Speaker of Truth (Old version)

New "Speaker of Truth"

2007-02-20T20:54:00.000Z

This blog has moved!

"Speaker of Truth" is now hosted at my own domain, using WordPress 2.1, at http://www.qaya.org/blog/. All of the posts and comments on this blog have been copied to the new one. (The comments on the latest post here have been combined into a single comment on the new blog for technical reasons.)

Please adjust your bookmarks, blogrolls etc accordingly.

This blog will continue to be accessible indefinitely (that is, as long as Blogger and Google choose to leave it up), but there will be no new posts after this one, and it is closed to new comments. If you have any comments on what you read here, please find the same post on my new blog and comment there.

Ethnic and Gender Diversity in Pastoral Appointments

2007-01-26T11:28:00.000Z

Adrian has now come up with a subject which I would like to take up. He reports on John Piper's message about Ethnic Diversity and "Affirmative Action" for Pastoral Appointments.

Affirmative action is of course a controversial issue, and I agree with Adrian in being unsure about Piper's strategy here while applauding his goal of ethnic diversity in his church leadership team. Also, in general I agree with Adrian's comments that it is better to appoint pastoral staff from within one's own church than from outside. Sadly perhaps, that is not the usual practice in my Church of England; indeed the church will consider for ordination only those who are prepared to serve in congregations other than the one they are leaving.

Holy Trinity Brompton is a very rare exception in that Nicky Gumbel was originally an ordinary church member, then a curate (assistant pastor), and is now the vicar (senior pastor) there, apparently without ever serving at any other church; but then HTB, the home of the Alpha Course, is an exceptional church in many ways.

Having said that, my own congregation appointed from outside, according to the normal Church of England procedures, a vicar from an ethnic minority, a Palestinian Arab. This was not because of any affirmative action but because he was the best qualified candidate, and has proved an excellent pastor. But if we had looked to our own congregation we would never have chosen an ethnic minority person, because we have rather few in our church - although more than the 2.6% non-white population of our parish according to the 2001 census statistics. Also we probably would not have found among ourselves such a good leader, certainly not someone with the same training and experience.

But unfortunately John Piper's appeal for diversity in leadership appointments looks rather hollow to me because it applies only to race and not to gender, although the arguments he makes for racial diversity apply just as much to gender diversity. I wonder how he would react to the following adapted version of his own reasons for pursuing ethnic diversity as an argument for gender diversity in the pastoral ministry:

It illustrates more clearly the truth that God created male and female in his own image (Genesis 1:27).
It displays more visibly the truth that Jesus is not a male deity, but is the Lord of both genders.
It demonstrates more clearly the blood-bought destiny of the church to be those "redeemed from mankind (anthropoi, gender generic) as firstfruits for God and the Lamb" (Revelation 14:4).
It exhibits more compellingly the aim and power of the cross of Christ to "reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility" (Ephesians 2:16).
It expresses more forcefully the work of the Spirit to unite us in Christ. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." (Galatians 3:28).

(Quotations from ESV, so Piper can't complain. I note that Ephesians 2:16 is primarily about the hostility between Jews and Gentiles, a religious matter, and so to apply it to gender is stretching it no more than to apply it to race.)

Yes, the church in New Testament times discriminated against women, because the first believers, like many conservative Christians today, brought the presuppositions from their partly patriarchal society into their church. For similar reasons slavery was not explicitly condemned in the New Testament (although of course slavery at that time was not linked to race as it was in 18th-19th century America). And there are significant Christian movements in the USA today which support not only the patriarchal system under which women are oppressed but also slavery. Piper, to his credit, does not seem to be advocating slavery, and certainly not racism. But he needs to realise that the same approach to interpreting the Bible which allows most modern evangelicals to condemn slavery (indeed it was evangelicals like William Wilberforce who led the campaign to end the slave trade 200 years ago this year) also implies condemnation of the patriarchal system and an end to discrimination against women in pastoral appointments.

Not much to say

2007-01-25T22:26:00.000Z

Things have been quiet here for no particular reason - indeed so quiet that Lingamish has been able to catch up with me in the Technorati blog rankings. Should I do something about that? Actually the rankings seem so arbitrary that I don't think I'll bother. I have been quiet partly because I have actually being working quite hard for a change, and had a nasty cold last week.

But also I have been quiet because not so many interesting topics have come up recently. For this perhaps I could blame Adrian; as I predicted, his now almost commentless blog is not nearly as interesting as it used to be, and no longer provides me with plenty of material for posts here. But then his first post when he returned was wise advice on not blogging for the sake of it but only when we have something worthwhile to say. So perhaps I should be thanking rather than blaming him.

Well, as I don't really have anything worthwhile to say now, I will leave it there except to quickly mention two things. I will be away on a business trip from 31st January to 17th February, and so this blog will probably continue to be quiet for that time. I am also planning to move this blog to a subdirectory of my own website, which I am currently moving to a new provider, and this means I will also be moving to the Wordpress blogging software. I'm not yet sure when this will happen, maybe not until after my trip, so watch this space for further announcements.

Our Parent, who art in heaven?

2007-01-17T21:43:00.000Z

TheoBlogian Mike Swalm has started an interesting series In Our Image: The Language of Father and Divine Gender. This takes up among other things some of the issues which I raised here recently, about Driscoll's God and Molly's paradigm shift.

In a comment on Part One of TheoBlogian's series Odysseus wrote:

I don't know for certain, as I have not double and triple checked the reference, but I was told that in Aramaic, 'Our Father' can be translated in a variety of ways, including 'Our Father/Mother'.

I'm not sure about the Aramaic either, but I know that the Greek word πατήρ pater translated "father" is not always explicitly male. Look for example at Hebrews 11:23, where the Greek literally refers to Moses' "fathers" (the plural of πατήρ pater), but almost all English translations, even back to KJV and including the very literal Young and Darby versions, render "parents".

If Moses' "fathers" were not necessarily male, then Jesus' Father was not necessarily male. Indeed, we more or less know that he was not, because he has no distinguishing body parts, and men and women are equally made in his image - as I argued in my post on Driscoll's God.

So, do we need to translate πατήρ pater, the more or less new name which Jesus gave to God, as "Father"? Well, it is not a bad translation or a mistranslation. But I would suggest that "Parent", while arguably not very elegant, would be just as accurate as a translation. For there is no justification for insisting on a specifically gendered word here.

Adrian is back

2007-01-15T18:21:00.000Z

As I was blogging about Adrian's blog being dormant, Adrian must already have been preparing the posts with which his blog woke up again. In part five of his personal story he tells how he learned an important lesson, and one which I have been learning afresh in recent months: what is important for us in God's sight is not what we do for him, but what we are, his children who worship him. In another post Adrian wonders if we should write less and think more. Indeed it is important that we don't rush into writing without thinking, not only of the accuracy of what we write but also of whether writing it is helpful for building up the body of Christ.

Molly's paradigm shift

2007-01-13T17:09:00.000Z

Molly writes, in a post at Adventures of Mercy, about her move from a complementarian or patriarchal view of gender relationships to an egalitarian one. This has been a real and difficult change of outlook for her. In a comment on her own post she writes:

I cannot begin to tell you what it has been like for me…just like a death…but yet I have felt like the One stirring up the questions in my heart was not my own rebellion, but Jesus, and most of it coming straight from Scripture. I had been so trained to read Scripture from a patriarchal perspective that I was unable to see it any other way without Divine intervention. Well, it’s either Divine or I’m totally decieved, one or the other, which is something I pray for (for truth and not deception) daily!

Molly certainly has a good point here about "Divine intervention".

Very often patterns of thinking about the teaching of the Bible become very deeply ingrained, and to change them requires what is technically called a paradigm shift. Sometimes people are able to make such paradigm shifts when presented with overwhelming evidence, but this is rather rare. Even in science, which is supposed to be objective, it is rare for established scholars to shift their personal paradigms to accept a completely new theory; the paradigm shifts which have occurred have more commonly been spread over decades, as the older generation has been gradually replaced by new scholars accepting the new theory.

But with theological understanding there is also a spiritual element. I think most of us would accept this when we consider the personal paradigm shift required for someone to become a Christian. For those with no Christian background this is one of the greatest paradigm shifts that could be made. And it is one which people are rarely persuaded to make by overwhelming logical arguments, although more commonly perhaps they are prompted to shift by evidence they see for themselves of God's activity. But it is not without good reason that most Christians hold that this paradigm shift can only be made with the help of the Holy Spirit, whose work includes opening the unbeliever's heart to God's truth. As the apostle Paul wrote:

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. ⁴ The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
(2 Corinthians 4:3-4, TNIV)

But whenever anyone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.
(2 Corinthians 3:16, TNIV)

Now the paradigm shift which Molly made is small compared with that of becoming a Christian. Nevertheless, I'm sure she is right to attribute it to "Divine intervention". When "the god of this age" has lost complete control of someone to the true God, he tries every trick in the book to get back into their lives to deceive them and make them ineffective as Christians. Galatians 3:1 is surely a biblical example of this. I know that he has done this kind of thing in many ways in my own life; I am still struggling in some of these areas, and there may be others which I am not yet aware of.

It seems to me that one of Satan's current strategies to deceive Christians and make them ineffective is... well, I won't say complementarianism in general, but I will suggest that it is the strident complementarianism or patriarchalism which seems so strong in the USA at the moment, although not so much here in the UK except perhaps in circles connected with Adrian's (currently dormant) blog.

This kind of stridency seems to go hand in hand with a lack of concern for people and how they will react. In this case, an insistence on patriarchy is surely causing many, men as well as women, to turn away from the Christian faith, potentially to their eternal ruin. But mention this to a strident complementarian, and the response is likely to be that God's truth is more important than whether people are saved or not. Well, God's truth is important, but there is no Christian obligation to present it in an unattractive way. I'm not suggesting that complementarians conceal their beliefs, but is there a good reason why they don't stop being contentious about this issue and instead put their efforts into positive preaching about the great blessings in the Gospel?

In fact the not so good reason for this that I am discerning is that these people have fallen for Satan's deceitful schemes. Indeed this seems to be part of his worldwide strategy for stirring up trouble by encouraging intolerant and angry fundamentalism among followers of every religion, including atheism. In this strategy 9/11 was a major success, not so much for the original attack as for the over-reaction which followed, including the invasion of Iraq which has simply encouraged all kinds of fundamentalism. But I am straying too far from the subject of this post!

So, how can people be encouraged to abandon strident complementarianism, or fundamentalism of any kind? It seems to me that presenting rational arguments to such people, as I have been doing here, at Better Bibles Blog, on Adrian's blog etc, is about as effective as bashing my head against a brick wall. But maybe Molly's paradigm shift shows us a better way. If, as she testifies, it took "Divine intervention" to change her from a complementarian to an egalitarian, then we should, instead of trying to win people by arguments, be praying that God will intervene in their lives and show them his truth. And at the same time we should allow him to intervene in our lives as well and show to us his truth, which may not be exactly what we have been trying to promote with our arguments.

Meanwhile, concerning the complementarian vision of male leadership, Corrie wrote this in a later comment on this same Adventures of Mercy post:

Christ, Himself, turned the leadership paradigm on its head when he told leaders not to be like the heathen but to be like Him, someone who gets on His knees to serve and not someone who expects to be served.

But this aspect of the Christian paradigm is so often ignored by those who believe that leadership is male, especially by men who seem to expect women to be their servants. If these men aspire to being leaders in the home or in the church, they should take to heart Jesus' own words:

You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. ⁴³ Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, ⁴⁴ and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. ⁴⁵ For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.
(Mark 10:42-45, TNIV)

Now it is surely another part of Satan's strategy to pervert God's originally designed concept of leadership into the kind of "lording it" which Jesus rejects here. Indeed this is a very ancient strategy which goes back at least to the time of Samuel (1 Samuel 8:11-18), and probably to the Fall. But this is an issue on which the Bible seems to be unanimous. So, rather than a head-on challenge on the basic complementarian position, it is perhaps a more productive strategy in countering strident complementarians to challenge them with this biblical view of leadership. Maybe men who realise that leadership in the family or in the church requires them to act as slaves, even to give up their lives, will no longer be so eager to claim this leadership for themselves and deny it to women!

Smenita is back

2007-01-09T21:38:00.000Z

The infamous word "smenita" is back! A few months ago this word was regularly appearing as a word verification word for Blogger comments, and was causing all sorts of problems largely because it was not being recognised. Indeed at least one whole blog, belonging to my friend Lingamish, was devoted to the study of Smenita. But then she seemed to disappear; at least, hardly anyone seems to have blogged about her for months, until one hour ago. Well, at least Crazy Mrs Nancy's post confirms to me that it is not just me seeing Smenita again.

Smenita's reappearance has been in the comment forms for both this blog and Better Bibles Blog. She reappeared just after Blogger had been down for several hours; perhaps they had to restore an old version of some software. But Smenita doesn't seem to be the problem she used to be. In the past when I typed in her name Blogger didn't recognise it, and gave it to me again for word verification. Now Blogger does recognise "smenita" and accept the comment, and repeats the same word verification.

I wonder how long Smenita will be around this time?

Driscoll's God: only metaphorically Father?

2007-01-07T22:47:00.000Z

Wayne, Henry and I myself have all had a few things to say about Mark Driscoll's article Theological reasons for why Mars Hill preaches out of the ESV. But I want to express my agreement with him on part of what he writes, near the end:

Theologically speaking, God does not have a biological gender because God is Spirit, without physical anatomy (John 4:24), and is therefore not a man (Numbers 23:19). In using the word “He,” the Bible is not saying that God is merely a man, but rather that God is a unique person who reveals Himself with terms such as “Father” when speaking about Himself. ... we acknowledge that Scripture does infrequently refer to God in terms that are more feminine in nature, such as a hen who cares for her chicks (Matthew 23:37). Nonetheless, such language is both infrequent and metaphorical because God is no more a woman than God is a chicken.

This is a good argument (although of course the word "He" is in translations rather than the original). But since, as Driscoll agrees, God is not a man, God is no more a man than God is a chicken. Therefore we must say that masculine language about God, just like feminine language about him, is metaphorical. Thus, by Driscoll's own argument, God is only metaphorically Father. Indeed, Driscoll seems to confirm that this is his view with the following:

John Calvin said that God uses terms such as “Father” to speak to us in baby talk, much like a parent uses words that their young child can understand in order to effectively communicate with them.

Now I have no problem at all with the statement that God is only metaphorically Father. But I wonder how acceptable this position would be among the Reformed theologians and preachers with whom Driscoll keeps company. For the implication of this being only a metaphor is that it is not an attribute of God, not a part of his actual being, but only a convenient way of talking about him. The Trinity is no longer "Father, Son and Holy Spirit", but "One who is like a father, One who is like a son, and ...". How acceptable is that kind of reformulation?

Also, if there is no essential way in which God is male or masculine, there is also no way in which human males resemble him more closely than human females do. Indeed this is clear from Genesis 1:27, from the very words "male and female" which (as Henry points out) Driscoll wrongly accuses some translations of omitting.

At this point Driscoll's position is completely opposite to that of Philip Lancaster, author of Family Man, Family Leader, as quoted at Adventures of Mercy (see also here and here, thanks again to Henry for these links, which I found only as I was well into writing this post):

God is masculine. He is not feminine. He is not an androgyny, a mixture of masculine and feminine.

Lancaster seems to base his generally complementarian teaching about the family on this position. Well, at least he is consistent, but his position does not seem to be the theologically orthodox one, at least if the following from Wikipedia (quoted here) is reliable:

Christianity does not regard the omnipotent God as being male, God the Father is genderless

Driscoll, however, is orthodox on this point:

God does not have a biological gender

but his logic is faulty. In the same article he writes:

Scripture states that God made us “male and female” (for example, Genesis 1:27). Consequently, in God’s created order, there is both equality between men and women (because both are His image-bearers) and distinction (because men and women have differing roles).

Indeed this equality is a consequence of this scripture. But the distinction is not a consequence. Indeed, while "differing roles" may not be contradicted by a shared image of God (and differing gender roles in reproduction are indisputable), the kind of view which Lancaster has, in which leadership is a male attribute, is certainly contradicted by Genesis 1:27.

The previously mentioned Wikipedia article also quotes the radical feminist Mary Daly:

If God is male, then the male is God.

Lancaster's arguments seem to confirm this. I am glad that Driscoll avoids going down this wrong road. But I fear for some of his complementarian friends. Lancaster already seems to have moved into ideas contradicted by Scripture and rejected as unorthodox. But it seems that these wrong ideas are the only ones logically compatible with complementarianism. So will other complementarians follow? Driscoll manages to be orthodox and a complementarian only because he doesn't notice that this is a contradiction at the heart of his theology.

Mars Hill Church: on a different planet?

2007-01-06T23:33:00.000Z

In some ways I admire the controversial preacher Mark Driscoll of Mars Hill Church, Seattle. I admire him for his no-nonsense attitude and refusal to conform to the religious expectations of others. But in other ways he infuriates me.

And he has done so again, not so much with his church's decision to use the ESV Bible as with his allegedly theological reasons for this. It is clear that he simply hasn't got a clue what he is talking about on the subject of language and translation.

For example, he writes:

when we change the words of Scripture we are changing the meaning of Scripture.

What does he mean here by "the words of Scripture"? If he is referring to the inspired words of the original text, then no one is suggesting a change. But probably he is referring to a translation. If we change a translation, the change may be neutral as far as the meaning is concerned; or perhaps we are indeed changing its meaning. But if the old translation was not correct (or had become incorrect over time because of language change), a change should be a change for the better, the correction of an error. And of course every translation claims to be correct where others were wrong. So this is no argument for any one translation over any other. Indeed if Driscoll really believes this argument he should go back to the King James Version or earlier, on the basis that every new translation is "changing the meaning of Scripture".

Then he writes:

Romans 3:24 is one of many places where “justification” is spoken of in the original text of Scripture.

I have looked at the original text (well, a scholarly edition of the Greek text) of Romans 3:24 and cannot find the word "justification" there. There are no English words, only Greek ones. In fact this word is not in any of the translations Driscoll quotes, but I guess he is referring to the word "justified". What I do find in the Greek text is the concept "justification", expressed in a Greek word. The task of a translator is to find an appropriate way of expressing this concept in a target language like English. That may be with an individual word like "justified". The problem is that many people today either do not understand this word or misunderstand it (perhaps something to do with text layout!), and so some translators choose a different way of expressing the word. Thus for example the NLT translators express the same concept in the word "God... declares that we are righteous". Doesn't that mean exactly the same thing? Who is to say that "justify" is a correct translation and "declare righteous" is not? Of course there might be a subtle theological distinction to be made here, but that is not the point made by Driscoll, who is not known for subtlety. In fact he seems to base his preference either on "justify" being one word rather than two, or else that the choice of King James is as unchangeable as the decrees of the kings of the Medes and the Persians.

Then, on Psalm 8:4, Driscoll writes:

The original text simply says “man,” yet some translations take the liberty to deviate from that markedly:

- and among the alternatives he rejects is "humans". What, does Driscoll really believe that the word "man" is in the original text, and not a Hebrew word? What planet is he on? In fact there are two different Hebrew words rendered "man" in ESV, 'enosh with a collective meaning in the first line and 'adam in the second line. Both of these words can legitimately be translated either "man" (if understood as gender generic) or "human beings". Why is one right and the other wrong?

I suppose that Mars Hill church is named after the forum in Athens (more correctly the Areopagus, but called "Mars' hill" in Acts 17:22 KJV although by Paul's time it did not meet on the hill of that name) in which Paul debated his Christian faith with Greek philosophers. But he could only debate with them, and start the process of Christianising Greek thought, because he spoke a common language with them. However, Driscoll seems to repudiate the idea of speaking a common language with the huge majority of unbelievers in his city, but prefers, even when "writing an article for a non-Christian newspaper", to retreat into Christian jargon which the readers, even the newspaper editor, don't understand.

By cutting himself off with a language barrier from most of the people of this earth, Driscoll seems to be positioning himself and his church not so much on Mars Hill as on the planet Mars.

Happy Christmas to you all!

2006-12-21T18:36:00.000Z

I will be away from home, except briefly on Saturday night, from tomorrow morning until next Wednesday or Thursday. So there will probably be no new posts or replies to comments on this blog for about a week, although your comments will continue to be welcome.

While I have the opportunity, I wish all my readers a very happy Christmas. May you all know the joy that comes from the birth of our Saviour, Messiah and Lord.

Helen Roseveare and Elizabeth Fry

2006-12-20T20:04:00.000Z

The debate stirred up by Adrian Warnock's interview series with Dr Wayne Grudem continues. In a comment on a post which is a spin-off from the debate, Suzanne mentioned several women heroes of the faith, including Helen Roseveare and Elizabeth Fry. In a response, which Adrian may well not approve because it is off topic, I commented:

Suzanne, thank you for your list of women heroes. Helen Roseveare is one of mine. I remember, even though it was nearly 30 years ago, hearing her preach a powerful sermon on how we should let God make us into polished arrows for his service, based on Isaiah 49:2.

Elizabeth Fry, by the way, is honoured on UK banknotes. I have her picture on a £5 banknote in my hand. In fact I think she is the only woman to be so honoured, apart from the Queen who is on the other side.

I wonder, how would complementarians reconcile the powerful effect of Helen Roseveare's sermon on my life for 30 years with their teaching on women preachers? Was I wrong or deceived to listen to her teaching, even though it was good biblical teaching? Should I forget it? Or is this perhaps more like Philippians 1:18, where Paul rejoices that Christ is preached even though some of the preachers had wrong motives? But one thing I am sure of, Roseveare's motives were not wrong.

Does God know what time it is?

2006-12-16T20:51:00.000Z

Believe it or not, this question is one of real debate among philosophers.

I mentioned in my last post blogs which I would like to read regularly, but don't. Jeremy Pierce and his associates' Parableman blog is one of these. Ever since July 2005 Jeremy has been posting a long series on Theories of Knowledge and Reality. His latest post on Omniscience and Time is number 34 in the series. I wish I had time to read them all.

