hope for Christians. Rather than the cosmic vision of the bodily resurrection of God’s people and the concomitant restoration of all of creation, the earth and the physical universe included, such as one finds in places like Romans 8 and in pieces all throughout the New Testament, we are given a limp, bland, self-centered picture of getting to go as a single solitary individual to a disembodied heaven away from the earth when I die. Christian eschatology has nearly dropped out of the picture, replaced with a kind of Platonist placebo. Such views, however, are common in the individualistic churches we find here in the West. “Going to heaven”, where this is understood as personal, individualistic persistence as a disembodied spirit in an immaterial realm separated from the physical universe, is seen as the great hope and goal of the Christian faith. This has usurped the classical and biblical view of our great hope as being the renewal of all things, including the resurrection of our own bodies, the hallowing of the physical, and heaven descended to earth. The cosmic, physical, redemptive gospel has become a personal, immaterial, escapist fantasy. This almost Gnostic flight from the historically and physically-oriented view of our destiny is something we ought to continue to work to correct in our churches.

The individualism of the book, particularly as it has infected its eschatology, is the main think I would correct in this book as I find it most irksome. The book as a whole, however, has much to say to many people, whether or not it falls short in all the ways listed here – what book does not fall short in many ways or fail to do everything one might want it to do? It offers hope and direction for a more real and deep relationship with God, realizing one’s divine purpose in life, and fleeing from self-serving goals and externally- or self-imposed purposes in favor of the purposes of our life that have been ordained by God, who is the center and anchor of all things.

Ehrman on the Bible on Suffering: A Short Historical Write-Up

Bart Ehrman’s work God’s Problem represents a combination of two different streams of attack on the Christian religion that have gained steam in American culture in the past few years, particularly with the rise and great popularity of the anti-religious zeal of the “New Atheists” (who, in fact, in both age and mostly-regurgitated arguments are ironically on average more on the older side), and – since it is written on a popular level and likely therefore to be rather influential – it is thereby worth looking at. One stream represented in the book is to attack Christianity at its foundations by attacking or trying to cast a bad light on its sacred Scriptures. Another stream is to attack it philosophically, by trying to argue using philosophical reasoning that Christianity simply cannot be correct. In particular, the problem of how there could be an all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good God given that the world as we know it is so full of seemingly gratuitous and horrendous evils has for several thousand years generally been one of the most important objections to theistic religions of all varieties, not simply the Christian one.
Ehrman’s book, then, combines these two streams and argues that the Bible does not give a satisfactory resolution of the problem of evil I have just described in the previous paragraph. Indeed, Ehrman does not seem to think that there is any resolution – or at least not one he would be willing to accept. Indeed, Ehrman’s own problem with the problem with the problem of evil, as it becomes clear as you read his responses to various Christian or theistic proposals regarding evil, is one of the heart or will rather than primarily of the intellect. It seems hard to imagine him being willing to accept a philosophical or intellectual resolution of the problem by proving that it is metaphysically possible for there to be an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good being and also for there to be evil. This becomes even clearer when one reads subsequent things he has written or said on this subject (he pretty much explicitly admitted as much in an online discussion with N. T. Wright ). In that case, then, contrary to the title of his book, it seems that the problem is really Bart’s Problem, not God’s.
There are a great many very sophisticated and very smart Christian or theistic philosophers of the past fifty years or so who have done much excellent work on the problem of evil – so much so, that atheist philosophers only rarely these days try to attack theism via the problem of evil in its traditional form. Yet Ehrman largely deals with various responses to the problem in his book, when he deals with them at all (he leaves out a lot of interesting and very powerful proposals), by creating caricatures of them and attacking them either in their most unsophisticated forms or in their least plausible forms (and at times, though not always, with rather weak or unsophisticated rebuttals himself). He does not, for instance, deal well with the idea that evil may be a mystery that we are not currently (or, perhaps, will never be) in a position to understand – if, as he is willing to admit, this may be, then why reject God? If there is no contradiction between the existence of God and of evil and we know or accept this but do not know how to explain evil, there does not seem to be any remaining intellectual problem, since that problem is completely tied up with the contradiction, which has been here dissolved in mystery. One is led to conclude, again, that he may have struggled with the problem of evil but it does not seem to have been much at the intellectual level.
Ehrman’s problem seems to be a long rebellion against the Fundamentalist framework he spent so much of his earlier life in and which he is still stuck in and struggling to get out of, a problem I’ve seen in quite a few people who have abandoned the faith. The Bible, in this framework not only needs to be completely infallible in every single one of its written sentences but also needs to be a systematic theology or philosophical handbook by a single author with a single point of view, answering all questions with complete certainty and doing so in a plain and straightforward manner admitting no ambiguity or difficulties. Every answer to every question must be completely and fully answered for all time and for all circumstances, with full and complete assurance. Neither culture nor literary genre (nor the idea of differing manuscripts) are to be admitted into the reading of the text, which, again, means only what it “plainly” means and does and can only mean a single thing, a thing we already have and know.
The Bible, and the Bible’s discussion of suffering and evil, of course, do not fit this framework and hence Ehrman, so stuck in the framework despite his struggles to get out, must denounce the Bible for the lack of a single, clear, certain, unified answer given in a single, clear, certain, unified voice. For him, any answer given by a biblical answer must be read as if it was meant to be the final, ultimate, and only answer to all the sufferings and evil of the world. And since more than one answer is given, he thinks these answers must contradict each other and hence this cannot be the authoritative Word of God (at least in the sense he seems to want and which most Christians believe in) and there cannot be a good answer to the problem of evil at all. But of course, there is no reason to accept the framework of expectations Ehrman is trapped in, whether one is an Evangelical more on the conservative side of things or a Christian more liberal. Again, tellingly, it seems over and over to be Bart’s problem, not God’s.