But I did just dip into the series by reading the latest post. And yes, it really is about the philosophical question "Does God know what time it is?" Apparently there are three possible answers to this: God is within time and so knows what time it is in the same way as we do; or God doesn't know what time it is and so this is an exception to his omniscience; or, despite what most of us think, there is simply not such a fact as what time it is now - which I suppose must mean that the whole concept of "now" is illusory. Well, I'm not sure how accurate this summary is, so if you are interested you really ought to read Jeremy's whole post - and probably also his whole series!

Update (19th December): I realised even before Jeremy commented on this that my point

which I suppose must mean that the whole concept of "now" is illusory

is not really correct. The third alternative mentioned above is more that what time it is now is not an absolute fact but a relative one. There has been some more discussion about this in comments on Jeremy's post, including some further explanation of what is meant by a relative fact. I suggested the following way of putting it, and Jeremy has agreed that this is right:

God cannot say where he is, because he is not in any one place but is omnipresent; and for the same reason he cannot say what time it is, i.e. at what point he is on the time axis, because he is at every time.

So actually, after some further thought, I find myself agreeing with Jeremy's third alternative, that God doesn't know what time it is because for him this is not a meaningful concept.

Updated website and blogroll

2006-12-16T19:24:00.000Z

For various good reasons I don't write much about my work on this blog. But I do put a bit about it in my occasional newsletters, which I put on my personal website with links from my home page, which is I am afraid rather basic in design. I have just uploaded and added links for my latest newsletter, which explains my current work situation. I have also linked to two more articles of local interest which I have written for Baddow Life newspaper, about which I blogged in June.

I have also at long last updated my blogroll, the list of links to other blogs on the right hand side of my blog page. I have added several blogs which I read regularly, and some others which I would like to. I have deleted a couple which are no longer active (nothing personal with those whose blogs I deleted) and one which I have not read for some time. And I have updated the name of Tim Chesterton's blog. The blogs are listed in no particular order. I hope you can also find something interesting there. As will be clear to any of you who have been following my recent posts about Adrian Warnock's interview with Dr Wayne Grudem, I by no means agree with the content of all the blogs which I link to; but I do find them interesting, and sometimes provocative.

Adrian Warnock closes his blog to comments...

2006-12-15T12:20:00.000Z

...except apparently to those which agree with him and with Dr Grudem.

He outlines his new comment policy in what has now become a footnote to every posting on his blog:Comments posted since 15 Dec 2006 have been approved by Adrian Warnock or an associate but do not necessarily reflect his opinion. Please be cautions of older comments and content on sites with links from or to this blog. ...

Comment moderation introduces a delay to discussion, and due to the volume of comments, many will be rejected. Writing a post on your own blog with a link to this page may be a good alternative.
Well, I am here taking up his last suggestion.

But what does his new policy mean in practice? I wrote a comment on part 7 of Adrian's interview with Dr Wayne Grudem, actually before this new policy came into force (which means that it should have been approved because it met the policy in force at the time), which was rejected. I asked Adrian why, and submitted a revised comment, but this was also rejected. The comment was entirely on topic and of general interest, as Adrian appears to accept. And for once I was agreeing with and supporting Dr Grudem's position. But it seems that Adrian will not allow me even to refer to the fact that Dr Grudem has rejected the positions which I hold on other issues.

Adrian's blog has become one of the most respected in the Christian blogosphere. Does he now want to "castrate" it (see the PS below re such language), turning it into a forum for himself, Dr Grudem and others who agree with them to pat one another on the back? At least this kind of castration is reversible, although it needs to be reversed quickly if Adrian is not to lose his reputation as a good blogger.

Here is my comment on part 7 of the Grudem interview, in its original form as posted 12/14/2006 10:55:16 PM and then deleted:

Well, having been condemned by Grudem for being a "feminist" and again for not accepting that penal substitution is a complete description of the atonement, I am glad not to be condemned a third time for being in a paedo-baptist denomination, the Church of England!

But actually in fact the C of E in practice, and semi-officially at least in our diocese, recognises dual modes of baptism and allows them to continue in parallel. In my congregation, it is up to each family whether they want their child to be baptised as an infant; in practice most church members choose instead to have a dedication service, whereas it is outsiders who want a proper infant baptism! Adult believers are encouraged to come forward for baptism by immersion (in our church in a borrowed portable baptistry), or if they have already been baptised as an infant for "renewal of baptismal vows", which comes to almost the same thing, usually immersion in the same water, but cannot be officially called baptism. Alternatively, some are baptised as believers at other churches, camps etc, as I was before there was a "renewal of baptismal vows" service; and no one complains as long as we don't teach publicly that everyone should do the same. Indeed a friend of mine who was baptised in this way, and didn't hide it, was recently accepted for ordination in the C of E. We are not allowed to teach that infant baptism is invalid, but we can opt out of it for ourselves. We cannot insist on believers' baptism as a condition for church membership - but then most UK Baptists don't either.

While this kind of compromise is certainly not ideal, it does seem to work in practice. Of course the C of E loves compromises, and this one is much more acceptable than some of the others!

Adrian rejected this, and I asked him why. I understand that there could be a problem with the word "condemned" in the first paragraph. I wrote the following to him in an e-mail (links added):

Well, what can I say? Would you prefer "damned"? As far as I can tell that is what Grudem is trying to say, about both "feminists" and Chalke supporters. Not exactly bridgebuilding! But I will leave Suzanne to complain about this. Grudem was not quite so explicit in what he actually wrote. He did say, completely without foundation, that "Chalke is denying the heart of the Gospel." But he doesn't quite say that Chalke is going to hell, and so he might not say the same about me.

So how about "Well, having had my beliefs rejected by Grudem for being a "feminist" and again for not accepting that penal substitution is a complete description of the atonement, I am glad not to be rejected a third time for being in a paedo-baptist denomination, the Church of England!"? If I start the comment like that, will you accept it? Well, I'll try it and see.

And the answer quickly came back: no, Adrian would not accept this. Why not? He gave me a rather unconvincing reason, which I will not publish because this was in a private e-mail. But it seems to me that the real point is that he doesn't want any reference on his blog to any disagreement with Dr Grudem. He just wants to post Grudem's propaganda without allowing for any proper discussion of its validity.

Adrian, if I have misrepresented you in any way, you are welcome to comment, but I will be convinced only if you open up your blog again to proper discussion of the issues you raise.

PS: Here is another comment I made, this time on part 5 of the Grudem interview and in response to Donna L. Carlaw's comment on that post of 14 December, 2006 23:38, which Adrian has at least not yet accepted:

Donna wrote "a good help mate will see when her husband needs her gentle intervention. She can do that without further wounding him by castration." Then she explained this with "I do believe that a woman can be a strong help mate without seeking to knock her husband out of the leadership role in the marriage. That is what I meant by "castration", removing him from his God-given position because of his handicap." (typo corrected)

This is an example of one of the worst logical fallacies and methods of argument, labelling one's opponent's position with a highly pejorative label (like "castration"), when it has no connection at all with the literal meaning of that label, and implicitly arguing that the position is wrong because it bears that label.

Donna, how would you react if I wrote something like the following: "An egalitarian man does not rape his wife", in a context implying that complementarian men do, and then explained this with "by 'rape' I mean 'exercise a leadership position over'"? Of course I would not dream of using such language. Maybe some egalitarians have done so, but not in this discussion. Please let's keep this kind of rabble rousing argument out of this blog.

"No need to apologize", you think, Donna? On the contrary, every need, for your explanation has made your slur worse, rather than better. If your mother can take the lead over your invalid father "without making a man feel like less of a man", without castrating him physically or presumably in the non-physical sense you have in mind, then why can't the same happen in a marriage in which the couple agree on an egalitarian relationship? Note that I am not talking about a case where a wife "assumes authority" or "usurps authority" over her husband (something which Paul rightly did not allow, although he reserved "castrate" for the Judaising false teachers of Galatians 5:12) but where this relationship is agreed between the couple.

I didn't write what I could have done (but which would surely have guaranteed the rejection of this comment), that Dr Grudem also uses the kind of argument by attaching pejorative labels which I objected to Donna using. One of Grudem's favourite pejorative labels is "feminist", which is not as bad as "castrate", but by arguing in this way at all he is encouraging others down the "slippery slope" into using labels like "castrate". Actually I wouldn't be surprised if someone finds that Grudem has also used "castrate" in this way, but I don't have any evidence for this.

Well, if Adrian's new policy introduced 22 minutes after Donna's comment stops people making generalised slurs of this nature on egalitarian women, and refusing to apologise for them, then maybe the policy is not all bad. But if he allows comments like this to be made, he should allow replies to them - if he doesn't apply his new policy to them retroactively by deleting them, as he did to the original version of my comment, as copied above, posted 43 minutes earlier and then deleted.

UPDATE: Adrian has now accepted an even further weakened version of my comment on part 7 of the Grudem interview. So the answer to the question I put to him in a private e-mail:

Or is your policy in fact that you will not allow any mention that anyone might disagree with Grudem?

must in fact be "No".

I realised that the opening of my posting above, "...except apparently to those who agree with him and with Dr Grudem", was grammatically confused as "those" appeared to refer back to comments rather than to people, but was then followed by "who". I considered correcting this to "...except apparently to those made by people who agree..." But it now seems clear that in fact Adrian's policy is not directed at individuals, but the content of their comments. So I have corrected this to "...except apparently to those which agree..."

Adrian Warnock censors those who find an error in Grudem's words

2006-12-12T19:10:00.000Z

Adrian Warnock has deleted from this post on his blog a number of comments, at least four by Suzanne McCarthy and two by myself. He has not informed me that he has done this. He has mentioned this in a comment addressed to Suzanne on a post at the Better Bibles Blog, where he writes:

I have removed some comments over at my place that I feel are off-topic. This is one of them

Fortunately I have a copy of these six comments still open in a browser window and so can restore them to public view on this blog.

I must agree with Adrian that some of Suzanne's points, and my second comment which is in reply to those points, are somewhat off the immediate topic of Adrian's post. So he has is acting reasonably by deleting those comments.

However, I have a very serious problem of principle with the fact that he has deleted both of the comments which point out an error of fact in his post. The error is in the words of Dr Wayne Grudem in part five of Adrian's interview with him. These comments are of course entirely relevant to the post concerning which they were added as comments.

Adrian doesn't seem to have a problem with being corrected himself. Indeed he was very gracious when I put him right about subordination within the Trinity in his recent post on the attributes of God. But it seems that he cannot take it when people find errors in what his favourite teachers have said. He wrote the following in a comment just before the ones he deleted:

O, and please be careful about being disrespectful to our guest around here. If I had Dr Grudem as a guest in my home and another guest was rude to him most likely I would ask that guest to leave.

Indeed it is right to be respectful to a guest - and to any guest, including any commenter on a blog, not just to those who have an academic position and a good reputation in certain circles. However, I do not consider it to be showing a lack of respect to politely point out errors of fact made by someone else. Indeed I would consider it disrespectful to avoid carefully correcting someone, to stop them perpetuating their error and potentially being even more embarrassed by public exposure. And I would certainly consider it disrespectful to the honoured guest, as well as to the person pointing out the error, to intervene in the discussion to prevent the guest from finding out about their error.

As for the particular issue in question here, since Adrian has not let me make the correction through a comment in his blog, I will have to make it more publicly, in a separate post from this one.

Here are the comments which Adrian deleted, unedited:

Suzanne McCarthy said...

On 1 Tim. 2:12 Dr. Grudem also takes a stand against the Tyndale - King James tradition.

12But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.

12Einem Weibe aber gestatte ich nicht, daß sie lehre, auch nicht, daß sie des Mannes Herr sei, sondern stille sei. Luther

So Dr. Grudem cannot teach from these Bibles, I have heard many times pastors tell me that they cannot teach from a certain text even though it is what was in the KJ or Luther Bible. Why is that? They need their own special version? They will not use a traditional and established Bible?

I don't know why the TNIV is "a highly suspect and novel translation", it is simply an update of the King James translation in this case.

I challenge Dr. Grudem to go back to the King James Bible and teach from that.

12 December, 2006 08:14

...

Suzanne McCarthy said...

And why is it alright to post on the internet against the TNIV and its translators? Why is that acceptable? Who are these people?

Bruce Waltke
Gordon Fee
Ron Youngblood
Douglas Moo
RT France

to name a few.

It is my prayer that this rift in the Christian community be healed and that there will not be one group posting in public against another, going on radio against another, in front of non-Christians.

I am so disturbed by this action on the part of the authors of the Statement of Concern against the TNIV. It is my desire that this provocation of disunity be dismantled. These people, these issues are personal to me. This statement has caused such personal grief, and for what, in what way is the ESV a perfect translation and the KJV, the TNIV and the Luther Bible is not?

There needs to be grace and healing and humility. Not this display of why the TNIV is suspect.

12 December, 2006 08:27

Suzanne McCarthy said...

Adrian,

I need to address your misunderstanding regarding the generic 'he'.

Dr. Grudem claims,

"Thus, in Hebrew and in Greek as well as in English, the usage “suggests a particular pattern of thought,” namely a picture using a male representative" and

"But in typical contexts, singular masculine gender pronouns encourage a starting picture of a male, not just a totally faceless entity"

This implies to me that Dr. Grudem thinks that the pronoun creates male semantic meaning - a male image in the mind. Does it do this in Greek?

In Greek, the pronoun is αυτος meaning 'the same one as has been mentioned'. And the grammatical ending is masculine.

In fact, no one has ever suggested that masculine grammatical endings create male semantic content, or a starting picture of a male in the the mind.

So I cannot understand this argument of Dr. Grudem's. He may feel that this is true in English, but the Bible was not written in English. We have to deal with this.

Let me be clear - the Greek pronoun αυτος does not create a male image in the mind that encourages us to receive Christ in our hearts.

Let's look at this verse.

Rev. 3:20

20Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.

Why should we need the pronoun 'him' to create a starting picture of a male in a woman's head. May not woman come to Christ untrammeled by the thought of a human male, not Christ himself, but the male who represents her in her relationship to Christ, as a picture in her head?

Indeed, if someone came to my door I would say, "Please let whoever is knocking come in and I will give them tea."

I would not say "Please let whoever is knocking come in and I will give him tea." I think not. I will welcome a woman as easily as a man.

I discussed this with Dr. Packer and he agrees on this - the generic 'they' is perfectly standard.

12 December, 2006 08:53

...

Suzanne McCarthy said...

Arian,

Does is only matter to you how masculine sounding the words are, or do you care about something being true?

Think of the women who reported that Christ was risen. Wasn't that truth? Can you not open up to something more than masculinity?

12 December, 2006 09:05

...

Peter Kirk said...

I am sorry to have to report yet another factual error in what Dr Grudem says. In fact I see that Suzanne has already spotted this, but I repeat it here because some may not take such a point from a woman or may not read all of her comments - and because I drafted what follows before reading Suzanne's comments.

Grudem writes: "in 1 Timothy 2:12 the TNIV adopts a highly suspect and novel translation ... It reads, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man”". But this is not a novel translation at all, for as with Matthew 5:9 Grudem seems to have ignored KJV. Look at the KJV rendering of 1 Timothy 2:12: “I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man”. Of course "usurp authority" is not precisely the same wording as "assume authority", but the meaning in the context must be the same. Grudem continued: "If churches adopt this translation, the debate over women's roles in the church will be over, because women pastors and elders can just say, “I’m not assuming authority on my own initiative; it was given to me by the other pastors and elders.” Therefore any woman could be a pastor or elder so long as she does not take it upon herself to “assume authority.”" Well, for over 300 years most churches adopted KJV, but despite Grudem's argument here this did not stop the debate over women's roles in the church. So what is the real difference between TNIV and KJV here?

Grudem also writes: "I don’t think a pastor can give a woman “permission” to do Bible teaching before the church, because the Bible says not to do that." But actually what the Bible passage in question says is that Paul himself does not give women this kind of permission, in the churches over which he had authority. So this seems to leave open the possibility that other church leaders could and did give this permission. There is a long and complex hermeneutical procedure which needs to be followed, including such issues as how far our churches today are under Paul's apostolic authority and whether individual examples should ever be taken to be normative, before we can translate Paul's example into a command for churches today. This process seems to have been ignored in this whole discussion, at least on the blogs I have been reading. I hope Grudem has addressed this issue in his book.

12 December, 2006 14:55

Peter Kirk said...

Suzanne, you shouldn't call Adrain "Arian". You may disagree with him, but I don't think he is guilty of this particular heresy!

You quote Grudem as claiming concerning generic "he" "Thus, in Hebrew and in Greek as well as in English, the usage “suggests a particular pattern of thought,” namely a picture using a male representative".

Here we need to distinguish carefully between linguistic and theological issues. It is true that in many languages, including Hebrew and Greek, and in some mostly older varieties of English, a grammatically masculine pronoun can refer to or "represent" all humans, male and female. But this is not true of all language, especially those like Persian and Turkic languages which have no gender distinctions in pronouns; it is also not true of the form of "gender neutral" English used in many parts of the English speaking world. It is thus of necessity a language specific issue, which has no significance outside the structures of specific languages. Thus it is something which cannot does not need to be preserved in a translation into a gender neutral language. The problem with this comes when Grudem attempts to recharacterise this as a theological issue and then insist that language specific distinctions are preserved even in languages which do not and cannot make these distinctions.

12 December, 2006 15:07

Post 100

2006-12-10T21:53:00.000Z

I was surprised to note that this would be my one hundredth post here at Speaker of Truth. All but the first two posts have been in just over six months. I wouldn't have thought that I had posted so many times, at an average rate of just over one every two days.

Of course there have been times when I have been prolific - when I have not been too busy and have had worthwhile things to say, or at least things which seemed worthwhile at the time. And there have been times, including one just recently, when I have taken a short break from blogging here - because I have been busy with my real work or real leisure, or have had nothing to say; or else because I have instead been blogging and commenting elsewhere. In fact this is what I have been doing quite a lot in the last few weeks, blogging at Better Bibles Blog and commenting mainly there and at Adrian Warnock's.

This Post 100 gives me an opportunity to reflect on this blog and where it is going. How have I been doing on meeting my aim, as described in my introductory post and in the blog header, of being "a speaker of truth to all mankind", or better (except for the rhyme in the song) "to all humanity"?

The "to all humanity" part seems to be going well. ClustrMaps has allowed me to keep an eye on how many people have been reading this and where. Currently hits are running at 7735 since 12th June, which is more than 40 per day, although the rate seems to have dropped off a little recently probably because I have been less active. And the hits have been from all over the world, except Antarctica (but then I don't aim to be a speaker of truth to penguins!): from every major English speaking country and many other countries, and probably from every state of the USA. I realise that these hits include search engine robots, but I know that I also have a significant human readership. But I would welcome more feedback in comments.

But how am I doing with being "a speaker of truth"? This phrase, by the way, is not just from the song by Martin Smith; it is a biblical concept, for in Ephesians 4:15 we are told that

speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the head, that is, Christ.
(Ephesians 4:15, TNIV)

Have I been speaking the truth? Well, I certainly haven't been lying, at least not deliberately. But perhaps I have been more putting forward interesting speculations, of my own and others', rather than promoting sure Christian truth. It is the latter that I believe God has called me to do, and perhaps I should start doing so.

Don't worry, I am not going to start blogging dogmatic assertions about Christian doctrine. That's not my style, and there are plenty of other dogmatic and sometimes offputting bloggers. And I won't simply regurgitate the works of famous Christians of past centuries, or even of our own time. What I want to speak is God's truth for today and for the readers of my blog. And I aim to do so in a prophetic way. In saying this I make no claim to inerrancy or infallibility, although some cessationists accuse charismatics of making such claims, something which in fact only a few wild extremists do. But I look for the guidance of the Holy Spirit in what I write here so that it can be helpful to my readers.

So, what is this blog going to look like in the future? That depends on where the Holy Spirit leads. So I can say truly and reverently that only God knows.

In An Advisory Capacity

2006-12-10T18:47:00.000Z

Quoted by my pastor in his sermon this morning, from the Sunday Express newspaper:

Most people want to serve God - but only in an advisory capacity.

The Original Gospel Manuscripts in Washington?

2006-12-09T20:56:00.000Z

We Evangelical Christians, who accept the Bible as the authoritative word of God, generally qualify our statements of faith with "according to the original manuscripts". We thus allow that the Bible as we have it may have been altered or corrupted even in the best manuscripts which survive, although we usually assume that such changes are trivial. This qualification allows for example for a scholar like Gordon Fee, in an old controversial case which is now being discussed again, to argue on text critical grounds that 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 is not original and so not authoritative, while, despite some accusations to the contrary, remaining an evangelical. But the qualification also implies a limitation on the authority of the Bible as we have it, and opens the door to accusations of a lack of intellectual rigour in the evangelical position.

And so I was interested to read that a new claim is being made which is startling in this context. I am not referring to the report that the tomb of St Paul has been found, although if his body is found in the tomb that might have some interesting implications for biblical studies such as the possibility of finding out what his "thorn in the flesh" was. But the claim I have in mind is far more startling, although from a less reliable source.

The claim I am referring to is that original manuscripts of the four Gospels have survived, and are in Washington DC! This is the claim which has been made by Dr. Lee W. Woodard. At least, he claims that the manuscripts which he has identified were produced and authenticated by the original authors, and date to the first century.

The Freer Gospels or Codex W (Codex Washingtonensis or Washingtonianus) is a codex (manuscript book) which was purchased in Egypt 100 years ago this month (19th December 1906 according to this page dating from 1913, although others have claimed that the centenary fell in November 2006) by Mr Charles Freer, taken to America, and bequeathed to the Smithsonian Institute. The centenary was marked with a special session at the SBL meeting in Washington in November, at which the latest scholarly opinions on this codex were aired, including the following attributed to Ulrich Schmid:

The IV/V century date seems to have no secure basis and a later date (e.g. VI century or later) is entirely possible.

A set of facsimile images of the Gospel of Mark in this codex is available online.

But it is this codex, generally accepted by scholars as being from the 4th or 5th century AD, which Dr Woodard is now claiming to be an original first century set of the four gospels. The evidence on which he bases his claim (from the brief summaries on his website and here; I have not read Woodard's book, nor the 14 page full colour paper entitled "Codex W Discovered to Be the Original First Century Gospels" which he was handing out at the SBL meeting) is that he has found on the codex small annotations and seal marks in Aramaic indicating the provenance and date of its various parts and the authors' names - apparently Matthew in Damascus in AD 36, Mark in Athens in AD 69-72, Luke also in Athens in AD 73-74, and John in Ephesus in AD 96, the same year in which, according to Woodard, the four gospels were bound together to form the surviving codex.

If Woodard has indeed found previously unrecognised marks in the codex, they deserve proper scholarly study; but until they have received such study and the results have been properly published, I remain sceptical. Woodard has not done his cause any good by his means of promoting his theory, through a book and a website targeted at a popular audience, as is clear from the unqualified claims and sensationalist language of the website.

Nevertheless there remains the intriguing possibility that Woodard's claims may be true, that the gospels sitting in a Washington museum may be the originals. That would have some quite significant consequences for biblical scholarship and for the church.

For one thing, it would revolutionise the study of the textual criticism of the New Testament. In fact for the Gospels it would render this study mostly obsolete; but the new evidence from these texts would also have profound effects on the textual study of the rest of the New Testament. Woodard also claims that his discovery solves the "Synoptic Problem" of the interrelationships between the gospels, and proves that the hypothesised "Q" document never existed - but then his theory that Mark used an early draft of Matthew and that Luke used both Matthew and Mark is one now held by many New Testament scholars.

There would be some other interesting textual consequences. If Codex W is the original, that implies the authenticity of passages which most textual critics now consider inauthentic, such as Matthew 17:21 (omitted in most modern translations) and the "longer ending" Mark, 16:9-20. It would also imply the authenticity of a short passage included after verse 14 in this "longer ending", which survives only in Codex W. Here is Metzger and Ehrman's translation of this interesting little passage, courtesy of Wikipedia:

"And they excused themselves, saying, "This age of lawlessness and unbelief is under Satan, who does not allow the truth and power of God to prevail over the unclean things of the spirits [or: does not allow what lies under the unclean spirits to understand the truth and power of God]. Therefore reveal thy righteousness now" - thus they spoke to Christ. And Christ replied to them, "The term of years of Satan's power has been fulfilled, but other terrible things draw near. And for those who have sinned I was delivered over to death, that they may inherit the spiritual and incorruptible glory of righteousness which is in heaven".

Could this passage be original? If so, this would be almost the only place in the Gospels where Jesus is simply called "Christ"; Matthew 11:2 is the only other one where there is not a clear reference to the expectation of the Messiah.

But the most profound consequence would be for the evangelical view of Scripture. At least for the gospels, the very words of Jesus, there would no longer be a qualification to biblical authority, but instead there should be a confidence that what we have is the authoritative record of the very words of the Lord. But quite how this insight would be received would be interesting! And of course this is all hypothetical, for Woodard's claim has by no means been proved. It will also be interesting to see whether any recognised scholars make the effort of looking into it properly, or whether all of them stay away from what might become quite a "hot potato".

Women in Ministry: Stan Gundry could change

2006-11-30T18:54:00.000Z

I have just come across an interesting piece by Stan Gundry, entitled Women in Ministry: Can we change? In it Gundry tells how, with the help of his wife Pat, he moved from believing that women should be entirely submissive and silent in church to an egalitarian position on this issue. He is by the way Senior Vice President and Editor-in-Chief, Publishing Group at Zondervan Corporation, who publish the TNIV Bible.

Thanks to Codepoke for this link.

Codepoke has also written about 1 Corinthians 14:34-35, one of the most difficult biblical passages for egalitarians. Wayne Leman has also written about this passage at the Better Bibles Blog, and created a storm of controversy in the comments. Both Codepoke and Wayne argue that this passage was not written by Paul, but is a quotation from the letter which the Corinthians had sent to Paul. Well, I discussed such quotations in 1 Corinthians in part 3 of my recent series on Paul, Sex and Marriage, and I didn't list 14:34-35 as such a quotation. But it now seems to me quite likely, but not certain, that these verses, which contradict what Paul writes elsewhere, are a quotation from the Corinthians' letter and so should not be understood as Paul's teaching.

Simeon and Wesley on Calvinism

2006-11-18T10:08:00.000Z

When I was as Christian student in Cambridge in the 1970's I was encouraged to look to Charles Simeon as one of my heroes. He had faithfully preached the evangelical gospel in that city for more than 50 years, and was one of the main leaders of the evangelical awakening in the Church of England which started started in the late 18th century.

Another Christian hero of mine is John Wesley, the great preacher of a generation before Simeon. But he is considered suspect in some circles as an Arminian and for his teaching on Christian perfection.

And so I was interesting to see this account on Adrian's blog of a conversation between Simeon and Wesley. Simeon starts by saying

Sir, I understand that you are called an Arminian; and I have been sometimes called a Calvinist; and therefore I suppose we are to draw daggers.

But after asking Wesley some questions, he concludes:

Then, Sir, with your leave I will put up my dagger again; for this is all my Calvinism; this is my election, my justification by faith, my final perseverance: it is in substance all that I hold, and as I hold it; and therefore, if you please, instead of searching out terms and phrases to be a ground of contention between us, we will cordially unite in those things wherein we agree.

Would that Calvinists and Arminians today could agree so easily! Almost all evangelicals today can agree on the points which Wesley and Simeon agreed on - although perhaps for some including myself

so depraved that you would never have thought of turning to God, if God had not first put it into your heart

is something of an overstatement.

But the difficulty today comes when Calvinists go beyond what Calvin taught, and Scripture teaches, into teachings like limited atonement (Christ died only for the elect, contra 2 Corinthians 5:14) and double predestination (some are predestined not to be saved, contra 1 Timothy 2:4 and 2 Peter 3:9); and when Arminians drift towards Pelagianism, the equally unbiblical teaching that people can bring about their own salvation. While I am sure there will continue to be disagreements about some of the details (and I hope to look for resolution of some of the issues when I continue my Kingdom Thermodynamics series), there should be sufficient common ground here that all evangelicals can work together in harmony.

Meanwhile Adrian is starting a campaign for an electronic edition of "the massive 21-volume set of Simeon's sermons that form a commentary on the Bible". If you are interested in getting this, please let him know.

Paul, Sex and Marriage 6: Conclusions and Bibliography

2006-11-16T21:01:00.000Z

This is the last part of my 1988 essay What did Paul really say about sex and marriage? 1 Corinthians 7:1-16, consisting of the conclusions and the bibliography, also a link to the Appendix.

6. CONCLUSIONS

The Christians were not unique in the first century Hellenistic world in rejecting the conventional way of life in favour of a commitment embracing every aspect of their life to a higher cause. Another such grouping was the Cynics: Epictetus gives an ironical portrayal of the life-style of these wandering philosophers, who saw themselves as “kings” (III.xxii, pp. 130-169). The Cynics did not reject marriage, but the Stoic philosopher points out the difficulties in marriage and family life for those living in such a way (p. 155). The Christians in Corinth, who also saw themselves as “kings” (4:8), surely thought similarly when they first began to reject marriage; and thus far Paul was prepared to go along with them, for the argument of 7:25-35 accords with that of Epictetus.

The Corinthian Christians, however, were taking the point further by also rejecting sexual relations within marriage, and not on pragmatic grounds (for Paul does not consider birth control as a reason for abstinence) but because of an emerging idea that all sexual relations were unclean or unholy. This idea was foreign to the Hellenistic world, although already known at Qumran, but it could well have arisen afresh among the Corinthians; if sex outside marriage was wrong, and marriage was discouraged, then must not all sexual activity be less than fully holy? The Corinthians did not ask Paul this question; they answered it for themselves and many adopted the ascetic view. As a result some were depriving or divorcing their partners without agreement; and the frustrated partners, attracted by the opposite view held by some at Corinth that Christians could do what they liked with their bodies (countered by Paul in 6:12-20), were going to the prostitutes.

This was the situation which Paul confronted in 7:1-16. It was a situation he could certainly not tolerate; nor could he lay the blame entirely on the immoral partners. His Jewish upbringing had taught him that sexual relations within marriage were good, even obligatory; and nothing in the Christian gospel had led him to reject that – indeed, he affirmed it as a general rule for the married (7:3). Yet he could find something to commend in the Corinthian view, by taking καλόν in the sense of a good option rather than the only or highest good: firstly, temporary abstinence for prayer, by agreement, can be a good thing (7:5); and secondly, for some to whom God has given the ability singleness is right (7:7). On these points Paul departs from his Jewish background, adopting Hellenistic pragmatism. This he urges also on the Corinthians: for some, the need to satisfy the sexual urge is so strong that if the outlet within marriage is denied they will not resist the temptation of other outlets; and therefore partners are not in general to deprive each other. These instructions were given because of cases of sexual immorality and are therefore not unconditionally binding, but the recent scandals among American television evangelists illustrate that no Christian group today, any more than the first century Corinthians, can consider itself immune from immorality and so able to ignore this teaching.

It has been most unfortunate for the history of the church that this passage has been so badly misinterpreted, so that the Corinthians’ views have been attributed to Paul and given his apostolic authority. One influence has been on Christian practice: through the centuries celibacy has been promoted in the church on a basis of apostolic authority which can now be seen to be quite spurious; and today such ideas lie behind the Roman Catholic prohibition of birth control which continues to lead to the birth of millions of children wanted neither by their parents nor by society. [At this point a faculty member has written a marginal note, with which I agree: "The connection would need a more careful argument than is offered here, but is probably correct".] Another influence has been on Christian theology; Augustine taught on this basis that all sexual intercourse was tainted with sin, from which he developed his doctrine of original sin, which underlies his theology of infant baptism and of grace and election – two of the most controversial issues amongst evangelicals today. This serves to show the great danger of exegesis and application of a passage without a proper linguistic understanding of its content or its context.

APPENDIX

Semantic display of 1 Corinthians 7:1-16

according to a method modified from Beekman and Callow

[The Appendix cannot be displayed here for technical reasons. It can be viewed as a PDF file here.]

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ABBREVIATIONS

Bible books	Names in full in italics. Quotations in Greek are from UBS³.
AV	The Holy Bible, Authorised King James Version, Collins 1950.
Balch	D.L. Balch, 1 Cor 7:32-35 and Stoic Debates about Marriage, Anxiety, and Distraction, Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. 102/3, 1983, pp. 429-439.
Barrett	C.K. Barrett, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, Black’s New Testament Commentaries, A & C Black, London 1968.
Bauer	W. Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, English translation² by Arndt and Gingrich, University of Chicago Press 1979.
Beekman/Callow	J. Beekman and J. Callow, Translating the Word of God, Zondervan, Grand Rapids 1974.
Bruce	F.F. Bruce, 1 and 2 Corinthians, New Century Bible, Oliphants, London 1971.
Collins	R.F. Collins, The Unity of Paul’s Paraenesis in 1 Thess. 4.3-8. 1 Cor. 7.1-7, A Significant Parallel, New Testament Studies, vol. 29, 1983, pp. 420-429.
Conzelmann	H. Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, English translation by J.W. Leitch, Hermeneia, Fortress Press, Philadelphia 1975.
de Ste. Croix	G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World, Duckworth, London 1981.
Downing	F.G. Downing, Strangely Familiar, no publisher or date.
Elliott	J. K. Elliott, Paul’s Teaching on Marriage in 1 Corinthians: Some Problems Considered, New Testament Studies, vol. 19, 1972-73, pp. 219-225.
Epictetus	Epictetus, Discourses, with English translation by W.A. Oldfather, vol. II, Loeb Classical Library, Heinemann, London 1928.
Fee, 7:1	G.D. Fee, 1 Corinthians 7:1 in the NIV, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, vol. 23/4, 1980, pp. 307-314.
Fee	G.D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, The New International Commentary on the New Testament, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids 1987.
Hurd	J.C. Hurd, The Origin of 1 Corinthians, SPCK, London 1965.
James	E.O. James, Marriage and Society, Hutchinson, London 1952.
JB	The Jerusalem Bible, New Testament, Darton, Longman and Todd, London 1967.
Jeremias	J. Jeremias, Zur Gedankenführung in den Paulinischen Briefen, in J.N. Sevenster and W.C. van Unnik (eds.), Studia Paulina, Bohn, Haarlem 1953, pp. 146-154.
Lewis/Reinhold	N. Lewis and M. Reinhold, Roman Civilization, vol. 2, Harper & Row, New York 1966.
Liddell/Scott	H.G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon⁹, Oxford University Press 1940.
Malina	B.J. Malina, The New Testament World, SCM, London 1983.
Moiser	J. Moiser, A Reassessment of Paul’s View of Marriage with Reference to 1 Cor. 7, Journal for the Study of the New Testament, vol. 18, 1983, pp. 103-122.
Moule	C.F.D. Moule, An Idiom Book of New Testament Greek, Cambridge University Press 1953.
Murphy-O’Connor, Slogans	J. Murphy-O’Connor, Corinthian Slogans in 1 Cor 6:12-20, The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, vol. 40, 1978, pp. 391-396.
Murphy-O’Connor, Divorced	J. Murphy-O’Connor, The Divorced Woman in 1 Cor 7:10-11, Journal of Biblical Literature, vol. 100/4, 1981. pp. 601-606.
NASB	New American Standard Bible, 1971, revised 1977.
NEB	The New English Bible, New Testament, Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press 1961.
NIV	The Holy Bible, New International Version³, 1984, anglicised 1986.
Oepke	A. Oepke, article γυνή, TDNT vol. 1, pp. 776 ff.
Phillips	J.B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English², Bles, London 1960.
Phipps	W.E. Phipps, Is Paul’s Attitude Towards Sexual Relations Contained in 1 Cor. 7.1?, New Testament Studies, vol. 28, 1982, pp. 125-131.
RSV	The New Testament, Revised Standard Version², 1971.
TDNT	Kittel and Friedrich (ed.), Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, English translation, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids 1964-1976.
TEV	Good News Bible, Today’s English Version (New Testament⁴) 1976.
TNT	The Translator’s New Testament, British and Foreign Bible Society, London 1973.
Turner	N. Turner, Syntax, volume III of J.H. Moulton, A Grammar of New Testament Greek, T & T Clark, Edinburgh 1963.
UBS³	The Greek New Testament^3(corrected), United Bible Societies, Stuttgart 1983.
Zerwick/Grosvenor	M. Zerwick and M. Grosvenor, A Grammatical Analysis of the Greek New Testament, revised edition, Biblical Institute Press, Rome 1981.

Paul, Sex and Marriage 5: Semantic Analysis of 7:1-16

2006-11-16T18:02:00.000Z

This is part 5 of my 1988 essay What did Paul really say about sex and marriage? 1 Corinthians 7:1-16. The Greek text here is adjusted as in part 3. Not all of the material in this section is of immediate relevance in 2006, but the introductory analysis is significant in proving that Paul treated men and women identically in family matters, and the discussion of 7:1 clarifies some continuing misunderstandings.

5. SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF 7:1-16

The following discussion of the features of semantic interest in this passage is based on a semantic analysis according to the method of Beekman and Callow, with some modifications. The semantic display resulting from this analysis is given in the Appendix. This method of analysis has the advantage over some others of requiring direct semantic relationships between kernel sentences not only to be shown to exist but also to be classified; sometimes a definite classification is impossible because of ambiguity or complexity in the relationship, but the attempt to classify is very helpful in understanding the passage. Additional points of semantic interest not covered by the analysis, such as non-literal language, are also considered in the discussion.

One striking feature about this passage is that men and women are treated completely equally with deliberate parallel passages, as illustrated here:

7:2	...		ἕκαστος	τὴν ἑαυτοῦ γυναῖκα	ἐχέτω
	καὶ		ἑκάστη	τὸν ἴδιον ἄνδρα	ἐχέτω.
7:3				τῇ γυναικὶ
			ὁ ἀνὴρ		τὴν ὀφειλὴν ἀποδιδότω,
ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ			ἡ γυνὴ
				τῷ ἀνδρί.
7:4			ἡ γυνὴ		τοῦ ἰδίου σώματος οὐκ ἐξουσιάζει
		ἀλλὰ		ὁ ἀνήρ,
ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ			ὁ ἀνὴρ		τοῦ ἰδίου σώματος οὐκ ἐξουσιάζει
		ἀλλὰ		ἡ γυνή.
7:2	[...		each (man)	his own woman	should have
	and		each (woman)	her own man	should have.
7:3				to the woman
			the man		should give back the duty,
and in the same way also			the woman
				to the man.
7:4			the woman		does not have authority over her own body
		but		the man,
and in the same way also			the man		does not have authority over his own body
		but		the woman.]

7:8	Λέγω δὲ		τοῖς ἀγάμοις
		καὶ	ταῖς χήραις ...
7:8	[But I say		to the unmarried
		and	to the widows ...]

7:10	...		γυναῖκα	ἀπὸ ἀνδρὸς	μὴ χωρισθῆναι,
7:11	...	καὶ	ἄνδρα	γυναῖκα	μὴ ἀφιέναι.
7:10	[...		woman	from man	not to separate,
7:11	...	and	man	woman	not to divorce.]

7:12	...			εἴ τις ἀδελφὸς
			γυναῖκα ἔχει ἄπιστον
	καὶ		αὕτη
συνευδοκεῖ οἰκεῖν				μετ᾽ αὐτοῦ,
	μὴ ἀφιέτω		αὐτήν·
7:13	καὶ			γυνὴ εἴ τις
			ἔχει ἄνδρα ἄπιστον
	καὶ		οὗτος
συνευδοκεῖ οἰκεῖν				μετ᾽ αὐτῆς,
	μὴ ἀφιέτω		τὸν ἄνδρα.
7:12	[...			if any brother
			has an unbelieving woman
	and		she
is willing to live				with him,
	let him not divorce		her;
7:13	and			if any woman
			has an unbelieving man
	and		he
is willing to live				with her,
	let her not divorce		the man.]

7:14	ἡγίασται γὰρ		ὁ ἀνὴρ ὁ ἄπιστος	ἐν τῇ γυναικί
	καὶ ἡγίασται		ἡ γυνὴ ἡ ἄπιστος	ἐν τῷ ἀδελφῷ·
7:14	[for is sanctified		the unbelieving man	in the woman
	and is sanctified		the unbelieving woman	in the brother;]

7:15	... οὐ δεδούλωται			ὁ ἀδελφὸς
	ἢ			ἡ ἀδελφὴ	ἐν τοῖς τοιούτοις ...
7:15	[... is not bound			the brother
	or			the sister	in such things ...]

7:16	τί γὰρ οἶδας,		γύναι,	εἰ τὸν ἄνδρα	σώσεις;
	ἢ τί οἶδας,		ἄνερ,	εἰ τὴν γυναῖκα	σώσεις;
7:16	[for how do you know,		woman,	if the man	you will save?
	or how do you know,		man,	if the woman	you will save?]

The parallel given in 7:8 will be explained in the discussion below. In obvious contrast to all these parallels stand 7:1b, καλὸν ἀνθρώπῳ γυναικὸς μὴ ἅπτεσθαι [good for a person not to touch a woman], which has no parallel concerning how women should treat men, and 7:7a, θέλω δὲ πάντας ἀνθρώπους εἶναι ὡς καὶ ἐμαυτόν [but I want all people to be as also myself] – which tends to confirm that these are quotations.

7:1

The first four words of this verse are grammatically difficult. Formally the relative pronoun ὧν should refer back to an antecedent, which could only be the preceding passage in general, giving the meaning and concerning these (previously mentioned) things you wrote “It is good ...”; but recognition of Περὶ δὲ [but about] as a discourse marker rules this out. The relative must therefore be taken in the non-classical (but common in the New Testament) sense of that which; περὶ ὧν [about which] stands for περὶ τούτων ἃ [about the things which] (Zerwick and Grosvenor). Since the discourse marker introduces what the author says on a new subject, there must be an implicit I say (cf. λέγω [I say] in 7:6,8) here. Thus the meaning could be Concerning the things which you wrote [I say] … . If the remainder of the verse is not taken as a quotation, this formula must introduce all of Paul’s response to the Corinthians’ letter, which is most of the rest of this letter. This view is not satisfactory, because of the repeated Περὶ δὲ at 7:25. 8:1, 12:1 and 16:1,12, and the earlier use of the Corinthians’ letter, most clearly at 6:12. There is however no difficulty if the latter part of 7:1 is taken as a quotation, for it then indicates a specific subject brought up by the Corinthians with which Paul deals in 7:1-16 (or 7:1-24). The meaning is thus something like Concerning these words, “It is good …”, which you wrote, [I say] … . This is a powerful argument for finding a quotation here. Thus in 7:2 Paul begins the content of what he is saying on the subject raised by the Corinthians’ statement; because he is also taking issue with their statement he introduces it with a strictly unnecessary δὲ.

The last part of 7:1, γυναικὸς μὴ ἅπτεσθαι, literally not to touch a woman, is an example of non-literal language, and one whose meaning is not immediately clear. AV, RSV, NASB, JB translate literally, leaving the reader to decide whether the phrase is metaphorical; but the translator, who should be familiar with first century Greek idioms, is much better able to decide such points than the reader, who might supply a quite inappropriate metaphorical meaning. TNT substitutes an explanation of the euphemism, but its not to have intercourse with a woman is too blunt. Phillips’ to have no physical contact with women is much better, a plausible literal translation which is also an equivalent English euphemism for sexual intercourse. NIV and TEV make explicit an alternative understanding of the metaphor, as not to marry, and NEB has a third understanding, surely too strong: have nothing to do with women. Fee, 7:1 showed that the Greek idiom regularly refers to sexual intercourse, and argued that the NIV translation is an attempt to harmonise with the context on the basis that there is no quotation here. The best translation therefore seems to be that of Fee, not to have relations with a woman.