Evangelicals: A Short Historical Write-Up

Evangelicalism is a long-running religious tradition in the United States which has had a huge impact on the American religious scene, on politics via activism, and on spirituality via revivals and evangelism. Evangelicals share many traditional Christian doctrines with other Christian groups but are distinctive in the especially strong emphasis they place on the Bible as an ultimate authority in religious matters, on the Cross (and Resurrection) as a central piece of devotion and theology, on activism in both missions or evangelism as well as in social justice and, to an extent, conversion or personal assurance of one’s place before God (which these days often takes the form of an emphasis on having a personal relationship with God).
Moving into the 20th century, there was an increasing battle in American churches between more traditional believers and those who were willing to sacrifice parts of traditional belief when they seemed to conflict with what was seen as rational or scientific or mature. Faced with attacks on traditional Christian beliefs, or what were believed as such, the Fundamentalist movement soon arose within the Evangelical fold. Unfortunately, this movement, whatever benefits or positive traits it may have had, also greatly hurt the Evangelical cause in the academy and in society. This separatist strain urged a separation from other believers who did not believe the same way (at times, even though they have been equally orthodox or even equally Fundamentalist) and, to some extent, from society as well, thus forming for many traditional Evangelicals in effect an intellectual, social, and religious ghetto. Who was outside, who inside was what often mattered most. Traditional doctrine and evangelism were seen as rejected by more liberal groups, replacing these with an almost-exclusive, it seemed, emphasis on social justice. The reaction, then, was a kind of guilt-by-association and separatist overreaction to these developments. To be distinguished fully from the liberals, fundamentalists gave the main emphasis to doctrine and evangelism and neglected social justice and activism as suspicious, liberal-like behavior, despite its key place heretofore in Evangelicalism.
Meanwhile, overreaction to excesses of some higher critics of the Bible and what was seen as a loose, symbolic use of Scripture by many liberals, drove fundamentalists beyond mere belief in the infallibility of Scriptures to a seemingly naïve, literalist interpretation of the Bible unfettered by scholarship, original (or, often, any) context, genre, or anything else seen as coming from outside. Instead, the Bible was treated as if it were a systematic theology handbook by a single author with a single point of view, answering all questions and doing so in a plain and straightforward manner admitting no ambiguity or difficulties, very often interpreted, ironically, through the theological lens of the 19th century dispensationalist theology which had become popular in the United States.
In the mid-twentieth century, however, there began a strong push-back within Evangelicalism against its Fundamentalist incarnation and a process began of reengagement and reentry into the academy, scholarly biblical studies, pursuit of social justice, openness to a diversity of views and increasing ecumenism, and so on. There is, however, still a stigma on Evangelicals as American popular culture, media, and other traditions have a tendency to see Evangelicalism almost exclusively through the lens of Fundamentalism and, often, the controversies between Fundamentalists and others in the early twentieth century. The stereotype of Evangelicals is pretty much how people see Fundamentalists and Evangelicals, in virtue of being such, are often labeled “Fundamentalist”. Evangelicals’ high views of Scripture, in particular, are often mistakenly all lumped together and treated as being all the same as the Fundamentalist take on Scripture, despite the sophistication of many Evangelical views of inerrancy and the acceptance of many of the tools of (as well as membership within) mainstream biblical studies. And this stigma persists despite the fact that Fundamentalism is merely the more separatist and militant right wing of the Evangelical family and not a paradigmatic representative of the whole – only one of the most well known.
Alternatively, Evangelicals are seen through the lens of particular evangelicals who are politically conservative (despite many, such as Billy Graham, not being so). Evangelicals, of course, tend statistically to side more with the Republican party than the Democratic, but this has stemmed in no small part (though there are other reasons as well) from the efforts of Ronald Reagan and those around him to woo Evangelicals and a comparative lack of interest on the part of Democrats in the early 1980s. Despite widespread Evangelical frustration with the Republicans, many still stick with them at least in part because Republicans at least pretend to take Evangelicals and their beliefs seriously or outright identify with them, creating the impression that this is the party Evangelicals are to be associated with, in contrast with the Democratic party which often either does not understand or care about Evangelicals or at least has had a hard time showing it. There is, however, a sizable minority of Evangelicals who are solid Democrats, in spite of general disagreement with the Democratic party over the issue of abortion.
The Evangelical tradition, then, both as it has been historically as well as how it manifests itself today, is a much more complex, diverse, and sophisticated movement than most people outside of it realize. Most simply do not understand or know about the distinctions within Evangelicalism that have been alluded to above and immediately associate Evangelicalism with the worst forms of Fundamentalism and political conservatism that they can think of.