7:2-4

The first difficulty here is the meaning of διὰ τὰς πορνείας [because of the immoralities]; the problem is that πορνείας is plural. Barrett concludes that the meaning here is cases of sexual immorality, which is quite plausible, but so would be various forms of sexual immorality. The reference is not hypothetical, for at least one case of πορνεία had actually occurred (5:1).

The relationships between these three verses, which follow one another with no conjunctions (asyndeton), are not immediately clear, partly because the husband/wife parallelism obscures the structure. One side of the argument in isolation reads:

7:2	Because of cases of sexual immorality:
		Each man should have his own wife;
7:3		The man should give his wife what he owes her;
7:4		The man does not rule his own body, but his wife rules it;
7:5		Do not deprive one another …

The main clauses in 7:2, in the context, are not to be taken as get married to the single, but as live as married to the already married; this is the general principle which is clarified in the following verses. 7:3 is central as it specifies the application to sexual intercourse, in euphemistic language. 7:4 amplifies the ὀφειλή [duty] of 7:3, explaining the reason for it and leaving no doubt as to its content. The opening of 7:5 is a summary introducing the exception clause.

There is thus a chiasmus in 7:3-4: 7:3 starts with husband-wife, then wife-husband; 7:4 explains first wife-husband and then husband-wife. An oddity emerges from this analysis: if, as Fee believes, the main problem at Corinth was that certain wives were depriving their husbands and driving them to the prostitutes, the most vital of Paul’s points, that each wife must give her husband what she owes him, is the one point which is not spelt out in full; perhaps Paul deliberately lets his readers work out the last step for themselves for greater impact, as he may also be doing in 7:17-24 where the application to marriage is left implicit.

7:5

This is another difficult verse to analyse. The general principle Do not deprive one another is modified by an exception, which is not hypothetical (Fee, p. 281) for the conditions can really be met; rather, it is optional in that the couple may deprive one another if the conditions are met but are under no obligation to meet them. The one condition clause includes four separate conditions: there must be agreement; the arrangement must be temporary, or perhaps for a pre-determined time; the purpose must be prayer; and (equivalently to the second condition) the couple must again be ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτὸ [together], presumably another euphemism for sexual intercourse. The reasons for laying down these conditions, or at least the last one, are to avoid temptation presumably to extra-marital sex. The semantic content of this verse is not difficult to understand if one remains at arm’s length from its grammatical form, which is obscure.

7:6

The question then arises of how 7:6 relates to the preceding verses. The traditional interpretation takes the whole of 7:2-5 as a concession because of cases of sexual immorality (7:2), whereas Paul’s ideal is stated in 7:1b. This is a possible understanding of 7:6, but conflicts with the conclusion that 7:2-4, rather than 7:1, represents Paul’s position. A more likely concession is the clause explicitly identified as such, the exception in 7:5; 7:6 is thus a clarification of εἰ μήτι ἂν [except] pointing out that Paul is not commanding such periods of separation but merely permitting them.

7:7

This verse brings a further difficulty. Introduced by δὲ, or possibly by γὰρ [for] although the textual evidence for this is less good, Paul makes the strong statement I want all people to be as I am, qualified only by the following contrasting clause. As Barrett points out, θέλω [I want] cannot be translated I should like (NEB) or I could wish (Fee, p. 285); indeed, the δὲ may be best understood as contrasting this definite wish with the indefinite concession of 7:5,6. Yet Barrett’s own explanation of 7:7 reads more into this statement than could have been seen by the Corinthians. Two points may help to clarify it. Firstly, this seems to be a quotation from the Corinthians, turned back round to make Paul the speaker; they had perhaps justified their renunciation of sexual relations by writing You said you wanted all of us to be like you, and you are celibate. Secondly, the similarity must be noted between this and the repeated Become imitators of me (4:16, 11:1) which forms an inclusio around this part of the letter; here Paul shows the limits of such imitation with the contrasting clause about different gifts, which applies not only in the area of sexual relationships, as chapter 12 beings out. The verse can perhaps be paraphrased as follows: But this, as you wrote, I do want for everyone of you, that you become like me, imitators of me – not identical to me, for each of you has his own gift … .

In the last part of the verse, it should be noted that the pairing is οὕτως … οὕτως [thus ... thus], not τοῦτο … τοῦτο [this ... this]; the reference is not directly to different gifts (contra NIV) but to different ways of living, parallelling ὡς καὶ ἐμαυτόν [as also myself]. The word χάρισμα [gift] here need not be taken as a technical term for a spiritual gift; rather it is what God graciously gives (χαρίζομαι) or assigns to each man, to live in his own individual way – a message expanded in 7:17-24.

7:8,9

These verses are comparatively straightforward to analyse. Fee argues from contemporary usage that the ἀγάμοι [unmarried ones] of verse 8 are widowers, as Paul himself probably was, rather than those never married. This certainly fits better with the man-woman parallelism of these verses; it also distinguishes this passage from 7:25 ff. and reduces the tension with 7:2. It should certainly not be assumed from its etymology that ἄγαμος is equivalent to unmarried. The first part of verse 9 is grammatically a condition, but semantically it serves to identify those who should get married, being equivalent to οἱ μὴ ἐγκρατευόμενοι [those who are not controlled].

In 7:9, πυροῦσθαι [to burn] is a clear example of non-literal language. AV and NASB translate literally as burn; no doubt some have misunderstood this literally as referring to martyrdom (cf. 13:3, AV, NASB ?), as perhaps they have JB be tortured. The word could be a reference to judgment and punishment in the fires of hell – which are surely metaphorical – but, as Fee argues from the wide context, a more likely metaphorical meaning is in this case the one chosen by NIV and TEV (cf. also RSV, NEB, TNT, Phillips): burn with passion, i.e. sexual desire. This desire was hardly unsatisfied (Phillips), for οὐκ ἐγκρατεύονται [they are not controlled], in the present indicative, implies that they were already satisfying it.

7:10,11

7:10, as punctuated in UBS³ and translated in NIV, RSV etc., opens with a contradiction: I command … not I; for not I but the Lord is taken as a parenthesis. The Greek could be taken instead as I do not command, but the Lord commands, taking ἐγώ [I] as the subject of παραγγέλλω [(I) command] and supplying an implied παραγγέλλει [(he) commands]; this avoids any contradiction and maintains the parallel with the opening of 7:12 if, as in UBS³ but not in NIV, I, not the Lord is not parenthetic there. In any case the meaning is little affected: Paul appeals to the authority of the Lord Jesus for these instructions.

The man-woman parallelism is broken in two ways in these verses. Firstly, the instruction to the woman is μὴ χωρισθῆναι, do not become separated, but that to the man is μὴ ἀφιέναι, do not divorce. In the cultural context there may have been a technical distinction between what was possible for a man and for a woman (although in 7:13 μὴ ἀφιέτω [let her not divorce] is addressed to a woman), but in view of the perfect parallels elsewhere it seems certain that Paul intended men and women to be treated as nearly as possible equally. Thus it is inappropriate to make a distinction in applying this passage in a modern culture in which men and women are equal with regard to divorce. Secondly, the prohibition of remarriage for those who have, despite Paul’s instructions, divorced is given explicitly only to woman, but Paul presumably intended it to apply equally to divorced men. The clause ἐὰν δὲ καὶ χωρισθῇ [but if she also divorces], like the first clause in 7:9, identifies the subject of the following clause, but ἐὰν [if] with the subjunctive indicates uncertainty: the situation might not, and should not, arise.

7:12,13

These verses are relatively straightforward in themselves, although their relationship to the following verses is obscure. It is not immediately clear who οἱ λοιποῖ [the rest] are; they must be those not included in 7:8 or 7:10, but the content of Paul’s instructions shows that they are those married to unbelieving partners. Thus οἱ γεγαμηκότες [the married (ones)] of 7:10 must be the married couples who were both within the church; and if 7:8 is indeed addressed only to the widowed Paul is postponing his instructions to those never married until 7:25. The indefinite conditional clauses εἴ τις ἀδελφὸς … [if any brother ...] and γυνὴ εἴ τις … [if any woman ...] again serve to identify specific classes of man and woman and are not true conditions. 7:12 is the beginning of a complex multiple chiasmus stretching to the middle of 7:14, as is shown by the terms used for men and women: ἀδελφὸς ... γυναῖκα ... γυνὴ ... ἄνδρα ... ἄνδρα ... ἀνὴρ ... γυναικί ... γυνὴ ... ἀδελφῷ [brother ... woman ... woman ... man ... man ... man ... woman ... woman ... brother] (italics mark the unbelieving partners).

7:14

The first half of this verse is very difficult theologically, since its teaching seems to conflict with the rest of Paul’s theology. Semantically it is not so difficult in itself. Ἡγίασται [is sanctified] is presumably a divine passive; it is God who has caused the change, through the believing partner. The easiest solution to the theological problem is the semantic one of taking ἅγιος [holy] and ἁγιάζω [sanctify] here in quite a different sense to Paul’s normal usage, a sense determined rather by the context, but it is difficult to find such a sense that does justice to the word’s important place in the argument. For Paul here is giving the reason for his prohibition of divorce in 7:12,13: God has caused a real change in the husband, despite his unbelief, so that he and the children of the marriage, although they too might not believe, are in some sense holy and are not to be rejected as unholy or defiled – and similarly for the wife. Thus ἄπιστος [unbelieving], twice in this verse, is a contraction of a concessive clause although he/she does not believe.

The second half of the verse is difficult to analyse, if not to understand. It is linked equally to both of the preceding statements, about husband and wife. The words ἐπεὶ ἄρα illustrate the danger of treating New Testament Greek as if it were Classical Greek: Liddell and Scott give the meaning since then, quoting Homer as their example, but that cannot be the sense here. A synchronic study of Paul’s use of ἐπεί gives a different picture: several times (Romans 3:6, 11:6,22, 1 Corinthians 5:10,7:14, 14:26, 15:29 - see Bauer on ἐπεί, Turner, p. 318, and Zerwick and Grosvenor on these verses) he uses it in the sense of otherwise, i.e. [if that were not the case] then. Here one must supply the double condition if the unbelieving husband or the unbelieving wife were not holy, a condition contrary to the fact as already stated, although this is not indicated in the consequence clause. This is introduced to highlight the significance of the last clause, the climax of the verse, which is the result or perhaps the purpose of the unbelieving partners being made holy.

7:15

This verse, which concerns the unbelieving partner who wishes to separate from the believer, provides the contrast to the preceding three verses concerning the unbeliever who wishes to remain married. Since this letter is not addressed to the unbelievers, the imperative χωριζέσθω [let him/her separate], grammatically addressed to the unbeliever, is semantically addressed to the believing partner; the English let him do so (NIV) is to be taken in its more basic sense allow him to do so. The believer must therefore accept that the marriage is truly terminated; this is underlined by οὐ δεδούλωται [is not enslaved], a metaphor since there is no question of literal slavery, and a significant one because it introduces the analogy between marriage and slavery which probably underlies 7:21-23. Since in the cultural context and therefore in the presupposition pool legal divorce automatically conferred the right of remarriage (Murphy-O’Connor, Divorced, p. 604), Paul surely intended to allow remarriage in this case of a believer divorced by an unbeliever; the contrast with 7:11 concerning two believers must be deliberate, and Fee’s argument that remarriage is not permitted (pp. 302-303) does not stand.

Most English translations (NIV, AV, RSV, NASB, NEB, JB; also the punctuation of UBS³) connect the last clause of this verse to the preceding clauses, making a major division at the end of the verse; but it is then difficult to explain the δὲ at the start of the clause: RSV appears to mistranslate it as for, and NIV, TEV, JB suggest this nuance, whereas the translations which retain but (AV,NASB,NEB) scarcely make sense. Fee argues that this clause is to be taken instead with the following verse, as in Phillips’ translation; together they give a further reason, in addition to that of 7:14,15, for the couple to remain together if possible. This analysis also makes more sense of the link between this clause and 7:17-24, in which the term κέκληκεν [has called], introduced here without explanation, is interpreted and linked back to the subject of marriage; this link would be much more awkward if 7:16 reverted to another subject.

7:16

This final verse on marriage between believers and unbelievers consists of two rhetorical questions. Formally, how do you know …? is equivalent to you do not know … , but to reduce the text to that, as a semantic analysis must do, is to lose the thrust of Paul’s style, here giving a last point to ponder for anyone who is considering divorce from an unbeliever. Paul distinguishes σῴζω [save], which for the unbeliever is future and uncertain, from ἁγιάζω [sanctify], which for the same person is past with continuing effects (7:14); the precise nature of the distinction is a theological difficulty which can only be answered by reference to Paul’s teaching elsewhere. Here, as in 9:22, Romans 11:14 and 1 Timothy 4:16 (the only cases in the Pauline letters), σῴζω [save] is given a human grammatical subject, but all these passages are rhetorical, and as with ἁγιάζω [sanctify] in 7:14 Paul surely sees the true subject as God and the human as the means he uses.

Paul, Sex and Marriage 4: Discourse Structure of 1 Corinthians

2006-11-14T14:17:00.000Z

This is part 4 of my 1988 essay What did Paul really say about sex and marriage? 1 Corinthians 7:1-16. The Greek text here is adjusted as in part 3.

This in fact concludes the part of the essay which is most likely to be of interest to readers in 2006. So, while I do intend to complete this series (as well as my unfinished series on Kingdom Thermodynamics), I may do so rather more slowly than up to this point.

4. DISCOURSE STRUCTURE OF 1 CORINTHIANS

A further requirement for a correct linguistic understanding of the passage is to determine its relationship to the surrounding material, the co-text, within the structure of the complete discourse, in this case the whole of 1 Corinthians. Therefore, an analysis of the main discourse components in the whole letter is necessary, and it must be based on linguistic criteria, rather than the theological presuppositions which often determine commentators’ analyses.

4.1. The Traditional Understanding

It is generally agreed by commentators that much of 1 Corinthians is a response by Paul to issues brought up in the letter sent to him by the Corinthians – although some of the issues he deals with came to his notice through other reports from Corinth (e.g. 1:11). The traditional view, expressed by Hurd (p. 48), is that 7:1 introduces the answers to a series of questions which the Corinthians had asked Paul in their letter, and indeed that most of the material from 7:1 to 16:12 is in answer to specific questions. By contrast, 1:10 to 6:20 is generally taken (e.g. by Barrett, p. 28) as written in response to the other reports.

Fee questions this standard view. He sees the combative style of the supposed replies as showing that Paul is not answering their questions but challenging their statements (pp. 5-6). This accords with the conclusion of Jeremias, originally on chapter 8 but also applying in chapters 6 and 7, that Paul repeatedly quotes a statement from the Corinthians and then takes issue with it.

In every commentator’s analysis, it seems, a new main section starts at 7:1, indicating the start of Paul’s replies to the Corinthian questions; some make an equally important division at 5:1. It would be necessary to take 7:1 as such an important new start if the second part of the verse were not a quotation from the Corinthian letter, for then the first part would refer to every matter raised in that letter, including those dealt with in the chapters following chapter 7. But if it is indeed a quotation, the second part serves to specify as the subject of the section starting at 7:1 one particular issue amongst those raised by the Corinthians, the issue of sexual relations; and Paul’s response to this issue does not continue beyond the end of chapter 7.

Although he rejects most of its basis, Fee sticks to the most extreme form of the traditional analysis, in which the section starting at 7:1 continues right through to 15:12. His most important argument for keeping to this analysis is based on the repeated opening phrase Περὶ δὲ [But about], found at 7:1,25, 8:1, 12:1, 16:1,12, which he takes as introducing some, but not all, of Paul’s responses to the Corinthians’ points (p. 267). Yet Fee recognises the close affinity between 6:12-20 and chapter 7, and that already at 6:12 Paul quotes and corrects a Corinthian position (p. 250 note 8); but he relegates this important point to a footnote and does not let it affect his overall analysis.

4.2. Major Discourse Markers

The main linguistic criterion for analysis of this letter is the occurrence in it of discourse markers, such as recurring introductory formulae.

The formula Παρακαλῶ δὲ ὑμᾶς, ἀδελφοί [But I encourage you, brothers], found in 1 Corinthians at 1:10. 4:16 (modified) and 16:15, is recognised as a commonly occurring introductory formula in Greek letters and official documents (see Fee, p. 52). It is found in Paul’s letters also in 1 Thessalonians 4:1,10, 5:14, where it is used to introduce three of a series of six mostly ethical exhortations; there, the fullest form Λοιπὸν οὖν, ἀδελφοί, ἐρωτῶμεν ὑμᾶς καὶ παρακαλοῦμεν [Then finally, brothers, I ask and encourage you] is found introducing the first exhortation (4:1), and the other five are introduced by various abbreviated forms including Οὐ θέλομεν δὲ ὑμᾶς ἀγνοεῖν, ἀδελφοί, περὶ [But I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, about] (4:13, cf. 1 Corinthians 10:1, 12:1), and, most briefly, Περὶ δὲ [But about] (5:1). It can be concluded that similarly in 1 Corinthians the fullest formula is a high level discourse marker and the shorter forms are lower level markers.

According to the traditional analysis of 1 Corinthians, the formula at 1:10 introduces a new main division of the letter – as indeed it must do since it follows the conventional thanksgiving which opens the letter. The occurrences of the same formula at 4:16 and at 16:15 are not generally recognised as of equivalent importance, but linguistic considerations suggest that they should be. There is some difficulty about making a division at 4:16 because the οὖν [therefore] looks backwards. A better understanding of this division can be obtained by looking at the subject matter of the section starting at 1:10, an exhortation that you all agree, and there be no divisions among you (1:10, NASB); this subject is carried through, with a digression on wisdom, at least to 3:23, and there then follows a practical conclusion (4:1-5a) and a brief doxology (4:5b), a conventional closing discourse marker. Thus the main division is at 4:6, which is the start of a link passage stretching to 4:15, taken up by the οὖν [therefore] of 4:16.

The exhortation of 4:16 has as its content μιμηταί μου γίνεσθε [become imitators of me], which forms an inclusio with the identical statement in 11:1, which is rounded off by καθὼς κἀγὼ Χριστοῦ [as also I of Christ]. There is little unity in the subject matter of 4:16-11:1, but its unity as a discourse component can be defended by its distinctness from the preceding and succeeding long sections, on divisions and on worship respectively, as well as from the discourse markers; the material is also united in being dominated by ethical exhortations on immorality and on idolatry, always closely linked in the New Testament.

At 11:2 a new section begins with an ironical pun, all the more striking if it is based on a quotation from the Corinthians’ letter. In view of the preceding verse, the praise which Paul would have preferred to have been able to give was πάντα μου μεμίμησθε, you have imitated me in all things; but instead he uses the very similar words πάντα μου μέμνησθε, you have remembered me in all things - somewhat fainter praise. He continues the irony with the double-edged word κατέχω, which can have the meaning as in Romans 1:18 of suppress rather than hold to. This introduces the new section, whose subject is τὰς παραδόσεις κατέχετε [you hold to/suppress the traditions], in both senses: received practices are in view in chapters 11-14, 16 and received teaching in chapter 15. The section closes at 16:13,14 with a summary. 16:15-18 is a brief final exhortation, again introduced by the standard discourse marker, and the letter closes with final greetings.

4.3. Immorality, Idolatry and Other Evils

The section from 4:16 to 11:1 can be analysed further by consideration of the discourse markers. 6:12 marks an abrupt new start: the quotation from the Corinthians is brought in with no conjunction – asyndeton, relatively uncommon in Greek. This verse matches 10:23, and can be taken as paired with it to form an inclusio, so that 6:12 to 10:23 becomes a section on its own. It serves to confirm this that all the quotations already identified from the Corinthian letter with which Paul takes issue are found within this inclusio. 10:24-33 is a closing summary with specific practical instructions, omitted earlier perhaps to avoid confusion with general principles. An inclusio can also be discerned marking off 4:18 to 6:11 as a separate section, for it begins and ends on the subject of the kingdom of God – not a frequent theme in Paul’s writings.

Furthermore, the sections 4:18-6:11 and 6:12-10:23 are linked in that the latter takes up the list of evils with which the former ends, in 6:9,10. In 6:12-20 Paul expands on his reminder to the Corinthians not to be πόρνοι [immoral people]; in 8:1-13 and 10:14-22 they are not to be εἰδωλολάτραι [idolaters]; in 7:1-40 not μοιχοί [idolaters]; 9:1-27 perhaps reminds them not to be λοίδοροι [slanderers]; πλεονέκται [greedy people] and μέθυσοι [drunkards] are considered later, in 11:21,33-34. Homosexuality and theft are not dealt with explicitly, but Paul hints at the latter in chapter 9 and possibly the former in 11:2-16. There is another list of vices in 10:7-10; the first two are clearly those dealt with in chapter 8 and in 6:12-7:40 respectively, and the last two probably relate to chapter 9. Thus Immorality, Idolatry and Other Evils would be an appropriate title for 6:12-10:23.

4.4. Chapter 7 in the Discourse

Within the inclusio of 6:12-10:23 the clearest discourse marker is the repeated introductory formula Περὶ δὲ [But about], found at 7:1,25, 8:1. An important conclusion from the analysis already made is that the first of these markers should not be taken, despite the traditional commentators’ analysis, to have a special status as marking the start of a primary division of the letter. From the start of chapter 9 the situation becomes more complex, and will not be considered here. 7:17-24 is somewhat anomalous: it is a unit in itself, with the repeated ἕκαστος [each] (7:17,20,24) giving a general principle which is illustrated by two pairs of examples; it is linked back to the advice of 7:8-16, and especially the appeal for peace on the basis of the Christian calling in 7:15; but its principles are applied in 7:25-40. Therefore it seems best to take chapter 7 as three discourse elements, 7:1-16, 7:17-24 and 7:25-40. The first and the last of these are separate elements and should be treated as such, although much of the subject matter is in common, and one can reasonably expect a consistent treatment of it within this small part of the letter, in addition to conformity in both sections to the general principles of 7:17-24. Only the first of these elements is considered further in this essay.

4.5. Concluding Observations

The above discourse analysis of 1 Corinthians, using linguistic criteria alone, is very different from the traditional commentators’ analysis. Only if the evidence for a new analysis were overwhelming could one expect such a widely held traditional view to be overturned. This essay does not claim to provide the required conclusive evidence, but only to suggest the alternative as worthy of further consideration. The final conclusions in Section 6 are not greatly affected by the choice of analysis, except on the one point assumed, and agreed by Fee, that the Περὶ δὲ [But about] formula of 7:1 serves to introduce only part of chapter 7 and not the majority of the letter.

Paul, Sex and Marriage 3: The Letter from the Corinthians and Paul’s response

2006-11-13T16:51:00.000Z

This is part 3 of my 1988 essay What did Paul really say about sex and marriage? 1 Corinthians 7:1-16. The Greek text here is fully accented, although in the original essay accents were omitted for technical reasons. For the benefit of the many of you, my readers, who don't know Greek, I have added (in square brackets) my own rather literal translations; with their help you can probably understand most of my argument.

3. THE LETTER FROM THE CORINTHIANS AND PAUL’S RESPONSE

3.1. Acknowledged Quotations

Modern commentators generally agree that 1 Corinthians incorporates quotations from the letter of the Corinthians to Paul, to which Paul is writing in part in response. Hurd surveyed 24 studies before 1965, and found eight widely accepted quotations and one doubtful one (pp. 67-68). Sometimes commentators choose to find quotations as a way to avoid theological difficulties; the study by the well-known New Testament scholar Jeremias has special value because he limits himself to linguistic arguments and, from the point of view of the student of chapter 7, because he is not concerned with explaining this chapter but rather finds quotations in it as a by-product of his study of chapter 8.

The widely accepted quotations (Hurd’s list with the addition of 7:26, which he elsewhere suggests as a statement of the Corinthians’ position (p. 179)) are as follows:

6:12	BFHJ	πάντα μοι ἔξεστιν ... πάντα μοι ἔξεστιν	[all things are permissible to me ... all things are permissible to me]
6:13	bFHJ	τὰ βρώματα τῇ κοιλίᾳ καὶ ἡ κοιλία τοῖς βρώμασιν,	[the foods for the stomach and the stomach for the foods]
	? bf	ὁ δὲ θεὸς καὶ ταύτην καὶ ταῦτα καταργήσει	[but God will destroy both these and these]

6:18	?bfh	πᾶν ἁμάρτημα ὃ ἐὰν ποιήσῃ ἄνθρωπος ἐκτὸς τοῦ σώματός ἐστιν	[every sin which a person (anthropos) might do is outside the body]

7:1	BFHJ	καλὸν ἀνθρώπῳ γυναικὸς μὴ ἅπτεσθαι	[good for a person (anthropos) not to touch a woman]

7:26	BFhJ	τοῦτο καλὸν ὑπάρχειν ... καλὸν ἀνθρώπῳ τὸ οὕτως εἶναι	[this to be good ... good for a person (anthropos) to be like this]

8:1	BFHJ	πάντες γνῶσιν ἔχομεν	[we all have knowledge]

8:4	BFHJ	οὐδὲν εἴδωλον ἐν κόσμῳ ... οὐδεὶς θεὸς εἰ μὴ εἷς	[nothing an idol in the world ... no one a God if not one]
8:5,6	? bH	εἴπερ εἰσὶν λεγόμενοι θεοὶ εἴτε ἐν οὐρανῷ εἴτε ἐπὶ γῆς, ὥσπερ εἰσὶν θεοὶ πολλοὶ καὶ κύριοι πολλοί, ἀλλ᾽ ἡμῖν εἷς θεὸς ὁ πατήρ ἐξ οὗ τὰ πάντα καὶ ἡμεῖς εἰς αὐτόν, καὶ εἷς κύριος Ἰησοῦς Χριστός δι᾽ οὗ τὰ πάντα καὶ ἡμεῖς δι᾽ αὐτοῦ	[if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many "gods" and many "lords"), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live. (TNIV)]

8:8	BFHJ	βρῶμα ... ἡμᾶς οὐ παραστήσει τῷ θεῷ,	[food ... will not present us to God]
	FHj	οὔτε ἐὰν μὴ φάγωμεν ὑστερούμεθα, οὔτε ἐὰν φάγωμεν περισσεύομεν	[neither if we do not eat do we lack, nor if we eat do we abound]

10:23	BFHJ	πάντα ἔξεστιν ... πάντα ἔξεστιν	[all things are permissible ... all things are permissible]

11:2	BfH	πάντα μου μέμνησθε καὶ, καθὼς παρέδωκα ὑμῖν, τὰς παραδόσεις κατέχετε	[in everything you remember me and, as I passed on to you, you hold the traditions]

Italics indicate probable alterations to the Corinthians’ text. B, F, H and J indicate that quotations are acknowledged by Barrett, Fee, Hurd and Jeremias respectively; lower case letters are used where these authors are uncertain. Jeremias does not consider every passage. For the purposes of this essay it will be assumed that these passages are indeed quotations from the Corinthians; the ones indicated with question marks will be considered uncertain.

3.2. Linguistic characteristics

Even in the limited amount of quoted material already identified some unifying linguistic characteristics can be found.

The first to be considered is the use of καλός [good]. This word occurs 39 times in the Pauline letters, but only four times is the neuter καλόν used with the dative, indicating what is good for someone to do; all four are in 1 Corinthians, three in chapter 7 and two in the quotations already identified, 7:1,26. It seems clear therefore that καλόν with the dative was a Corinthian idiom. Thus καλὸν αὐτοῖς ἐὰν μείνωσιν ὡς κἀγώ [good for them if they remain as also me] in 7:8 is most probably a further adapted quotation from the Corinthian letter; in 9:15 Paul echoes their language in καλὸν ... μοι [good ... for me].

A second characteristic is the use of ἄνθρωπος [person (anthropos)] in both 7:1 and 7:26 for man as opposed to woman, where ἀνήρ [man (aner)] is normally expected. These are the only unambiguous examples in Pauline writing of this use, except in Ephesians 5:31 where Genesis 2:24 is quoted. This provides added evidence that there is a quotation in 6:18, for in context the ἄνθρωπος in this verse is probably male. The similar use of ἄνθρωπος in 7:7, contrasting with the regular pairing of references to men and women in 7:1-16, strongly suggests that here also there is an adapted quotation from the Corinthians: θέλω δὲ πάντας ἀνθρώπους εἶναι ὡς καὶ ἐμαυτόν [but I want all people (anthropos) to be as also myself]. The similarity of this to καλὸν ἀνθρώπῳ τὸ οὕτως εἶναι [good for a person (anthropos) to be like this] in the acknowledged quotation of 7:26 is more evidence for this further quotation.

Another remarkably common word in the acknowledged quotations is πάντα [all things], occurring seven times (although four are in the repeated quotation πάντα ἔξεστιν [all things are permissible]), with other forms of πᾶς [all] occurring twice, and again in 7:7. It is difficult to conclude much from such a generally common word, but it is especially common in 1 Corinthians in comparison to Paul’s other letters (used as a pronoun 38 times in this letter and only 55 times in all the others), and therefore it does seem to have been something of a Corinthian catch-word.

3.3. Paul’s Responses to the Corinthians’ Points

Jeremias concluded that in the case of each of the quotations in chapter 8, Paul quotes a statement from the Corinthians and then takes issue with it. This seems to apply equally to all of the quotations identified, except for 11:2, which has a different character and purpose from the others. Paul’s responses are as follows, in bold print:

6:12		πάντα μοι ἔξεστιν ἀλλ᾽ οὐ πάντα συμφέρει·	[all things are permissible for me but not all things benefit;
		πάντα μοι ἔξεστιν ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐγὼ ἐξουσιασθήσομαι ὑπό τινος.	all things are permissible for me but I will not be mastered by anything.]

6:13		τὰ βρώματα τῇ κοιλίᾳ καὶ ἡ κοιλία τοῖς βρώμασιν,	[the foods for the stomach and the stomach for the foods,
	?	ὁ δὲ θεὸς καὶ ταύτην καὶ ταῦτα καταργήσει.	but God will destroy both these and these.
		τὸ δὲ σῶμα οὐ τῇ πορνείᾳ ἀλλὰ τῷ κυρίῳ, καὶ ὁ κύριος τῷ σώματι·	But the body not for immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body;
6:14		ὁ δὲ θεὸς καὶ τὸν κύριον ἤγειρεν καὶ ἡμᾶς ἐξεγερεῖ ...	but God both raised the Lord and will raise us out ...]

6:18	?	πᾶν ἁμάρτημα ὃ ἐὰν ποιήσῃ ἄνθρωπος ἐκτὸς τοῦ σώματός ἐστιν·	[every sin which a person might do is outside the body;
		ὁ δὲ πορνεύων εἰς τὸ ἴδιον σῶμα ἁμαρτάνει.	but the one doing immorality sins against his/her own body.]

7:1		Περὶ δὲ ὧν ἐγράψατε, καλὸν ἀνθρώπῳ γυναικὸς μὴ ἅπτεσθαι·	[Now about the things you wrote, good for a person not to touch a woman;
7:2		διὰ δὲ τὰς πορνείας ἕκαστος τὴν ἑαυτοῦ γυναῖκα ἐχέτω ...	but because of immmoralities each (man) should have his own wife ...]

7:7		θέλω δὲ πάντας ἀνθρώπους εἶναι ὡς καὶ ἐμαυτόν·	[but I want all people to be as also myself;
		ἀλλὰ ἕκαστος ἴδιον ἔχει χάρισμα ἐκ θεοῦ, ὁ μὲν οὕτως, ὁ δὲ οὕτως.	but each has his/her own gift from God, one like this, but another like this.]

7:8		... καλὸν αὐτοῖς ἐὰν μείνωσιν ὡς κἀγώ·	[... good for them if they remain as also me;
7:9		εἰ δὲ οὐκ ἐγκρατεύονται, γαμησάτωσαν, κρεῖττον γάρ ἐστιν γαμῆσαι ἢ πυροῦσθαι.	but if they are not controlled, let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn.]

7:25		Περὶ δὲ τῶν παρθένων ...	[Now about the virgins ...
7:26		Νομίζω οὖν τοῦτο καλὸν ὑπάρχειν ... ὅτι καλὸν ἀνθρώπῳ τὸ οὕτως εἶναι ...	Therefore I consider this to be good ... that good for a person to be like this ...
7:28		ἐὰν δὲ καὶ γαμήσῃς, οὐχ ἥμαρτες· καὶ ἐὰν γήμῃ ἡ παρθένος, οὐχ ἥμαρτεν ...	but if you also marry, you did not sin; and if the virgin marries, she did not sin ...]

8:1		Περὶ δὲ τῶν εἰδωλοθύτων, οἴδαμεν ὅτι πάντες γνῶσιν ἔχομεν.	[Now about the idol-sacrificed things, we know that we all have knowledge.
		ἡ γνῶσις φυσιοῖ, ἡ δὲ ἀγάπη οἰκοδομεῖ ...	Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up ...]

8:4		Περὶ τῆς βρώσεως οὖν τῶν εἰδωλοθύτων, οἴδαμεν ὅτι	[So then, about the food sacrificed to idols: we know that
		οὐδὲν εἴδωλον ἐν κόσμῳ, καὶ ὅτι οὐδεὶς θεὸς εἰ μὴ εἷς.	"An idol is nothing at all in the world" and that "There is no God but one."
8:5	?	καὶ γὰρ εἴπερ εἰσὶν λεγόμενοι θεοὶ εἴτε ἐν οὐρανῷ εἴτε ἐπὶ γῆς, ὥσπερ εἰσὶν θεοὶ πολλοὶ καὶ κύριοι πολλοί,	For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many "gods" and many "lords"),
8:6	?	ἀλλ᾽ ἡμῖν εἷς θεὸς ὁ πατήρ ἐξ οὗ τὰ πάντα καὶ ἡμεῖς εἰς αὐτόν, καὶ εἷς κύριος Ἰησοῦς Χριστός δι᾽ οὗ τὰ πάντα καὶ ἡμεῖς δι᾽ αὐτοῦ.	yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.
8:7		Ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐν πᾶσιν ἡ γνῶσις· τινὲς δὲ τῇ συνηθείᾳ ἕως ἄρτι τοῦ εἰδώλου ὡς εἰδωλόθυτον ἐσθίουσιν, καὶ ἡ συνείδησις αὐτῶν ἀσθενὴς οὖσα μολύνεται.	But not everyone possesses this knowledge. Some people are still so accustomed to idols that when they eat sacrificial food they think of it as having been sacrificed to a god, and since their conscience is weak, it is defiled. (TNIV)]

8:8		βρῶμα δὲ ἡμᾶς οὐ παραστήσει τῷ θεῷ,	[but food will not present us to God,
		οὔτε ἐὰν μὴ φάγωμεν ὑστερούμεθα, οὔτε ἐὰν φάγωμεν περισσεύομεν	neither if we do not eat do we lack, nor if we eat do we abound
8:9		βλέπετε δὲ μή πως ἡ ἐξουσία ὑμῶν αὕτη πρόσκομμα γένηται τοῖς ἀσθενέσιν ...	but look lest somehow your authority itself becomes a stumbling-block for the weak ...]

10:23		πάντα ἔξεστιν ἀλλ᾽ οὐ πάντα συμφέρει·	[all things are permissible but not all things benefit;
		πάντα ἔξεστιν ἀλλ᾽ οὐ πάντα οἰκοδομεῖ.	all things are permissible but not all things build up.]

Several of Paul’s responses begin with ἀλλ᾽ οὐ πάντα [but not all things] or ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐν πᾶσιν [but not in everyone]; with these Paul gives qualified assent to the Corinthian statement but points out restrictions on its validity; the response in 7:7 is semantically similar. Most of the other responses begin with δὲ [and/but], which most commonly has a mild adversative force; again it would seem that Paul is giving his own more balanced statement without completely rejecting the Corinthians’ view – no doubt his language would have been more forceful and explicit, as at 6:15-18a, if he had wished to do so. In 6:13-14, the contrasts are complex: the strongest one is οὐ τῇ πορνείᾳ ἀλλὰ τῷ κυρίῳ [not for immorality but for the Lord], but Paul is making his point through a weaker contrast, in which he affirms the Corinthians’ slogan about food and the stomach but rejects their implied – or perhaps explicit in their letter – extension of the same principle to sexual behaviour.

In 8:1 there is no immediate δὲ, for Paul starts his response with a consequence of the Corinthian position, not using a conjunction, before using δὲ to introduce his own mildly contrasting position. In 8:5,6 there is again an interlude explaining the Corinthian position, here perhaps in their own words and introduced with καὶ γὰρ [for also], before Paul expresses his main point of response to 8:4 in 8:7. In 7:25-28 there is a similar structure, it seems: 7:27, with no conjunction, gives specific cases of the Corinthian position, before Paul gives his own mildly contrasting position in 7:28 (for in the second part of the verse Paul shows that he is not totally rejecting the Corinthian view). 7:27 seems to be in Paul’s words, not the Corinthians’, for it is very similar to 7:18,21, and that confirms that Paul is in agreement. Thus Paul is not rejecting what the Corinthians had said, but is putting it in perspective, as advice in the present situation rather than a command the breaking of which would be a sin.

Paul, Sex and Marriage 2: The Presupposition Pool

2006-11-12T23:26:00.000Z

This is part 2 of my 1988 essay What did Paul really say about sex and marriage? 1 Corinthians 7:1-16.

2. THE PRESUPPOSITION POOL

For a correct understanding of the passage it is necessary to determine the presuppositions shared by Paul and the Corinthian recipients of the letter. This presupposition pool is in two parts. Firstly, Paul and the recipients shared a common Hellenistic culture, although combined with disparate non-Greek influences, Roman at Corinth and Jewish for Paul; thus a certain shared understanding of marriage and sexual relations could be assumed by Paul as he wrote. Secondly, this letter is not the first contact between Paul and the Corinthians – Paul had spent eighteen months in the city (Acts 18:11), founding and establishing the church there, and he had sent at least one previous letter to the Corinthians (5:9) and had received at least one from them (7:1) – and Paul could presuppose at least some memory and understanding of what had been said and done previously.

2.1. Cultural Presuppositions

The city of Corinth, abandoned for a century, had been refounded in 44 B.C. as a Roman colony. It was repopulated initially by Italians, but as it grew rapidly it attracted settlers, and therefore cultural influences, from all over the Empire. The church, to which this letter is addressed, had attracted a broad cross-section of the community, it seems from the limited evidence; some of the believers had a Jewish background, and some had Latin names, but much in the letter points to a predominantly Greek readership. The relevant cultural presuppositions are therefore neither Jewish ones nor specifically Roman ones, but those of the Hellenistic cultural mix which dominated the eastern half of the Empire.

Collins argues that singleness was very rare in Hellenistic culture, pointing to laws of Augustus penalising unmarried Roman citizens. They were more highly taxed and were forbidden to inherit; the purpose was to increase the birth rate (see Lewis and Reinhold, pp. 47-52). Yet there was widespread evasion and opposition to these laws: Tacitus wrote that people were not driven thereby to marriage and the rearing of children in any great numbers, so powerful were the attractions of the childless state (Annals III.xxv, quoted by Lewis and Reinhold, p. 50). Thus the laws are in fact evidence that singleness was known and culturally acceptable. Confirmation of this comes from the Stoics. Musonius, a contemporary of Paul, and his pupil Epictetus agreed that marriage is a duty for most men but that for a few in special circumstances it is not advantageous as it can distract from higher pursuits (Balch, pp. 433-434). Epictetus condemned as subversive of the state, destructive of the family the teaching that people ought not to marry (III.vii, p. 55). Thus this teaching was known; and the general Hellenistic attitude was far from that of the Jewish rabbis: He who has no wife is not a proper man (quoted by Collins, p. 424).

Divorce was certainly easy, at least for the husband, and was very common, so that some men and women had several partners in turn (Oepke, pp. 779-780). Sexual relations outside marriage were also more-or-less acceptable, again at least for the man, who could take a concubine or go to prostitutes. These cultural presuppositions were clearly challenged by Paul’s teaching; yet his views on them have precedents in the teaching of pagan philosophers as well as of Jews. Remarriage was considered generally desirable for the widowed and for the divorced; indeed the laws of Augustus sought to enforce remarriage of women after a suitable interval. There were few suggestions that remarriage was improper in either case.

2.2. Presuppositions from Previous Contact

Paul should have been able to presuppose that the Corinthians understood the basic Christian teaching he had given them. But he had already found that in fact he could not do this, for they were still mere infants in Christ … not yet ready for solid food, more advanced teaching (3:1,2). In continuing to give them milk in this letter he surely avoided assuming understanding of his previous teaching, whether given during his stay in Corinth or in the earlier letter which they had so seriously misunderstood (5:9,10). Paul did speak of specific personal circumstances, of which a common knowledge could be presupposed, in 1 Corinthians (e.g. 5:1-5), but this is unlikely to be a factor in chapter 7, with its very general language.

Therefore the only important shared presuppositions from previous contact were those relating to the letter Paul had received from the Corinthians (7:1). The basic point is that Paul could presuppose that the Corinthians would immediately recognise when he quoted from or alluded to their letter. Yet today these cannot be recognised directly, as their letter is not available; one must rely on the linguistic and theological evidence in Paul’s letter. Unfortunately on the important points in chapter 7 the theological evidence is disputable. Therefore in the following section the linguistic evidence is examined in order to determine as far as possible where Paul was quoting from the Corinthians’ letter.

Paul, Sex and Marriage 1: Contents and Introduction

2006-11-12T17:06:00.000Z

Over the last few days, as part of my Bible translation work, I have been looking at 1 Corinthians. This reminded me of an essay which I wrote about this book, nearly 20 years ago, in fact in 1988. At the time I was a student at London Bible College, now London School of Theology. Studying for this essay helped me to form some of my current views about issues of sex and marriage, as well as about the structure of the book. And I have found myself referring back to this essay a number of times, including in the last few days.

For some time I have meant to put this essay on the Internet. This is because at least some of the questions which I raise and methods by which I answer them (see especially the last paragraph of the Introduction, at the end of this first part) are very relevant to recent discussions here, and on other bl0gs including the Better Bibles Blog.

So, here is the essay, at least the first part - with links to further parts to be added later. This is based on a scan of my printed copy of the essay, as unfortunately my original computer files were lost. I have retyped the Greek and/or copied the text from computer files of the New Testament text. The text has not been edited only to correct scanning errors. I have attempted to preserve the bold and italic marking of the original, except in section headings, but not the page layout.

WHAT DID PAUL REALLY SAY ABOUT SEX AND MARRIAGE?
1 CORINTHIANS 7:1-16

by
Peter Richard KIRK

Essay submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the B.A. degree of the Council for National Academic Awards

London Bible College
B.A. Part Two
Linguistics
Lecturer: Dr. F.P. Cotterell

23rd February, 1988

1.	INTRODUCTION

2.	THE PRESUPPOSITION POOL

	2.1. Cultural Presuppositions
	2.2. Presuppositions from Previous Contact

3.	THE LETTER FROM THE CORINTHIANS AND PAUL’S RESPONSE

	3.1. Acknowledged Quotations
	3.2. Linguistic Characteristics
	3.3. Paul’s Responses to the Corinthians’ Points

4.	DISCOURSE STRUCTURE OF 1 CORINTHIANS

	4.1. The Traditional Understanding
	4.2. Major Discourse Markers
	4.3. Immorality, Idolatry and Other Evils
	4.4. Chapter 7 in the Discourse
	4.5. Concluding Observations

5.	SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF 7:1-16

	7:1
	7:2-4
	7:5
	7:6
	7:7
	7:8,9
	7:10,11
	7:12,13
	7:14
	7:15
	7:16

6.	CONCLUSIONS

APPENDIX – Semantic Display of 1 Corinthians 7:1-16 [External link to a PDF file]

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND ABBREVIATIONS

1. INTRODUCTION

The popular image of the apostle Paul is that he was a misogynist who disapproved of marriage, sex, and in general of everything enjoyable in life. On the basis of this caricature many have rejected the Christian faith, and many others who call themselves Christians have rejected Paul’s teaching in favour of a religion of love and liberty which, equally simplistically, they take as the true or original Christian message.