Weird cult-like folks

Just for fun, this is something I was just looking at...

For some reason, I always find - and am fascinated when I do - the websites of weird cults and sects who want to say that Christians for the past 2 millenia have been basically wrong and suddenly they (usually the one true church, obviously) have suddenly got it right. Sometimes I find these sites because they end up linked to my blog in the ads at the side of the page. Today I found one that was a bit interesting (in a bad way): zionministry.com, which seems to be the ministry of one Neville Stevens.

Check out this quote in their article about who the true church is:

By all means pray for your enemies and those who spitefully use you. This is right and proper. But don't take it upon yourselves to pray for the enemies of God - this is an act of treachery! Don't participate in public rallies for promised 'liberties.' Don't donate money to organisations that attempt to thwart God's judgment. Don't pray for, or support, the starving Cushites that God has judged. God could have sent rain to the famine-stricken African nations and ended the famine - but He didn't! Do you agree that God was just? If you had the power, would you have ended the famine? If the answer is yes, then you are not in agreement with God! You must get your thoughts and your priorities right! If you don't NOW, then you will be in great danger of offending God when the crunch-time comes. You may even find yourself wanting to kill God's two prophets! If you found offence in what God has done to Satan's evil brood in Africa and elsewhere, what will be your reaction be to what happens in your own country? God is in control! You don't have to question His judgment - it is correct! Always! See what Christ said: Luke 21:25 "There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. Men will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the WORLD, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken." The translation of these verses is relatively innocuous in comparison to their true meaning. There are plenty of other descriptions about coming events.

Now that's just crazy - this is the sort of wrong-headed, unbiblical hate that really makes people look down on Christians. I also found an article on the book of Galatians where they question whether Galatians is really Scripture (mainly because they both seriously misunderstand it and also because they pretty much agree with the Judaizers that Galatians was opposing - along with some other really bad arguments, of course). This is a bit strange, of course, since almost all the teachings in Galatians can be found elsewhere, such as in Romans. (This also one of the places where the author uses kind phrases like "curdled-brained morons" - and many others - to speak of people who aren't quite up to their standards) There's indeed a lot of "creative" interpretation going on in the articles here (context seems to be important only when it's convenient). Not everything's bad or false, but like other sectarian or heretical groups, its mixed in with a lot that is. Another example of the sort of crazy stuff from this site (from an article on the Passover):

Christ set out the exact format for observing the Passover.If you substitute the Passover ceremony with a ‘lords supper’, then you are worshipping demons!What is more, you are forbidden to do both (some people believe they can observe their ‘lord’s supper’ at any time of the year and fulfill the requirements given by Christ. They can’t!

Dispensationalism and the Interpretation of Scripture Part 4: The People of God, Israel and the Church

It's been over a month since my last post in this series, so I thought I'd start it back up again. Is there a single people of God like most Christians throughout history have believed or is there two as many dispensationalists believe? Dispensationalists, reacting both to an oversimplified identification between Israel and the Church that is sometimes found and to the view that Israel has been cast aside and is no longer God's people, have in general fallen all the way off the other side of the horse and imposed an oversimplified and massively wrong division between the two, sometimes even going so far as to say that the two have entirely different destinies, covenants, or even administrations of salvation. I think dispensationalists are right to make some distinction between Israel and the Church but they go wrong when they posit to peoples of God instead of one. I don't have enough time to go through this topic in enough detail to really do it justice and list all the relevant Scripture and such, but I'll outline some of my thoughts on this.

In the Old Testament, there was a single people of God, Israel. But then of course there's Israel and then there's Israel. Some within the group were considered truly part of God's people in a way others were not even if those others were supposed to be - some were the remnant or the true Israel. And not all in this group were necessarily ethnic Israelites either since Gentiles too could eventually become incorporated into this body (indeed, many non-Israelites were among those who journeyed out of Egypt and took part in the great events and covenants at the founding of Israel as a nation and people of God). So from the very beginning, Israel was God's people but this people, ethnic Israelite or not, also incorporated converted non-Israelites. At this time (or at least it had become so by NT times), it was generally expected, though, that the converted would combine religious identification and ethnic identification by, among other things, submitting to the right of circumcision and "becoming a Jew". In Jesus' time, Gentiles who wished to convert were also baptized as a right of passage into God's people.

The Old Testament spoke of a time, though, when other nations would call on God and God would acknowledge them and make them his (in fact, this was a main reason of why God chose Israel in the first place - as a beginning to something greater that was meant to sweep out even unto the Gentiles). Somehow, they would follow the Law or join with Israel and yet somehow not exactly. How all this would work out and what it would look like was yet to be revealed.

In the New Testament, we do not see the creation of a new people of God. What do we see instead? We see Jesus, the True Israel himself, taking on the role of Israel and its duties and reforming God's people, Israel, about himself. And what do we begin to see? Non-Jews and non-Israelites seem to be allowed inclusion into this people but the ethnic identification with the Jews is not required of them. As the True Israel, incorporation into Jesus means incorporation into the one people of God, so these Gentiles truly became co-citizens in God's people with their Jewish brethren who were already there for generations. This incorporation therefore means a kind of incorporation into the covenants and promises of the Old Testament. Jesus is the vine, Israel, and we, both Jew and Gentile are the branches of God's people. God's one people are a holy nation, a priesthood, elect, etc. - all terms for Israel now applied to anyone who is incorporated into Jesus by faith in him. The old uses of the Law, its ethnic particulars for the Jews at the point in history before the cross, are now past and it takes on a new role suitable for people of all ethnicities as the people of God is expanded greatly beyond its previous ethnic boundaries.

Jesus' followers, the true Israel, were at first almost entirely Jewish but soon they began actively converting Gentiles and Paul championed full inclusion of the Gentiles in God's people on the basis of faith and declared that they did not need to follow the ethnic particulars of the Law and become Jews - God accepted both Jew and Gentile on the same basis, that of faith. So now, this one people of God which previously was almost entirely roughly identified as Israel included a lot of Gentiles, thus expanding God's people beyond ethnic Israel to form one entity neither Jewish nor Gentile but rather universal and transcending the distinction (and indeed transcending all ethnic distinctions and particularities) - a new thing called the Church which included both. The old covenants, promises, etc. are thus expanded and transcended so that God is no longer simply interested in particular promises to a particular people but more grand, larger promises to all peoples. The promise of the land for the Jews, for instance, is now transcended, and God's people, Jews and non-Jews, are promised the entire earth.

So, as Paul said, Gentiles have been grafted onto the plant, Israel. But some other branches have been cut off because of unbelief - the unbelieving Jews. This, of course, does not mean God is done with them. No, they are the natural sons, the natural branches - they belong on the tree and are meant, if they are willing, to be regrafted. So as you can see, things are not nearly so simple as many dispensationalists make it. Yes, there is some discontinuity between Old Testament Israel and the Church and between how things went on with each. But that doesn't in any way mean that there are two peoples of God. Believing Israel is still the core, the natural trunk of the tree or the main branches of the vine - the others having been cut off - and "the Church" is simply the name for this new thing, this new stage of God's People which transcends all ethnic and national distinctions.

Previous posts in this series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Final post in this series: "The Tribulation and Rapture"

Notes on Boyd's Satan and the Problem of Evil Chapter 3B

Okay, part 2 of my notes on chapter 3 from Boyd (see here for part 1). After going through some philosophical arguments to try to show that EDF (exhaustive definite foreknowledge) is incompatible with risk, Boyd then goes on to try to argue that Scripture supports the idea that God lacks EDF and takes risk with his creation. His main argument is that a lot of Scripture looks like it describes God as (a) being temporal, (b) lacking EDF, and (c) taking risks - and that if things were different God would have made them clearer. That is, the way Scripture is written is just what we would expect if all three of those things (a, b, and c) were true. However, it seems - taking at least just a and b for the moment - that if these things were not true, the way Scripture is written is also just what we would expect. That is, we would expect Scripture to be written the way it is regardless of whether a or b are true. Why is that? Well, assume an atemporal God with EDF. How would God's actions in history and revelations of himself look to a normal person? Exactly the way things get described in Scripture. And how would God express what he was like in human terms that would be understandable for almost everyone, terms that would allow people to get the main point of what God's character is like, even those who are unable to understand what it is to be atemporal or what that entails (a lack that Boyd apparently also shares, given a lot of his misconceptions about an atemporal God that show up in this book)? Exactly the way things get described in Scripture. So either way, things would get described this way and hence I see no reason to think that the Scriptures Boyd mentions automatically favors one view over another - it is open to more than one plausible interpretation. But we should get into the nitty gritty of Boyd's interpretations - let's go.