Most of the passages from Paul to which such people take exception are in his first letter to the Corinthians. In it there are two passages, 11:2-16 and 14:34-35, which seem to be degrading women, at least in their place in the church, and there is a whole long chapter on marriage and sexual relations, chapter 7, which has traditionally been taken as disapproving of both and allowing them only as grudging concessions to human weakness. Yet modern commentators have produced very different interpretations of these contentious passages. For example, Fee, summing up chapter 7, says: Does not Scripture say in fact that singleness is better than marriage? To which the answer is No (p. 357); on 11:2-16 he concludes that such a “church custom” … is not to be raised to Canon Law (p. 530); and on 14:34-35 that it is not authentic … certainly not binding for Christians (p. 708).

Are such reinterpretations valid? Or are they a case of making the bible fit one’s cultural presuppositions? One way of answering this question is to analyse the contentious passages in their context using linguistic criteria, rather than by theological ones which tend to be coloured by traditional interpretations. This essay is an attempt to answer the question in this way for chapter 7, by analysing the first sixteen verses; the remainder of the chapter is both more obscure and less directly relevant to the central question: did Paul disapprove of all marriage and all sexual relations, or did he not?

Gradually breaking through

2006-11-09T21:09:00.000Z

I have taken a break from my series Kingdom Thermodynamics partly because I needed to give some more thought to the theological side of this issue, and partly because I have been rather busy with my Bible translation work. I hope that this post will have some relevance to that series, but also be less technical and so accessible to all my readers.

I was prompted to begin that series by what I had been reading from the book Breakthrough about which I posted on 28th October. I have been continuing to read it, although slowly, and gathering from it material relevant to my series.

Here is an extract which is of some relevance, from the chapter on the Parables of the Kingdom, p.112:

We usually speak of 'the present and the future' because we orientate ourselves in the present and look towards the future. But Jesus speaks of the present from the future. He stands with God in the ultimate future of his kingly reign and speaks into the present. This is one of the reasons for saying that Jesus addresses men [sic] as God. Only God can speak from the future.

Then from pp.113-114:

This future impinges on the present with such force that the 'now' is filled with significance. Right now the Son of Man is preaching the word of the kingdom (Matthew 13:37); good and bad seed are sown together; the mustard seed looks insignificant; the fish are encircled by the great net, and the seed is being scattered abroad (Mark 4:26-29). ...

We should be aware that we live in a pregnant present overshadowed by an ultimate future. The danger is that we will be mystified by the hidden way in which the future is being manifest now and miss its overpowering significance. How does the little bit of leaven affect all the meal (Matthew 13:33)? How can the mustard seed become a great tree? How can a Galilean carpenter be the Messiah of the age to come? Why is there a delay before the bridegroom appears? If we conclude that the urgency has passed, we are seriously mistaken. There is no time to allow a tree to fail to bear fruit. If it does not bear within one more season, chop it down (Luke 13:6-9)!

Becoming snagged on the exact relationship between the present and the future will do us no good. We have to accept that it is a mystery. ...

Well, I need to bear these last comments in mind on the subject of Kingdom Thermodynamics. I can't claim to be be able to discover "the exact relationship between the present and the future". But I hope it will do some good to look into it a bit more closely, when I have the time!

Now for some extracts from the chapter on Kingdom Lifestyle, first from the section "Entering the Kingdom", p.121:

This leads to one of the most fundamental principles in kingdom theology. The call to repentance is uttered in the context of kingdom intervention. The kingdom is here, therefore repent! Repentance is part of our response to the good news that the kingdom is near. The presence of the kingdom must initiate repentance and not vice versa. Only when the powers of the age to come are present in the announcement of the gospel can one anticipate true repentance. ...

... The rabbinical concept of repentance placed the initiative with man and his responsibility to repent. Jesus placed the initiative with God and the dynamic intervention of his reign. When Jesus preached repentance, the offer of grace was no mere verbal promise. When Jesus spoke, things happened. His words were events. When he announced liberty, people were set free. It was in this context, with the power of the Holy Spirit evident amongst the people, that Jesus demanded the most uncompromising repentance. This suggests that the greater the evidence of the power of God, the greater the possibility of deep repentance. When God's power is not evident, a powerful call to repentance only produces legalism.

And then from the section "Living in the Kingdom", pp.125-126:

The beatitudes can only be understood against the background of the presence of the future. Christians are people who have met Jesus, and to meet Jesus is to meet the end. We have been taken out of this present world and already live by the powers of the age to come. Yet at the same time we live in this world. We are caught in the tension between two worlds, but the power, reality and values of the kingdom determine our lives rather than the standards of this world.

...

If the Sermon on the Mount were taken as the moral standard men have to attain, no one could ever hope to enter the Kingdom of God. Jesus is not prescribing a new set of rules. He is describing what happens to those who pass out of this age and begin to live in the age to come. A revolutionary change takes place in our lives when we are overtaken by the powers of the age to come. ... It is a description of the lifestyle of the new man in Christ, the new creature for whom the old has passed away and everything has become new (2 Corinthians 5:17).

Finally, at the end of the chapter, p.136:

... If we could escape from this world and live completely in the kingdom, it would be great. If we could forget about the kingdom and live only in this world, things would be safe. But neither is possible. We will continue to be part of both kingdoms at the same time. Our lives are disturbed in a most wonderfully upsetting way so that we can never see anything in quite the same way again.

My reading gradually continues!

Kingdom Thermodynamics 4: The Crunch

2006-11-04T10:22:00.000Z

Note: This is not completely new material. I realised after I posted it that part 3 of this series was rather long, and so I have split it, making the second half of it into this part 4.

In part 3 of this series I discussed the boundary conditions in time, how they might apply to the universe, and how they relate to causality. I also showed how they are in tension with the biblical picture in which God knows and purposes the future, the final state of the universe.

In this post I will look more closely at the final state of the created universe, and how it compares with the initial state.

We observe that the universe is now not in a completely random state but has some order. The Second Law of Thermodynamics implies that its initial state was even less random, technically with lower entropy than at present. It also implies that the final state of the universe will be more random, with higher entropy.

Cosmologists have observed that the background radiation which they interpret as being left over from the Big Bang is extremely uniform across the sky. This implies that at least from an extremely early stage, if not from the very beginning, the universe expanded isotropically, i.e. in the same way in all directions, to a very high degree of accuracy. This isotropy implies order and low entropy; the very early universe was not in a random state but in an extremely special one. Theologians might see the hand of God in this; cosmologists have sought to explain it with physics, but in a way which would require that the Second Law of Thermodynamics did not apply in the first fraction of a second (actually only something like 10^-32 seconds in some expansion theories) after the Big Bang.

My argument here is not in fact at all dependent on the Big Bang theory. It would work equally well if the universe was created in a form similar to its present one, even as recently as 4004 BC. But its initial state, at least once the act of creation was complete and the normal laws of physics took over, must have been not completely random, but with order and so low entropy. It first came into being "formless and empty" (Genesis 1:2 TNIV), Hebrew tohu wabohu; these words may imply a state of chaos, but if so God created order within it during his work of creation before putting it in "bondage to decay" (Romans 8:21 TNIV).

As for the final state of the universe, cosmologists generally assume that it will be highly disordered. According to them, there are two possibilities: either the universe will continue to expand for ever but will gradually become more and more disordered, with entropy eventually approaching a maximum, the so called Heat Death; or the universe will collapse again into a Big Crunch, which, according to most, will be very different from the Big Bang in that it will be highly disordered and anisotropic, a state of high entropy. Both Heat Death and a disordered Big Crunch can be considered as unconstrained; there are no final boundary conditions here.

However, some cosmologists have speculated that at some time in the future, probably at about the time that the universe reaches its maximum size, the Second Law of Thermodynamics will go into reverse, and that entropy will start to decrease, such that the universe will collapse in an isotropic Big Crunch which will look just like the Big Bang in reverse. Thus the history of the universe will be at least in general terms symmetric in time. But these cosmologists have realised, without as far as I know discussing this in detail, that such a reversal of the Second Law would have complex and severe philosophical implications, and for this reason the idea is not a popular one.

Nevertheless, they have an interesting idea which is helpful to illustrate the direction in which I am arguing here. In the standard cosmological model, there are tight boundary conditions on the initial state of the universe, constraining it to be isotropic, so in a state of order and low entropy; but there are no final boundary conditions, as required by the principle of causality, implying that the final state is disordered. But if there will also be an isotropic Big Crunch, that is a final and tightly constraining boundary condition. Now as I have tried to make clear, there is only one law of physics which disallows this, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and that applies only because of causality. An isotropic Big Crunch is possible only if causality does not apply completely, that is, if at least in principle current events can be caused by future ones, indeed ultimately by the Big Crunch itself.

According to cosmologists, the universe is still expanding, and it will be a very long time before it starts to contract again towards a Big Crunch, if it ever does. So, in the isotropic Big Crunch model, its current state is like a point on the banner quite near to one of the poles, or the distribution of the children soon after they were released and before they were starting to think about going home. That is to say, the universe is still quite tightly constrained by its initial boundary condition, the isotropic Big Bang, but the constraints of the final boundary, the Big Crunch, so far have only a very weak effect. Because of this the universe now operates almost precisely as if there were no final constraints, and so according to causality and the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Nevertheless, if there is going to be an isotropic Big Crunch, one might expect to see very occasional or very tiny deviations from this law, which will gradually grow as the universe moves towards the mid-point of its life. Then it will have a severe mid-life crisis! I will not presume to speculate on how physics will operate around this time. But eventually the Second Law will gradually start to work in reverse as the universe collapses towards the Big Crunch.

Now it is interesting to speculate about this time-symmetric universe. But actually I don't think this is what is going to happen. If the Bible teaches us anything about the final boundary conditions for the universe, those conditions are not an isotropic Big Crunch, but some kind of steady state for eternity. It is interesting that scientists are still unable to decide whether the universe will continue to expand indefinitely or collapse in a Big Crunch. A third and intermediate position may be possible, in which it grows to a fixed size and remains that size for ever; and the current expansion of the universe is at about the right rate to attain this. This steady state is probably a very special and improbable state, similar to the isotropic Big Crunch, but if it is a final boundary condition specified from the beginning, the universe is bound to end up in this state. But if there is such a final boundary condition, causality and the Second Law lose their absolute status, and at some stage will gradually cease to operate.

I have to accept that these ideas, especially the final one, are highly speculative. But I hope you find them interesting.

In the next part of this series I intend to relate these ideas to the coming of the Kingdom of God. I hope there will be less heavy physics and more about God and the Bible.

Note re links to Wikipedia: I provide these as service to readers wanting to read a little more about the subjects in question, not as authorities or references.

Kingdom Thermodynamics 3: The Boundaries

2006-11-03T21:10:00.000Z

I followed the introduction to this series with a discussion of the principle of causality, and how it underlies the Second Law of Thermodynamics but is also inconsistent with Christian theology. In this third post I want to look at a different, but in some way equivalent, way in which the Second Law is in tension with theology. This relates to assumptions about what happens at boundaries, especially those at the beginning and the end of time.

The point which I am trying to make is rather clearer when presented in terms of space rather than of time. So I will start with what is I hope a simple analogy, so that those of you who are not used to too much technical material can get an idea of what I am talking about.

First imagine a large flag, flying in a gentle breeze. At one end the flag is fixed, tied to a flagpole, and can move only if the flagpole moves. The other end of the flag is flying free, with no immediate constraints. The middle of the flag is partially free, but not completely so because it cannot move too far from the pole. A point on the flag say one tenth of its width from the pole is even less free, because it is constrained to be close to the pole.

Then imagine a large banner of the kind which is fixed at each end to a pole, but is being carried so that it is loose in the middle. In this case both ends of the banner are fixed. The middle of the banner is relatively free, but it is constrained to some extent, to an equal extent, by both poles, for it cannot move too far from either of them. As for a point on the banner one tenth of its width from one pole, this is again quite tightly constrained by the nearby pole; there is also some constraint from the second pole, but this is much less tight.

Then try to imagine this same kind of situation transformed from space into time. This is rather hard. Perhaps one can imagine a group of children who are released from school to explore an area on condition that they all get home at a particular time - and imagine that they are actually obedient! As you watch how they spread out across the area, to start with this will be determined by their starting point and how fast they walk or run. As time goes on they will start to realise that they mustn't wander too far as they must get home on time, and so their distribution will start to be affected by this. As they start to return, a time will come when their positions are determined by their need to get home, and hardly at all by where they started from.

Or imagine a dynamic caption of the type I have sometimes seen on TV programmes. It starts with a clear message, and then gradually and apparently at random letters in the message start to change until it becomes unreadable. For a time it looks as if nothing but chaos remains. But it gradually becomes apparent that a new message is forming. The changes turn out not to have been random at all, but to have been constrained by the intention to transform the message letter by letter into a new message.

All of these are examples of boundary conditions. In the case of the flag, the boundary conditions in space apply at one edge only, whereas there are no conditions at the other edge; but for the banner the boundary conditions apply at both edges. For the children, there is an initial boundary condition and also a final boundary condition, that they are in a particular place at a particular time. Similarly, there are initial and final conditions on the letters on the TV screen, that they form particular messages at the start and at the end. If you look at a point in space or time which is close to a boundary with conditions, the state at this point is constrained closely by the boundary conditions, but the constraints become much looser a long way from the boundary.

When we look at processes in time in the world as we know it, at least those which are not somehow controlled by intelligence and advance planning, it seems that no final boundary conditions can apply, although initial boundary conditions may be imposed. Thus processes in time are more like the flag than the banner, with the end flying free. In practice we can constrain the final state of something in time only by imposing tight initial boundary conditions, or by intelligent intervention. This is a direct consequence of causality operating within the universe, which implies that the state of something at the end of a period cannot affect any state or event during that period.

However, when we look at all of this from a biblical and theological perspective, the position is quite different. The Bible gives clear teaching about the future, including specific prophecies, some of which have already been fulfilled, and details about the end times. If the future is known in any kind of absolute sense, that is to say if these prophecies are more than predictions based on current data (like weather forecasts), this is a final boundary condition and so a breach of the principle of causality.

Theologians have taken a variety of positions on specific prophecies. Those of a more liberal kind have tended to discount all biblical prophecy, and to take apparent fulfilment of prophecies, such as those in the book of Daniel, as evidence that the prophecy was in fact written after the event. Open theists have taken a rather different line: prophecies are not absolute knowledge of the future, but rather a combination of predictions based on current data and advance announcements of plans which God intends to fulfil by working within the universe and within time.

Of course any theologian who presupposes that the principle of causality is a philosophical absolute is bound to take one or other of these positions on prophecy. However, this does not seem to be the biblical picture, as I briefly explained in part 2 of this series. The biblical position, as it seems to me, is that God knows the future absolutely, and at times communicates information about it to humans as prophecy. He has said:

I make known the end from the beginning,
from ancient times, what is still to come.
I say, 'My purpose will stand,
and I will do all that I please.'
(Isaiah 46:10, TNIV)

This flow of definite information from the future to the present is a breach of causality. Furthermore, it is related to the spiritual gift of prophecy (although revelation of information about the future is only a small part of that gift), and as such is an indication of a link between the gifts of the Holy Spirit and breaches of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I intend to explore this link further later in this series.

I do not intend in this series to discuss specific prophecies concerning events before the end of time. My interest here is more in the final state of the created universe, and how it compares with the initial state. As this post is already rather long, I will continue this discussion in the next post in this series.

Note: originally the next post was combined with this one; I then split them into two separate posts.

Kingdom Thermodynamics 2: Beyond Causality

2006-11-02T16:45:00.000Z

In the Introduction to this series I explained my long-standing fascination with the Second Law of Thermodynamics and how it relates to Christian teaching, especially to Romans 8:19-23. I wrote about how I had been thinking about these matters on and off for about 30 years.

In particular I remember sitting in the Cavendish Laboratory library in Cambridge, in 1976 or 1977, looking at some rather heavy books dealing with the theoretical basis of the Second Law. While I don't remember the names of the books, I do remember the basic point I discovered: the Second Law is not dependent on experimental evidence, for it can be deduced by pure logic. It must be this that gave Arthur Eddington such supreme confidence in this Law that he could write:

if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

But what I did not find in the books I consulted was a recognition of a hidden assumption in the logic. Yet it should in fact be rather obvious that there is some such hidden assumption, for without it there is no way that the time asymmetry of the Second Law can arise, within a framework of more fundamental laws which are all time-invariant.

The hidden assumption on which the Second Law of Thermodynamics is based is causality. That is to say, it is assumed that any event in the universe is caused solely and completely by other events in the universe which precede it in time, but cannot be caused or affected by any event which follows it in time.

To most people in the modern world this principle of causality seems so obvious that it can be assumed without question. This was certainly not always the case. And I will go on to argue here that there is a fundamental contradiction between causality and Christian teaching.

Nevertheless I must recognise that in practice the world in which we live operates according to the principle of causality. It is perhaps this rather than the Second Law of Thermodynamics which explains why we don't see stationary objects suddenly start to move without an cause or applied force. If the principle of causality needs any experimental proof, it is in the precise and predictable way in which even at the sub-microscopic level physical, chemical and biological systems obey the Second Law. And we should be glad of this, for without this neither our modern technology nor our bodies would function.

But the principle of causality has implications which conflict with Christian theology. Causality implies that what happens now depends only on what has happened in the past within the universe. The Bible teaches that what happens now is preparation for the future consummation, that "The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed" (Romans 8:19, TNIV) and "all things work together for good to those who love God" (Romans 8:28, TNIV marginal reading).

Now it is not a violation of causality for an event now to be preparation for a future event, if it is caused by an intelligent being who is planning for that future event. In this sense we might be able to argue that current events which are God's preparation for the future are caused by God, and so preserve the principle of causality. But this resolution only works if we place God within the universe, and his plans for the future within time - specifically, in the distant past. Some theologians (associated with Process Theology and Open Theism, from the limited amount I know about these movements) have taught that God is inside the universe and constrained by time, and in this way they could preserve the principle of causality. However, this view of God has not been accepted by most theologians, for the good reason that it seems to conflict with the biblical picture of God as separate from his created universe and not constrained by time or space.

If God is outside of the universe, an event caused by him has a cause from outside the universe, in contradiction to the principle of causality. Also, from a theological viewpoint all events are part of God's preparation for the future and must therefore be at least in part caused by God. So all events have a cause outside the universe, and there is nothing left to be caused according to the normal principle of causality operating within the universe. Thus the classic view of God as outside time and separate from his creation is incompatible with the principle of causality.

But why then do we see the universe operating on the basis of causality and according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics? The answer was clearly written by the Apostle Paul: "the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it" (Romans 8:20, TNIV). In other words, the universe is currently experiencing "frustration" and "bondage to decay" through the operation of the Second Law because God has chosen to let it work for the time being according to the principle of causality. But, Paul promises, this will not always be true, for we and all creation can look forward in hope to the time when "the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God" (Romans 8:21, TNIV).

In this verse Paul writes of this as something entirely in the future. But elsewhere, even in this chapter, he suggests that this "freedom and glory of the children of God" is something not entirely future, but which is already starting to appear among Christian believers:

¹⁴ For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. ¹⁵ The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father."
(Romans 8:14-15, TNIV)
Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
(Romans 8:23, TNIV)

In other words, as Christians we have already been adopted as children of God and given the Holy Spirit, and so in principle we already have "the freedom and glory of the children of God". But we live within a universe which remains in bondage to decay; even our bodies are in bondage to decay working within them as they operate. Yet the promised freedom of the Kingdom of God has already broken through into our lives, and continues to break through, through us, into the world around us.

So, while we can expect the world and our bodies to continue to follow the principle of causality and the Second Law of Thermodynamics, as Christians we should not expect to be bound by this principle and this law. In the spiritual realm we are not bound by them. And, as I will go on to explain in further parts of this series, we should expect to see times and places where these rules are not followed even in the physical realm, because the Kingdom of God is breaking through into the world.

But this is enough for this posting. More will follow. In the next part I look at "boundary conditions" of the universe.

Meanwhile, does anyone reading this know of any specialist forums, journals etc where issues like this are discussed? If so, please let me know by commenting on this.

Kingdom Thermodynamics 1: Introduction

2006-10-31T19:47:00.000Z

I should start this series of posts by suggesting that perhaps it does not really belong at Speaker of Truth. For I cannot presume to call what I intend to write here, at least after this introduction, "truth". I hope that it is an exploration in the direction of truth, but some might prefer to write it off as "speculation". On the one hand, these are preliminary thoughts on this subject, and are liable to be refined at any time. On the other hand, although this is, I think, the first time I have gone public on this, I have already been thinking it over on and off for about 30 years. Yes, really: I remember doing some research on this when I was a student in Cambridge, it must have been 1976 or 1977, in the library of the Cavendish Laboratory.

As a student of physics at that time, and as a young Christian, I was fascinated by time, and I still am. I learned that almost all of the fundamental laws of physics are time-invariant, that is to say, they work exactly the same when time is reversed. If you watch a film which only shows things operating according to these laws, you cannot tell whether it is being played forwards or backwards. This applies, approximately, to such things as swinging pendulums and heavy objects travelling through the air; it also applies, perfectly, to all process on the atomic scale (technically, if charge and parity are also reversed).

There is just one fundamental law of physics which is not time-invariant: the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This law in its most basic form states that the entropy of a system always increases, which means that the system gradually become more disordered. This may explain the state of my desk! It also explains why heat always flows from hotter to colder bodies, and why moving objects, unless in a vacuum, slow down and stop unless a force is applied to keep them moving. These are all processes which are not time-invariant; if you see a film which shows systems spontaneously becoming more ordered, heat flowing from colder bodies to hotter, or moving objects speeding up without a force, you quickly realise that it is being played backwards.

On the face of it this law, that systems will always become more disordered and will tend towards a state of uniform temperature and only random motion, might seem to be a rather negative and useless one. However, biological systems are able to make use of this law to produce effects which seem to contradict it - but do not really do so, for an organism can decrease entropy in one place only by increasing it even more in other places, typically by converting low entropy food into high entropy waste products. Similarly, human ingenuity has contrived various kinds of engines, which are basically methods of creating ordered motion by converting low entropy fuel into high entropy exhaust gases; thus the modern human world can continue its activities by generating huge amounts of waste entropy which (to grossly oversimplify some very complex processes and issues) causes global warming.

There is something rather special about the Second Law of Thermodynamics which goes beyond its breaking of time invariance. The early 20th century physicist Arthur Eddington wrote:

The second law of thermodynamics holds, I think, the supreme position among the laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell's equations - then so much the worse for Maxwell's equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation, well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.

What made Eddington so sure of his ground on this one? I am sure that it was not just that the Law fitted so precisely with observation. Eddington's own greatest claim to fame is that he was the first to confirm Einstein's General Theory of Relativity by detecting a small deviation from Newton's laws. But he did not seem to allow that there might be even such tiny deviations from the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The reason for this seems to be that, in addition to the experimental evidence, there is a fundamental philosophical and logical basis to the Second Law. It was this basis that I was researching at the Cavendish Laboratory, where Eddington had studied before me.

But my interest in this issue was sparked all those years ago not so much by the physics involved as by what is taught in the Bible. I read (at that time not in this version) and thought about the following:

¹⁹ The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. ²⁰ For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God.
²² We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. ²³ Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption, the redemption of our bodies.
(Romans 8:19-23, TNIV)

These verses fascinated me. The Apostle Paul wrote that "the creation was subjected to frustration... [in] bondage to decay", and he was writing 1800 years before physicists formulated the same principles as the Second Law of Thermodynamics. But, whereas for physicists like Eddington the Second Law is absolute and immutable, Paul wrote that this "bondage to decay" is ordained by God as something temporary, from which it can eagerly expect liberation.

But how could I, as a physicist at the time and later as a student of theology, bring together these two opposing viewpoints on the same phenomenon? What is the philosophical basis of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and how does this compare with Christian teaching? Could the differences here be linked to the "problem" of miracles, events which seemed to break the laws of physics? And how does it all relate to the coming of the Kingdom of God and our hope of experiencing "the freedom and glory of the children of God"? I hope to deal with these matters in future posts. But I am posting this introduction without having written any more, so don't expect the rest of the series very quickly!

Update: see part 2: Beyond Causality; part 3: The Boundaries; part 4: The Crunch.

House For Sale in High Wycombe

2006-10-30T10:46:00.000Z

This is a change from most of my posts here, but this is a convenient way to put my advertisement on the Internet:

I am selling my house in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, UK. This is not where I am currently living. I did live there for my last few years as a member of Wycliffe Bible Translators, and since then the house has been let. The tenant intends to move out soon, and the house will then be available for purchase.

The house is a four bedroomed semi-detached house, solidly built of brick in the 1950's, on the western edge of High Wycombe (30 miles north west of London on the way to Oxford), convenient for the M40 motorway and Heathrow Airport. It is in a good position, near to public woodland and with a great view from the back. Downstairs there is a lounge, a dining room, a kitchen and breakfast room, and a shower room. Upstairs there are three large bedrooms, one small one, and a bathroom and separate toilet. Outside there is reasonably large garden, a garage, and off road parking for several cars.

I am offering the house for £215,000, which is a bargain price for a house of this size in this area. I may be able to offer a discount for a private sale. If you are interested, please contact me by e-mail: peter AT qaya DOT org, or by commenting on this post.

UPDATE 14th December: I have now put this house up for sale with agents Philip Green and Partners, and the details are on the Internet. Here is the new picture which the agents took:

UPDATE 12th January: The house is now sold - at least, I have a confirmed buyer.

Breakthrough: Discovering the Kingdom

2006-10-28T22:10:00.000+01:00

I am safely back home from my trip. It was hard work but worthwhile. Maybe I will write more about it later.

But for now I want to bring you some insights from a book I am reading, Breakthrough: Discovering the Kingdom by Derek Morphew, published by and available from Vineyard International Publishing (see the Contact link on that page; not available at amazon.co.uk or amazon.com). Morphew is a South African pastor and the international director of the Vineyard Bible Institute. I bought this book at the Momentum conference, where it was being promoted by the main speakers.

Here is an extract from the chapter The Implications of the Kingdom, pp.80-81 which is relevant to some recent discussions on this blog:

The last days begin with Jesus and in Pentecost. Since then we have been living in the last days.
One hears Christians quoting texts about the special conditions that apply during the last days as though they only refer to the last seven years of world history, or perhaps to our times. This is to miss the point completely. The last days begin with the coming of Jesus. Since then they have just been edging closer and closer to the ultimate 'last' day. When Jesus came it was already the end. Perhaps we can speak of the end, the end of the end, and the end of the end of the end. New Testament texts are absolutely clear on this. Hebrews 1 can say, 'in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son' (1:2). Peter can say, concerning Jesus, 'He was chosen before the foundation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake' (1 Pet. 1:20).
This has crucial implications.
The last days are one, unbroken continuum, from the first coming of Christ, to the Second Coming of Christ, coexisting in tension with this present world. There is no period of church history that has not been a time of the last days. The last few minutes before the Second Coming will not be some different time, only the climax of the same mysterious dimension Christians have experienced since Jesus first came. This is not to say that history cannot 'hot up' or become more dramatic. Revelation shows that it will, but there is no other dispensation waiting to arrive, other than the very end of the end.
To grasp this is to understand that all dispensational and cessationist theories and schemes have no substance. Cessationists want to tear the time of the apostles away from the remainder of church history and dispensationalists want to do the same with the last seven years. But there is only one, continued dispensation of the last days. The Bible knows of only two dispensations, or ages: this age and the age to come. The age to come arrived when Jesus came.

Here is another extract, from p.84, which I found helpful in view of some things which have happened to me. I hope that others might also find it helpful:

Understanding the kingdom also makes us patient with what fails to happen. It is always here, almost here, delayed, and future. Every promise of God, every prophetic word, every calling, every ministry we engage in, has the mysterious sense of being continually delayed by God and yet just around the corner. We live tasting, yet with our mouths watering; filled and yet hungry; satisfied and yet longing; having all, yet needing all. Get used to it! It will not go away until the very end.

As I continue to read this book I will look out for other passages which might be worth sharing here.

Away for three weeks

2006-10-03T12:32:00.000+01:00

I will be away from home from Wednesday 4th to Wednesday 25th October, working on my Bible translation project. I will be staying in a major city in a country where the infrastructure is not quite up to western standards. I should have Internet access, but only dial-up and not always reliable or fast. I will also be rather busier than I usually am at home. Therefore I will not have as much time as usual to spend on blogging. So don't be surprised if you don't hear from me for a few weeks. But then I may find time to post something. Also I will continue to receive comments, by e-mail, and will try to respond to anything significant.

I don't want to say too much about my project here for various reasons. I can say that I will be working with a team of local translators and two other outsiders on the final stages of checking a new translation of the New Testament. I may say more on my return.

PS: I have now worked out how to blog by e-mail, so maybe I will keep in touch that way.

The non-negotiables of the faith, including gender distinctions?

2006-10-02T15:08:00.000+01:00

Adrian Warnock has been reporting on the Desiring God 2006 conference, entitled "Above All Earthly Powers: The Supremacy of Christ in a Postmodern World".

Now let me first say that I have a lot of respect for the ministry of Desiring God and its leader John Piper. They are doing a great work by emphasising the importance for Christians of desiring God and seeking "a passion for the supremacy of God in all things". I also greatly appreciate Piper's support for exercise of the gifts of the Spirit in a properly balanced way.

But Piper is not as careful as he should be at distinguishing between biblical standards and the cultural norms of conservative America. I am not the only one to suggest this. For example, Suzanne McCarthy has referred to a list of roles which Piper considers as suitable for women. I commented as follows on her posting:

Are these rules supposed to be Christian and derived from the Bible? It sounds to me as if they come from a 19th century manual of etiquette. That doesn't make them necessarily wrong, but nor does it make them right. Piper, Grudem and friends need to distinguish between Christian values and old-fashioned conservative cultural ones. A good course in cross-cultural evangelism, or some in depth first hand experience of a very different culture, would do them a world of good.

and also:

I just read the first half sentence of Piper's book, and I think this gives the real key to his thinking. That first half sentence is "When I was a boy growing up in Greenville, South Carolina". It was in that conservative environment, around 50 years ago (according to Wikipedia he was born in 1946, actually in Tennessee), that his cultural values were formed. In the second paragraph we learn that they attended a Southern Baptist church, and that of course further explains the formation of his cultural values. He goes on to describe supposed differences between men and women which he claims "go to the root of our personhood", but which it seems to me are at least very largely conditioned by the specific cultural and religious context in which Piper grew up. ...

To summarise, Piper is making the mistake which I am afraid is so common among Americans, especially conservative ones but not only Christians, of simply assuming that their own cultural values are objectively and absolutely right, ... There is a woeful failure to understand the distinction between cultural norms and absolute morality.

So, I was really interested to see that Desiring God was taking on the issue of relating to a postmodern world whose cultural norms are very different from those of the conservative South in which Piper grew up.

And what do I find? I am basing this mainly on Adrian's rather brief summaries of others' reports, but these are the points which some have considered significant. I have also looked at some of Tim Challies' more detailed first hand reports.

The controversial preacher Mark Driscoll spoke about: (as summarised by Adrian, condensing a report by Ricky Alcantar):

Nine issues to contend for:
1) The Bible.
2) The sovereignty of God.
3) The virgin birth of Jesus Christ.
4) We must argue against pelagianism, a denial of original sin.
5) We must contend for penal substitutionary atonement.
6) The exclusivity of Jesus.
7) We must contend for male and female roles.
8) We must contend for hell.
9) We must contend that kingdom is priority over culture.

John Piper, in comments on Driscoll's talk, spoke as follows about these nine issues (as reported by Josh Harris and quoted by Adrian):

He referenced a point Driscoll had made in his talk about the importance of holding certain unchanging truths in our left hand that are the non-negotiables of the faith while being willing to contextualize and differ on secondary issues and stylistically (these are “right hand” issues).

In principle Piper is making an excellent point here on relating to postmodern culture. But I find it very interesting that what Piper affirms as "the non-negotiables of the faith" are apparently these particular nine points listed originally by Driscoll. Most of these nine points I can accept as important and non-negotiable (although I would want to ask for clarification about point 4, and I would argue that penal substitutionary atonement is only one among several good biblical models of the atonement). But this list is revealing both for what it includes and for what it omits.

For example, it omits any mention of several things which are clearly taught and commanded in the New Testament as norms for all believers, such as baptism and the Lord's Supper. I refer not to the details of how these are to be administered and what they mean, but their very existence. If such things are not listed as non-negotiables, does that imply that they are secondary issues on which we can differ and which we can abandon for the sake of "contextualisation", in other words in order to make our Christian faith more palatable to, for example, a postmodern generation? Or are they simply additional non-negotiables, thus implying that this list nine points is to be consider as incomplete?

But my main point here is the inclusion in this list of one item, "7) We must contend for male and female roles", which seems to me totally out of place here. Tim Challies' version of this is "6) We must contend for gender distinctions", but he actually lists this before "7) We must contend for the exclusivity of Christ", as if gender roles more important than the exclusivity of Christ! Well, what exactly are the "male and female roles" or "gender distinctions" which we must contend for? Ricky Alcantar's report says a little more here:

7) We must contend for male and female roles

we’re different. Male elders are to govern. We do not endorse homosexuality.

If Driscoll and Piper's main point is that Christians should oppose homosexual practice and same-sex "marriage", I would not disagree with them. But I would wonder why opposing these is listed as a "non-negotiable of the faith" when there is no mention of opposition to any other sins, such as heterosexual sex outside marriage, or greed, or pride. Why is homosexuality considered to be a much worse sin than these others? Is there really a biblical basis for this, or is this a case where (despite "non-negotiable" 9) cultural values are being put before kingdom values?

But it seems that what Driscoll and Piper largely have in mind is gender distinctions in the church, that "Male elders are to govern." Now it is well known to regular readers here and at Better Bibles Blog that I differ from Piper, and implicitly also from Driscoll, on such issues and on the principles of interpretation of Bible passages which are alleged to teach this. I won't repeat those arguments here, but will restrict my comments to wondering why they make such a big thing out of this. After all, there are in fact only a very few passages in the New Testament which teach about such gender roles. There is probably more teaching which favours slavery, but I don't see "We must contend for slavery" among the non-negotiables! It might well have been on similar lists in the early 19th century, but anyone looking at such a list today would recognise how dependent it was on cultural norms which have now been abandoned.

There are many issues which are given far more prominence in the Bible than gender roles but have been omitted from this list of non-negotiables. For example, Paul devotes two long chapters of 1 Corinthians to spiritual gifts, and commands elsewhere

Do not put out the Spirit's fire. ²⁰ Do not treat prophecies with contempt ²¹ but test them all; hold on to what is good, ²² reject whatever is harmful.
(1 Thessalonians 5:19-22, TNIV)

But Driscoll and Piper do not list acceptance of spiritual gifts including prophecy as a non-negotiable. Why not? Piper accepts these gifts himself, but maybe he is afraid of upsetting a large part of his audience, cessationists who disagree on this, by stressing their importance. But he doesn't seem afraid of upsetting those who reject his approach to gender issues. Or is it because he accepts that cessationist arguments are strong enough that this should be considered a legitimate area for disagreement among Christians? Well, the cessationist arguments, largely an indefensible interpretation of 1 Corinthians 13:10, seem to me much weaker than the arguments for alternative interpretations of passages on gender roles in the church. So why can't Piper and friends accept that here too there is a legitimate area for disagreement among Christians?

It seems to me that Driscoll and Piper are picking and choosing among biblical commands, and not to find issues which really are central to the Christian faith and should really be considered non-negotiable. Instead they have selected a list of points which fit with their personal presuppositions about what is central to the faith, based on their culture as much as on the Bible. Their approach on such matters seems to be similar to that of the scribes and Pharisees of Mark 7, who no doubt justified their teachings from Scripture, but of whom Jesus said:

You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.
(Mark 7:8, TNIV)

So, what should we do? I nearly finished this post here, but decided that this was too negative. I would challenge Driscoll and Piper (if they would listen to me!), and others who might agree with them, to go back to the drawing board and reexamine what really are the central non-negotiables of the Christian faith, the points which are not culturally relative and which are also central to the Good News of Christ. And these are the things which I would recommend them to concentrate on in their preaching to a postmodern generation. Then there will be other things which they will also hold as non-negotiable in principle but in practice might allow to take a less prominent position; here I might include baptism, the Lord's Supper, spiritual gifts, and (from Driscoll's original list) the virgin birth and hell. Finally, I would remind them to base their contextualisation on Paul's biblical model:

Though I am free and belong to no one, I have made myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. ²⁰ To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. ²¹ To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. ²² To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some. ²³ I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.
(1 Corinthians 9:19-23, TNIV)

Dawkins is wrong: a scientist can believe in a real God

2006-09-26T19:23:00.000+01:00

Richard Dawkins' new book The God Delusion seems to be causing a bit of a stir. I haven't read it, and I probably won't. Not long ago I sat through a series on Channel 4 TV in which Dawkins presented his views on the same subject, and that was more than enough to put up with!

But I would like to respond to one of Dawkins' points which is highlighted by Al Mohler in his commentary article The Dawkins Delusion. And as Mohler has not enabled comments on that article, I am responding here and in more length than appropriate for a comment.

Mohler writes, in part quoting Dawkins in The God Delusion:

In [Dawkins'] opening chapter, he argues that most legitimate scientists--indeed all who really understand the issues at stake--are atheists of one sort or another. He defines the alternatives as between a stark atheism (such as that Dawkins himself represents) and a form of nonsupernatural religion, as illustrated by the case of Albert Einstein. "Great scientists of our time who sound religious usually turn out not to be so when you examine their beliefs more deeply," he explains. As examples, Dawkins offers not only Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking but also Martin Rees, currently Britain's Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal Society. ... He cites Einstein to the effect that he was a "deeply religious nonbeliever"--moved by the majesty of the cosmos but without any reference whatsoever to a supernatural being.

As Dawkins explains, real scientists are naturalists. As such, they eliminate entirely the question of a supernatural being's existence. "The metaphorical or pantheistic God of the physicists is light years away from the interventionist, miracle-wreaking, thought-reading, sin-punishing, prayer-answering God of the Bible, of priests, mullahs and rabbis, and of ordinary language. Deliberately to confuse the two is, in my opinion, an act of intellectual high treason."

Thus Dawkins claims that scientists are never true theists, believers in a living and personal God separate from his creation, but if they are not atheists they are more like pantheists, believers in the divinity of the universe. But this claim is so wide of the mark as to be ludicrous. For centuries there have been many scientists who have been theists of one sort or another. Indeed the founders of modern science were almost all theists, even though many, such as Isaac Newton, were not orthodox Christians, and some tended towards deism (which is rather the opposite of pantheism, not identifying God with the universe but separating him entirely from it). Einstein also seems to have been a theist, despite what Dawkins claims, as shown by his famous statement "God does not play dice with the universe" (is that "without any reference whatsoever to a supernatural being"?); so apparently is Stephen Hawking, for he has insisted that "God does play dice with the universe." Indeed, in our own time there are many good scientists who are theists, indeed who are orthodox Trinitarian Christians.

As an example, I can mention John Polkinghorne. He was Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Cambridge, in the same department as Stephen Hawking (although not then in its beautiful new building). In fact Polkinghorne taught me astrophysics, when I was a graduate student of physics at Cambridge; I still remember his graphs of the life cycle of a star. He would never have got that post, nor been elected FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society), if he had not been a good scientist! He was also a reader (effectively a part-time assistant pastor) at a local Anglican church; I remember receiving communion from him. At about the time that I left Cambridge, 1978, he also left to train for ordination in the Church of England; he was then in his late 40's. He ministered in churches for some years before returning to Cambridge as President of Queens' College.

Polkinghorne has written a number of books on the subject of science and faith. In the one I have in my hand, Science and Christian Belief (SPCK, 1994), based on the prestigious Gifford Lectures for 1993-4, he argues from scientific first principles for an orthodox Trinitarian Christian faith, with a very definitely theistic God. Now I don't agree with everything that Polkinghorne writes in this book. But he is certainly a counter-example to Dawkins' claim. And Dawkins must be aware of him. Does he get a mention in Dawkins' book, I wonder, or is this an embarrassment which is simply ignored?

But does Dawkins in fact have a point that these scientists have "a form of nonsupernatural religion" which is "light years away from the interventionist, miracle-wreaking, thought-reading, sin-punishing, prayer-answering God of the Bible"? Well, yes, although this concept of a non-interventionist God is not pantheism but deism. As I mentioned before, there has certainly been a tendency towards deism among scientists, and more widely, since the 18th century Enlightenment. Indeed, as I have discussed elsewhere, a form of deism is found even among many Bible believing Christians, whose God is not really "interventionist, miracle-wreaking, thought-reading, ... prayer-answering", and is "sin-punishing" only outside this world; they too hold to "a form of nonsupernatural religion" at least since the end of the apostolic age. But that is another issue.

Well, as we have seen, Hawking is certainly not a deist but a theist if he is serious in asserting that "God does play dice with the universe," for this is a personal God intervening in the universe after its creation. Einstein's denial of this did not make him a deist either, for, according to a BBC programme, "Einstein's work was underpinned by the idea that the laws of physics were an expression of the divine." It seems rather that their concept of God is a classical theistic one: God perpetually controls and upholds the universe which he created. But at least for Einstein this seems to have implied that God always works in a way determined by the laws of physics, thus ruling out miracles as well as randomness.

Polkinghorne, although not in the same league as Einstein and Hawking as a scientist, is certainly not a deist. He also goes beyond Einstein's kind of theism to accept that God can work outside and beyond the laws of physics, for he accepts that at least one miracle took place: the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And if one miracle is possible, then there is no reason why others should not be. So, while Einstein's God is not "the interventionist, miracle-wreaking, thought-reading, sin-punishing, prayer-answering God of the Bible", and while Polkinghorne might not identify completely with this rather tendentious description, Polkinghorne's God is able at least in principle to do all these things, and his religion is not "nonsupernatural".

And where my former science professor led, I am not afraid to follow. Indeed I would go further, and claim that God does indeed intervene in our world, work miracles, read thoughts, punish sins (but more readily forgive them), and answer prayer. There is nothing in science, understood properly, to say that these things are impossible. But I have seen these things happen, and as a scientist I need to take this as evidence that they are possible, and indeed should be expected to happen today.

Deborah and a woman from Bethlehem

2006-09-20T17:22:00.000+01:00

I usually agree with my blogger friend Lingamish, and I regret that I will not have time to meet him in person when he passes through London next week on his way back to Mozambique.

But I do have to disagree with one part of his recent posting on misogyny in the book of Judges, specifically his assessment of the role of Deborah. He quotes from my comment about her place in the book:

Indeed this “misogynist” book in fact gives one of the strongest biblical examples about a woman in leadership.

I was rather taken aback by his response to this:

Even the story of Deborah in Judges 4 & 5 is given not to show a woman in a positive leadership role but rather to shame the man who abdicated his responsibility. I’m not against women in leadership, but I don’t think you should look to the story of Deborah to show a positive role model.