One thing Boyd says to get out of the problem of God needing EDF to give prophecies is that some prophecies are conditional - for instance, God may say "I'm going to destroy X" but this was really a mere threat to get them to do something, not a promise or forecast of what was definitely to come. So some prophecies reveal not God's foreknowledge but rather his conditional intentions about something. But Boyd thinks these sorts of things also support his view. But of course, they do not - or at least no or little more than the opposing view. After all, if God had an unconditional intention, say, to destroy Nineveh (see the book of Jonah), then not destroying it would have been a case of God changing his mind and would have been good evidence of a lack of EDF. But if Boyd is right and lots of these cases were really cases of conditional intentions - of something like a threat - then its perfectly compatible with this that God knew exactly what would come of his threat. After all, a parent may say threateningly, "I'm going to spank you!", and the child may as a result stop what they are doing and avoid the spanking - and all this is perfectly compatible with the parent knowing that the child would avoid the spanking by avoiding the bad behavior (in fact, that was probably precisely why the threat was given in the first place). So Boyd's own strategy to save and support his view seems to also save and support his opposition as well.

To give another example of this phenomenon, consider what Boyd says about II Kings 20:5-6/Isaiah 38:5-6, where as a result of his repentance God is said to heal Hezekiah of his terminal illness (God said he would die) and "add fifteen years to his life". To this, Boyd asks, "If the Lord didn't really change his mind, isn't Scripture misleading when it says the Lord added fifteen years to his life? Conversely, if God was truthful in declaring his intentions to end Hezekiah's life, and if God's later statement was also truthful, then must we not accept that God truly changed his mind?" Well, no and no. No to the first question because the Lord added 15 years to his life in the sense that he made sure Hezekiah would live 15 years longer than he would have had God not healed him of his disease. But that's perfectly compatible with God always from eternity intending to heal him and thus add those years. No to the second question because, as Boyd's already said, God's original statement was not an unconditional one. So this passage doesn't seem to necessarily teach what Boyd thinks it does. Most of the texts from Jeremiah that Boyd looks at are much in the same boat as this one from Kings.

In some passages, though, it does say that God "changed his mind" or "repented of what he had done". Does that mean that God did really change his mind? Or does it merely mean that the condition for the conditional intention was not fulfilled and hence God did otherwise? If the latter, which seems very plausible, then this is perfectly compatible with God having EDF. In the parent-child case above, a parent may have a conditional intention to spank their child, know that they won't because the condition won't be fulfilled, and then this all may come to pass and it will perfectly true in a very real sense that the parent "changed their mind" about the spanking in so far as they didn't carry out their threat and would have done so had the child acted otherwise than the parent knew they would. And we can say all of this and accept these texts at fairly close to their face value without hiding out in the "that's just an anthropomorphism" reply that some EDFers give to such texts. It just so happens that, as I said earlier, the Scriptures in these cases admit of more than one plausible interpretation (something which is actually fairly common with Hebrew styles of writing in general).

Even if we did go the "anthropomorphism" route, which isn't even necessary, many of Boyd's criticisms of that option still fall short. He speaks as if the anthropomorphic texts would be less accurate than others - but this, of course, is complete baloney. The fact that a text makes use of some kind of symbolism or anthropomorphism or whatever does not make it less accurate than a text that speaks literally - this is to automatically privilege literal philosophical styles of discourse over symbolic ones, a move which is surely illegitimate to say the least. What next, is Boyd going to claim that the Psalms or Prophets or other symbolic literature in the Bible are less accurate than, say, the Gospels? Clearly, this objection proves too much. In any case, Scripture isn't even intended to teach us about the exact, literal metaphysical nature of everything about God - Scripture is more interested in God's character and great acts in history rather than how he relates to time. So Boyd's claim that the anthropomorphic reply would make it the case that, contra Scripture, Moses didn't really know God that well misses the point - one can know someone really well without knowing specifics of their metaphysical nature and vice versa. I, for instance, know my wife better than probably any other human being outside the two of us, but I'm sure a lot of biologists or physicians or psychiatrists or whatever probably know more about her nature as a human than I do. But that's not what's most important in knowing someone. And that's something I think Boyd's missed here. (I won't even mention Boyd's discussion of Calvin here on this subject since his argument is one of the worst howlers I've seen and completely uncharitable to Calvin)

Most of the other passages Boyd considers are in pretty much the same boat as the ones discussed above. And many of them come from prophetic passages telling stories or otherwise symbolically talking about God's dealings with Israel. To just think that one can automatically take them as literally true and, not just that, literally true and this in an open theist sense like Boyd tends to do is a fine example of an implementation of the faulty Hermeneutic of the Literal (yes, it afflicts others - not just dispensationalists and their ilk). Other passages quite simply do not directly support an open theist interpretation (though they are certainly in harmony with it) over any other. In other places, Boyd seems to assume that knowledge of the future is incompatible with the future being open to influence (see, for instance, his discussion of God's use of 'may' or 'perhaps' in speaking of future events) - but, of course, an argument for this is still needed and hence cannot be used to force an open theist interpretation on the relevant passages. After all, for all Boyd's said, it may be the case that an actual future p is perfectly compatible with the possibility of an alternate future not-p. If that's the case, though, then Boyd's argument suffers. And I think it is the case.

So much for Boyd's arguments from Scripture. For more problems with open theism and scripture, see this post on Parableman. Next time in this series, I'll begin my discussion of chapter 4...

Dispensationalism and the Interpretation of Scripture Part 3: Modern Israel and Biblical Prophecy

A lot of dispensationalists (particularly, the Hal Lindsey types) tend to interpret everything that is or will soon happen in current world news as being the literal fulfillment of scriptural prophecies. Even if most do not go to the extremes of Lindsey, a large proportion still think that the modern day creation of a Jewish state in the land formerly occupied by biblical Israel is a fulfillment of prophecy and that this modern state is the focus of a lot of the Bible's prophecy. Unfortunately, there is very little real evidence for this contention, as nice as it sounds. For one thing, it confuses the modern secular state with the biblical nation - these are definitely not the same thing.

For another, it ignores the fact that the Bible's promises or blessings for the Jewish people are not for each Jew unconditionally - they are meant for the "children of promise" (to quote from Paul) since "a man is not a Jew if he is one outwardly but only if he is one inwardly, and true circumcision is of the heart, not the flesh" (to badly paraphrase Paul) and "not all who are descended from Abraham are his children" (Paul, again). That is, it is the Jewish people as a people who have faith in God that are in the center of God's promises - God intends for Jews to have faith in him and then, as a result, receive the inheritance or blessings they were meant to have. To act as if modern Israel was the focus of all this is anachronistic and simply wrong. This is not to say that unbelieving Jews are no better than nonbelievers or that they have no place in the divine economy. Far from it - but that's a subject for a later post.

But what about the prophecies about a return of Jews to the land of Israel? Wasn't that fulfilled by the modern state? Well, no. Again, if you read the actual prophecies it is a purified people who are faithful to God who return - unbelieving Jews such as make up the bulk of the modern state are simply not included in this prophecy. Not only this, but the prediction of a literal physical return to the physical land of Canaan was already fulfilled over 2400 years ago! The Jews (well, at least a lot of them - some were left behind) got carted off to Babylon but the purified remnant (finally no longer so tempted by idols and false gods and now finally zealous for God's law) were allowed by Cyrus the Great and subsequent Persian Kings to return to their land and to rebuild the temple (another prophecy people point to as still to be fulfilled which has in fact already occurred here in the 5th century B.C.).

To be fair, of course, the Bible does speak as if the exile was still going on, as if the return both happened and yet was still to occur. But of course this has to do with the first set of imagery I listed in my last post in this series. The exile was seen as still ongoing, even though they were back in the land, because they were still seemingly under a curse, under sin, slaves, and in need of final restoration from God's judgment on them. And they still needed to return, despite having physically returned, in the sense that the new creation and restoration to a perfect relationship with God was still required in the future. They knew that though they were back in the land, they still had not arrived into full salvation and peace with God. So the physical return and restoration of the physical temple have indeed already happened, but the prophecies are not fully fulfilled yet since the fullness of "creation, restoration, exodus, return from exile, and final vindication or justification" is yet to come (though it was foreshadowed with the physical return and came in its inception - though not yet in its fullness - in the person of Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection). Dispensationalists simply fail to notice the levels symbolism and complexity in the relevant prophecies. Indeed, a lot of this prophecy (as hinted at in the last parenthetical remark) was actually fulfilled or will be fulfilled by Christ, who is the true Israel who takes on Israel's destiny upon himself.

This is not to say that there is no prophecy about believing (or unbelieving for that matter) Jews that is yet to be fulfilled - I still believe, for instance, that the land of Canaan was promised to them and that God does not go back on his promises. But I also believe that just as the People of God was expanded to include Gentiles (they were grafted onto Israel according to Romans), so too the promise of the land has been expanded (and I think was already hinted at in the Old Testament) for all believers, Jew or Gentile, to cover the whole earth.

Previous posts in this series: Part 1, Part 2

Further posts in this series: "The People of God, Israel and the Church" and "The Tribulation and Rapture"

Quiz Results

You scored as Amillenialist, Amillenialism believes that the 1000 year reign is not literal but figurative, and that Christ began to reign at his ascension. People take some prophetic scripture far too literally in your view. Amillenialist 90% Moltmannian Eschatology 85% Preterist 70% Postmillenialist 60% Premillenialist 50% Left Behind 30% Dispensationalist 25% What's your eschatology? created with QuizFarm.com

Note: this is interesting given that there are versions of premillenialism that I would be more than comfortable with. Note also that on the first time I took the test, 'Left Behind' and 'Dispensationalist' both got a score of 15% and Moltmann tied amillenialism for 90%. Some of the questions are vague or ambiguous, so it's not surprising that the answers would slightly change between each time taking the test.

Dispensationalism and the Interpretation of Scripture Part 2: Prophetic Literature

This series, introduced in my last post, is about (big surprise!) dispensationalism and the interpretation of Scripture. The sorts of traditional views common among dispensationalists of various stripes include the following:

• A belief in multiple "dispensations" or administrations of God's salvation or providence throughout history
• A strict separation between Israel and the Church, God's plans for them, God's ways of dealing with them, and the Scriptures talking about them (and perhaps a strict separation between the covenant appropriate to each)
• A very literal interpretation of biblical prophecy and a focus on a modern day return of the Jews to the land of Israel (thought by many to have been fulfilled with the founding of the modern state of Israel) and in some cases an eventual reestablishment of the temple and sacrificial system when Christ returns
• A belief that the church is a kind of parenthesis in God's plans (more common among older versions) - the Jews being the real focus
• Premillenialism (Christ will return bodily to earth and then visibly reign for a literal one thousand years before the Final Judgment)
• Pretribulation rapture (the Church will be removed from the world with Christ's secret, invisible first Second Coming and taken to heaven - after which will follow seven years of very bad stuff called "the tribulation" during which an Antichrist will gain control of things)

Not every dispensationalist agrees with every one of these points in every detail (though I believe that all of them believe in the last two at least). Not everything I say in this series therefore will apply to every dispensationalist, though at least something will! To avoid having to talk about every kind, I'll stick to a version that subscribes to the theses above as I've written them - a kind of generic dispensationalism.

The topic of this post is about prophetic literature in general and how the dispensationalist Hermeneutic of the Literal goes wrong in interpreting such writings. The key idea here is that a presumption in favor of literal interpretation, when applied to such writings, is just plain wrong. Prophetic literature is a highly symbolic form of literature and it is often just as likely that a symbolic meaning was meant rather than a literal meaning. In some cases - apocalyptic, for example - the presumption is rather the other way around and one must presume that what is said is meant symbolically unless there is good reason to think otherwise. All of this is not a matter of preference but simply a matter of the kind of literature this is - literary genre and the conventions and uses for such a form of literature. To treat it otherwise is to ignore the genre and the conventional use to which language is put within such a genre. But once we recognize the genre and its conventions and the symbolic use of language within it, dispensationalism's house of cards quickly begins to crumble.

Here are just a small few of the key symbolic or otherwise interesting uses of language throughout the prophetic writings (and indeed used elsewhere in the Bible as well) which the dispensationalist hermeneutic generally simply does not take into account:

• Fall, curse, slavery, exile, and final judgment are all spoken of in terms of each other and using symbolism derived from others. Similarly, creation, restoration, exodus, return from exile, and final vindication or justification are all spoken of in terms of each other and using symbolism derived from others.
• Numbers are generally symbolic rather than literal (especially numbers like three, seven, ten, or twelve - or multiples thereof such as 144,000 or 1,000)
• Imagery of grand cosmic events (like the eclipse or "the sky being rolled up like a scroll") are generally used to talk about earthly events - especially sociopolitical ones - that are of great theological or spiritual significance.
• Prophecies are not always concerned with single events that are to happen all at once but often present us with a single vision which is really of multiple events that are to happen at different times - that is, prophecies are not necessarily always fulfilled completely all at once but one bit or aspect may be fulfilled at one time and another at another time. Indeed, prophecies or prophetic books are not necessarily even in any kind of chronological order at all (except perhaps for the chronological order in which the prophet saw his visions) and may even be speaking of the same event or sequence of events more than once within a text using different images or visions to get at the target in multiple ways.
• Israel is spoken of as a vine, vineyard or olive tree. It is also spoken of as a woman, wife, or mother and as priests, chosen or elect, saints, a holy nation, God's son, God's anointed, etc.
• The Messiah is spoken of using imagery or titles that apply to Israel (since, of course, the Messiah is the true Israel - Israel's representative and fulfiller of its destiny).

Previous posts in this series: Part 1

Further posts in this series: "Modern Israel and Biblical Prophecy", "The People of God, Israel and the Church" and "The Tribulation and Rapture"

Dispensationalism and the Interpretation of Scripture Part 1: Two Kinds of Hermeneutic

How are we to go about interpreting Scripture or some particularly troublesome passage of Scripture? Here's one thing we shouldn't do that lots of people seem to think is a good idea: interpret all of Scripture metaphorically, or at least those sections of it the literal meaning of which we don't particularly like (in particular, those which seemingly contradict our theological position). Call that the Hermeneutic of the Metaphorical ("hermeneutic", as I'm using it, refers to a method of interpretation). Here's another thing we shouldn't do that lots of other people who oppose the Hermeneutic of the Metaphorical seem to think is a good idea: interpret all of Scripture literally, or at least those sections of it which support our particular theological position (those that do not being interpreted metaphorically instead). Call that the Hermeneutic of the Literal.

Notice that these two hermeneutics are of a kind - they are both incarnations of a larger hermeneutic which we can call the Hermeneutic of the Present. Both ignore lots of relevant historical or literary facts or traditions of interpretation in their interpretation of Scripture, basing their readings instead on their own narrow contexts, interests, and theological positions. Both privilege a certain kind of reading (literal or metaphorical) over another (metaphorical or literal) but do so ultimately only arbitrarily and where it suits them (or their theological view) since to interpret everything consistently with the espoused principles of the hermeneutic would be implausible or inconsistent - some passages cannot be taken other than literally and some passages if taken literally would contradict each other. The key, unspoken principle of the Hermeneutic of the Present is that the text means what I (or my fellow countrymen or fellow members of my church or etc.) would have meant by it. Liberalism follows the Hermeneutic of the Metaphorical and Classic Dispensationalism follows the Hermeneutic of the Literal. But both are wrong, as the Hermeneutic of the Present is in general a misguided, me-centric way of reading the Scriptures.

Contrast now the Hermeneutic of the Present with the Hermeneutic of Context which tries to place the meaning of a text within its textual, historical, theological, grammatical, semantic, pragmatic, cultural, religious, sociological, anthropological, narrative, symbolic, scriptural and literary context and use that as the determiner for deciphering the original meaning of a given text. In the Hermeneutic of Context, one can go just as wrong in interpreting a passage literally that was meant symbolically as in interpreting a passage symbolically that was meant literally. The key is to look at the evidence of the context.

Principles like "interpret literally unless there is an overriding reason not to do so" or "interpret according to the plain meaning of the text" are overly simplistic and generally unuseful - which is why they are almost always espoused by those who ignore at least parts of the complex of context within which a given text was originally situated. These principles are the watchwords of the Hermeneutic of the Literal - principles not followed to a t but instead too often followed only insofar as it bolsters the theology of the interpreter. The former principle is not helpful since one must have evidence in interpreting a text of literary genre before one knows whether it is to be interpreted literally or otherwise - it is that which in large part decides whether it is to be interpreted literally, not this principle of literalism. The latter is not helpful since plainness differs from person to person and yields contradictory results. What is the plain reading to one person contradicts the plain reading for another. "Plainness" is, after all, a relational concept - it involves a relation between an interpretation and a person and so will differ from person to person. Indeed, sometimes a text has no "plain" interpretation at all and is in fact generally puzzling (one reason why there are so many debates and conflicting interpretations among well-meaning Christians).

So ultimately, the Hermeneutic of Context is preferable to the Hermeneutic of the Present in either of its incarnations. It promises to get at the original meaning of the text with less interference from one's own context, interests, or theological point of view than is found in the other hermeneutic. It is also truer to the way actual interpretation of texts in general proceeds anyway.

Further posts in this series: "Prophetic Literature", "Modern Israel and Biblical Prophecy", "The People of God, Israel and the Church" and "The Tribulation and Rapture"