Now it would come as no surprise to hear such teaching in some church circles. It is an embarrassment to those who have strong views about leadership being inherently male that the woman Deborah was clearly leading the people of Israel. But I can see no justification for treating her as a secondary character or a negative model in this picture. As I commented on Lingamish's blog:

I don’t think you are fair to Deborah to treat her simply as a minor character in the story of Barak. From a literary viewpoint she is the main character in the story, in both chapters 4 and 5. She, not Barak, was the judge with the authority to command even Barak in God’s name, 4:4-6. Those who downplay her part in the story to a mere foil for Barak are more guilty of misogyny than the author of this part of Judges.

I hope it is not fair to suggest that Lingamish himself is guilty of misogyny, but I would claim that, if not, he is uncritically accepting an interpretation of this passage by misogynists.

This is how I would interpret this passage:

All of the judges in the book of Judges should be understood as positive role models for us to the extent that they took up God's call to lead his people, and by following his leading defeated their enemies. But many of them are also presented as flawed individuals, with faults which are clearly pointed out. While it is an encouragement to us that God can use even imperfect people, the judges' faults are clearly not for us to copy.

Deborah is the judge in her time, the divinely called leader of Israel. She is also a prophet (4:4) and "a mother in Israel" (5:7). I note that there is no justification in the Hebrew for the distinction between "became Israel's judge" (3:10 TNIV, of Othniel) and "was leading Israel" (4:4 TNIV, of Deborah); in each case a verb "judge, lead" is used with "Israel" as the object. But the distinction is not gender-based, for oddly enough Othniel is the only individual called a "judge" in the book of Judges, in both NIV and TNIV. So there is no justification in the text for considering Deborah to be anything less than a full member of the succession of "judges" after whom the book is named.

The relationship between Deborah and Barak seems to have been that of political leader and appointed army commander, like that between King David and Joab. The ancient tradition was that the political leader personally led the troops into battle; indeed this was still common practice in Europe into the early modern period. In 2 Samuel 11:1, however, we read that David sent Joab off to fight his battles while he himself remained in Jerusalem, presumably busy with affairs of state as well as with his affair with Bathsheba. The often rebellious Joab doesn't seem to have complained on this occasion at being given his freedom.

In the rather similar position in Judges 4:6-9, Deborah clearly has the right to give orders to Barak in God's name, but she is reluctant to go into battle herself. We don't know why: maybe she thought this was not a woman's place, or maybe she had other work to do. But Barak refused to go into battle without the divinely appointed leader of the nation. Again we don't know why, but it certainly wasn't out of misogyny!

It is frequently alleged that Barak should have been the judge but that he refused the job and so Deborah had to do it. But that is not what the text says. It says that she was already the judge before there is any mention of Barak. And, while Deborah as a prophet speaks in the name of God, Barak does not; he is simply a soldier who follows God's guidance as relayed to him by Deborah and wins a battle (4:14-15). Maybe this is the key to Barak's reluctance: he knew that he needed God's help in this battle and he wanted the prophet Deborah to be on hand to pass on God's tactical guidance. But he need not have worried, for it was not him but God who routed Sisera and his army (4:15).

But there is certainly some truth in the suggestion that God uses women in leadership when they are willing to serve in this way but men are not - and when they are allowed to. The following story is taken from Light Force by Brother Andrew, about which I recently posted. It concerns a middle-aged Arab woman from the modern town of Bethlehem, who is already a Bible college graduate. This event took place in 1996 (p.200):

Nawal Qumsieh was ready and eager to go into ministry. But where? And how? At a seminar in Bethlehem, Nawal responded to the challenge. 'If anyone wants to dedicate his life to ministry for Jesus,' the guest speaker intoned, 'now is the time to come forward!' The man stepped back from the podium and bowed his head in prayer. Nawal slipped out of her seat and hurried to the front of the room. Out of some fifty in attendance, she was the only one to answer the call.

The speaker opened his eyes and looked around the room, then down at Nawal. He shook his head and said quietly so only Nawal could hear, 'Go back to your seat, please. Women cannot help in this society. We need men.'

Again the speaker challenged the audience. 'We need men to stand up for Christ in this culture. Will you come forward? Will you be part of the solution?'

Fighting back tears, Nawal walked slowly back to her seat. She felt like she'd been hit in her heart by a rubber bullet. Not one man took her place in the front. Now weeping, she prayed, 'Lord, who will minister to my people?'

And within her heart, she immediately sensed the answer: 'I am calling you to be in ministry.'

A little later in the book (pp.225-228) we find Nawal ministering in healing prayer and evangelism.

This happened in Bethlehem, but could it happen in your church, here in the west? Maybe it would be done a bit more subtly, but is the message going out that some classes of people, such as women or maybe less educated or ethnic minority people, are not really wanted for God's service?

Jesus said to his disciples,

"The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. ³⁸ Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field."
(Matthew 9:37-38, TNIV)

And he said the following just as a woman was bringing many people to meet him:

"... ³⁵ Don't you have a saying, 'It's still four months until harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. ³⁶ Even now those who reap draw their wages, even now they harvest the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. ³⁷ Thus the saying 'One sows and another reaps' is true. ³⁸ I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor."
(John 4:35-38, TNIV)

Yes, the workers are few. Sometimes the only workers available are women, but even when men do come forward there are rarely enough of them. And there is still a plentiful harvest: people who are going to a lost eternity unless they are reached with the gospel message. So let's not discourage any believers who God is calling to take a part in bringing in his harvest. Let's not reject them just because of their gender, or anything else, but let's encourage them all to find their place in God's work.

In the lands of the Bible God has been able to use women in his service, from the time of Deborah up to today when he is using women like Nawal. If he can use women even in the strongly patriarchal cultures of ancient Israel and modern Palestine, surely he can use them also in our own western cultures.

The acceptable face of charismaticism?

2006-09-13T20:48:00.000+01:00

In a post on his blog today, linking to sermons by one of his heroes, Adrian Warnock wrote:

C.J. Mahaney is well-known as the acceptable face of charismaticism.

I commented in response:

If CJ "The Father killed the Son" Mahaney is "the acceptable face of charismaticism", then may God preserve the non-Christian world from its unacceptable face!

Adrian deleted my comment, as he did not want to open up a new debate on this matter. In fact I had no intention of taking it any further, but maybe others would have tried to reopen the debate we had in June. (By the way, I don't want to reopen it with this post either.)

Well, I sympathise with Adrian to some extent. He recently had the comment thread on an excellent post on the charismatic debate hijacked by an irrelevant discussion about Benny Hinn. But in this case I was responding directly to a statement Adrian was making about Mahaney. It seems that Adrian is not willing for his statement to be questioned. He allowed all kinds of frankly libellous accusations to be made against Hinn (in fact he could probably get in legal trouble for publishing them), before eventually calling an end to that discussion. Could it be that he is so sensitive to a negative opinion about Mahaney because he doesn't personally agree with it?

Is censorship "the acceptable face of charismaticism"?

Bibles from China

2006-09-12T00:10:00.000+01:00

I never got round to posting about the Momentum conference as I had promised. I still might do. But for now all I will say was that one of the highlights was to hear Brother Andrew, of God's Smuggler fame. He was talking mainly about his more recent work in various Middle Eastern countries. This is also described in his more recent book Light Force, which I am currently reading. Brother Andrew also reminded us that Jesus told us to "Go and make disciples...", but didn't say anything about coming back!

Today I happened to read, in the latest issue of the Evangelical Alliance's idea magazine, that Brother Andrew's organisation Open Doors is marking 25 years since "Project Pearl", in which it successfully smuggled a million Bibles into China. Sadly, 25 years on there is still a severe shortage of Bibles in China.

In the light of this, I found it rather ironic that Bibles in the Momentum conference bookshop were being unpacked from boxes labelled "Printed in China". It was not just one version or edition, but a wide variety as far as I could tell, which came in boxes so marked. It seems that the People's Republic is quite happy to make money by printing cheap Bibles for export to the West, but does not allow them to be printed or imported in adequate numbers for its own people.

As Christians, should we buy Bibles which are printed in a country which does not allow its own people access to Bibles? Should we support the Chinese economy in this way? Maybe that is worth thinking about.

At least the Bible which I bought there, a small format TNIV reduced from £18.99 to £8.99, was "Printed in Great Britain", although that is not why I chose it.

Theology, language or world view?

2006-09-09T23:56:00.000+01:00

I have been rather quiet recently on this blog. But I have just uploaded to the Better Bibles Blog a post which may be of general interest, on The TNIV controversy: a matter of theology, of language, or of world view? This post takes as its starting point the ongoing controversy on that blog about the TNIV Bible translation, and relates it to the general conservative world view, and to the need for Christians to put God before their world views.

Adrian defends charismatic experience of God

2006-09-05T23:26:00.000+01:00

Adrian Warnock has written an excellent defence of the charismatic position, especially against negative comments from the cessationist Dan Phillips. Adrian contends powerfully for "an authentic, experiential, and relational Christianity", and for the legitimacy of charismatic experience of God's presence. He also quotes passages from Piper, Lloyd-Jones and Spurgeon in support of his position.

Here are some extracts, all Adrian's own words:

The desperate need of the hour is a vibrant, living Christianity which worships a God who is not dead, but acts today! ...

For most of the charismatics I know at least, it is NOT mere emotion that we seek; rather we seek an appropriate emotional response to the presence of God, and we seek His activity in our lives and churches to be manifestly present. ...

We must approach the Bible prayerfully, with an open heart, and cry out to the God of the Bible to make Himself plain to us as we read. I seek my experience of God within the context of His revealed Word to us - not outside it. ...

Such knowledge is, of course, only perfected when we see Him face to face, but in the meantime, here on earth, I do believe we can expect moments when heaven seems almost to break in and we respond with joy and wonder at the manifest presence of our coming king.

I have experienced such "moments when heaven seems almost to break in" myself. Indeed something like this was happening at our church worship and prayer meeting last night. Such experiences must not of course be sought for their own sake, and must not be separated from proper biblical understanding. But I too long to "respond with joy and wonder at the manifest presence of our coming king".

My church's new website launched

2006-09-04T23:27:00.000+01:00

My church's new website has been launched. I have been one of the team working on it. I am not responsible for the "funky" design, but I did put together quite a lot of the content.

God is not a God of disorder but of peace

2006-08-30T12:58:00.000+01:00

In a comment on my Theology quiz results post, TS asked about 1 Corinthians 14:33 "For God is not a God of disorder but of peace—as in all the congregations of the Lord's people." (TNIV):

Is it relevant only for prophets speaking in turn, or is it a case against "untoward" manifestations in church service? Are non-charismatics right in accusing charismatic services as being out of order based on this verse?

This is an excellent question!

It seems to me that this verse gives a general principle, which here is being applied specifically to gatherings of the church but can be applied more widely. I don't think the specific application here is only to prophecy, but to everything described in verses 26 to 32. Indeed the point is basically to support the last part of verse 26, "Everything must be done so that the church may be built up." (TNIV). Thus it does apply to "untoward" manifestations of any kind, but of course that depends on exactly what is considered "untoward".

On the second question, I wonder if it is based on a misunderstanding of typical charismatic church gatherings. Now I accept that some charismatic meetings are disordered, and thereby wrong according to Paul's teaching here. But these are the minority, or at least I hope they are, and I don't seek to defend them. However, from my own experience the majority of charismatic gatherings are in fact rather well ordered. It is just that the type of order found in them is not the same as is found in more formal church services. But in fact these meetings are much closer to what Paul is recommending here than those formal church services are.

It is I guess hard to define a typical charismatic gathering, and my own experience is not all that wide. But from what I have seen, these meetings are usually clearly led by one person who is in charge of what is happening, and who may delegate to others authority over parts of the meeting. In fact times when the meeting is thrown open for congregational participation are usually a small part of the whole, if they occur at all; Paul's "two or three prophets" (verse 29) tends to be a guideline. In most cases people only speak if given explicit permission by the leader - it helps that in larger meetings they need a microphone. Good leaders exercise discernment by giving permission to speak only to those they know and trust, and when they are unsure of the appropriateness of what is said they make this clear and ask God to give them and the congregation discernment. There is little disorder here.

The times which might seem disorderly are "ministry" times, when people are invited to respond to the message by coming forward for prayer. This necessarily involves several things happening at once; but then I don't suppose the 3000 baptised on the day of Pentecost were dealt with strictly one at a time. But the prayer for each individual is generally led by people authorised by the church to do so. The difficulties for some are with the manifestations which sometimes occur at these times such as falling over, laughter and other loud noises, of the kinds associated with the Toronto Blessing. I can appreciate that these are disturbing to some, but in general they are happening with the blessing of whoever is leading the meeting, and so can hardly be called disorderly. In well run meetings those who manifest very openly will be talked to by experienced stewards, and if necessary taken aside for special prayer.

So, the principle "God is not a God of disorder but of peace" certainly applies to charismatic church meetings. And it is one which leaders of those meetings generally seek to put into practice. But I don't think it can be used as a general condemnation of those meetings. Rather, it teaches that meetings should be led firmly but sensitively, by leaders authorised by the church and following the leading of the Holy Spirit.

God is not a spot in the brain

2006-08-30T12:49:00.000+01:00

Some interesting research reported by the BBC:

There is no single "God spot" in the brain, Canadian scientists say.

Studies on nuns have shown that personal experiences of communication with God cannot be located in any particular part of the brain. But this is not a surprise to me. As Father Stephen Wang says in this report,

True Christian mysticism is an encounter with the living God. We meet him in the depths of our souls. It is an experience that goes far beyond the normal boundaries of human psychology and consciousness.

Singleness: Köstenberger versus Maken

2006-08-28T20:23:00.000+01:00

Although I don't always agree with Andreas Köstenberger on gender-related issues, I appreciate what he has to say about singleness, part 1 and part 2. But I don't appreciate Debbie Maken's response, preaching that for most people it is wrong to remain single.

Unlike either of these two protagonists, but like significant Christian leaders such as John Stott and Mike Pilavachi, leader of the event I just got back from, I am single myself. This is neither from deliberate choice nor from a settled conviction that God has called me to singleness. In fact I rather believe that God has called me to get married at some time. But, from a combination of circumstances and a belief at various times that now was not the right time to look for a partner, this has not yet happened, even though I have now passed 50. A few years ago I was engaged briefly, but it didn't last. More recently I signed up for a short time with Christian Connection, a dating agency, and made a few friends through it but it didn't seem right to pursue anything. I continue to struggle with loneliness, as one of the very few singles anywhere near my age in my church or among my friends. And the attitude of the church is not always helpful. But for the moment I also appreciate the freedom from other responsibilities that gives me time to serve God, and to pursue other interests which are mostly related to God's work. And I continue to trust God to bring the right marriage partner into my life at the right time if that is right, and to continue to provide for me as a single man if that is his better way for me.

Theology quiz results

2006-08-26T17:46:00.000+01:00

I'm safely back from Momentum, and intending to blog about it when I get round to it. But first I have been looking at what other bloggers have been up to while I have been away. I have already responded to Adrian on the Better Bibles Blog.

Rick of ThisLamp took a couple of theological quizzes, so I decided to do the same, and like him to share my results.

On Eucharistic theology, I seem to fall right in the middle, or perhaps I'm just confused. The quiz had to ask me a tiebreaker to classify me as Zwingli. Here are the results:

You scored as Zwingli. You are Ulrich Zwingli. You believe that bread and wine are mere symbols of the absent Jesus. You believe in interpreting Scripture reasonably.

Zwingli

69%

Calvin

69%

Luther

69%

Unitarian

19%

Catholic

13%

Eucharistic theology
created with QuizFarm.com

And then on my general theological worldview, I was a little surprised to find myself classified as Wesleyan, although again with something of an eclectic mix of views. I might have come out more Charismatic/Pentecostal if I had accepted that tongues were important for salvation, which is not a teaching of most charismatics. But then I rather agree with Rick that there are not enough questions in this test to distinguish between all these different theologies. My results:

You scored as Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan. You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God's grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly by John Wesley and the Methodists.

Evangelical Holiness/ Wesleyan

89%

Emergent/ Postmodern

79%

Charismatic/ Pentecostal

71%

Neo orthodox

68%

Reformed Evangelical

43%

Fundamentalist

36%

Classical Liberal

36%

Modern Liberal

32%

Roman Catholic

29%

What's your theological worldview?
created with QuizFarm.com

Getting The Momentum Going

2006-08-18T19:56:00.000+01:00

This blog seems to have lost some momentum in the last week or so. This is largely because I have been unexpectedly busy. August is usually a quiet month for me, as for most people it seems, at least in the northern hemisphere. But for various reasons I have been rather busy this week. The blogging I have been doing has mostly been on the Better Bibles Blog: four short posts by me spread over the last two Fridays.

The blogging momentum won't be getting going again here for the next few days, in fact not until next Thursday at the earliest. This is because I am going away, with no Internet access, to a Christian event called Momentum. This is an offshoot of Soul Survivor, a network of Christian youth events with an evangelical and charismatic basis. They write:

The heart of Soul Survivor is to envision young people of all denominations to capture first a vision of Jesus, and then to equip, train, empower and release them into his ministry in their every day lives.

Last year they had over 22,000 guests at their three summer camping events, held at Shepton Mallet, Somerset - 3-4 hours drive south west of here. For several years the young people from my church have gone to this event and had a great time, as have my pastor and his wife. Their excuse for going has been to take their own children and help to lead the other youth, but it seems to have been a real blessing to them as well, and has made me want to see what it is all about.

This year, a group of teens from my church is currently at the regular Soul Survivor youth camp. They come home tomorrow but will be replaced by a group of mostly twenty-somethings going to Momentum, which is designed for that age group.

Well, it is some years since I no longer qualified for that group. But I decided to pretend to be in my twenties for a few days and join my rather younger friends for a week under canvas. I haven't camped in Britain for many years, only in Egypt and Australia where warmth was guaranteed. So I am relieved that the five day weather forecast is looking quite good.

I am looking forward to learning all the latest worship songs, and using them to worship God among thousands of others. I am looking forward to fellowship with a group of enthusiastic young (many in both ways) Christians. And I am looking forward to God inspiring me and equipping me for whatever he has in store for me.

I hope to tell you all a bit more in about a week's time.

Bible Puzzler

2006-08-17T11:07:00.000+01:00

Lingamish has invited me to be a Bible Puzzler, and I have agreed to be an occasional participant. The purpose of this is:

To demonstrate Bible study skills.
To model collaborative scholarship.
To promote application of the Bible to real-world situations.

He is looking for a few more bloggers to join him, so if you are interested please contact him, by comment on his new blog. Meanwhile I will be interested to see how this series goes.

I'm a PneumaBlogger!

2006-08-15T21:27:00.000+01:00

Rich Tatum has added me to his PneumaBlogs list of "Select Pentecostal, Charismatic, and Assemblies of God Bloggers".

Post-Charismatic?

2006-08-12T23:24:00.000+01:00

I would like to thank Lingamish for bringing to my attention a very interesting site called Post-Charismatic. This site consists of a series of articles, or a short e-book, which Rob McAlpine, a Canadian and former pastor, has written about the charismatic movement, and about those he calls "post-charismatics" because they have been through the charismatic movement and left it, without necessarily rejecting its principles. (His "post-charismatics" should not be confused with "ex-charismatics" like the cessationist Dan Phillips.)

McAlpine's history of the charismatic movement is very interesting, but deliberately focuses on three main areas of distorted, or at least controversial, teaching which have affected the movement: Latter Rain, Prosperity and Shepherding. He seems himself to be one of many people who has been involved in the charismatic movement but has become confused and disillusioned by these kinds of teaching. Indeed some of these people seem to be so hurt that they have entirely given up on churches or on the gifts of the Spirit. McAlpine's focus in his series is on helping such people to recover from such shipwrecks the essential features of their Spirit-filled Christian life.

I can agree with most of what McAlpine's positive attitude towards the central charismatic teachings and negative assessments of the controversial teachings he describes. But he does seem to me rather negative about the charismatic movement as a movement. It seems to me, from my British perspective, that there is still a lot of hope for the movement. While it has been damaged by some distorted teachings, they have by no means destroyed it. There is still a vibrant core of charismatic believers and churches who have avoided the excesses of these teachings, while discerningly accepting what is good in them.

So, I see no reason to call myself a post-charismatic, to dissociate myself from the charismatic movement, or to accept that, as Lingamish suggests, the word "charismatic" is a slur. I am proud to be a charismatic Christian, as well as an evangelical at least in the British sense which is somewhat weaker than the American one. Yes, I and my church need continuing vigilance against all kinds of errors, and against the dangers of shallowness and hype. But, as we follow the example of Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit, we can look forward in confidence to continuing to do great things for God.

Jesus is Our Fully Human Example

2006-08-11T20:31:00.000+01:00

One of the most important lessons I learned for my Christian life was that Jesus is fully human. I had recited that as part of the Creeds since childhood, and I had believed it at least in theory. But in my first few years as a Bible-believing Christian, in an environment where good Bible teaching was highly valued but the Holy Spirit was mostly ignored, the humanity of the second Person of the Trinity was also given little attention.

I did of course learn that it was necessary for Jesus to be human for him to take on the cross the punishment deserved by the rest of humankind. But the idea I had of Jesus living on earth was of a divine being with superhuman powers in a human form, perhaps with an actual human body. This Jesus was portrayed as someone entirely unique, someone whom ordinary Christians could not aspire to be like. And Jesus now reigning in heaven just seemed to be totally divine.

Let me first make a disclaimer to avoid any misunderstanding. I accept and believe that Jesus is the divine Son of God, fully God as well as fully human. The Bible clearly teaches this. But it also clearly teaches the other side of the picture, that he is fully human.

It was only after I experienced the Holy Spirit for myself (I received the so-called "Baptism of the Holy Spirit" and spoke in tongues) that I started to understand the wider significance of Jesus' full humanity. Perhaps this is because I started reading books with a rather different perspective. I started to understand that Jesus is the perfect example for us to follow. Paul wrote, "I follow the example of Christ", and on this basis told the Corinthians to "Follow my example" (1 Corinthians 11:1, TNIV). Thus Jesus is an example even for us to follow.

You may ask as perhaps I did, how can this be? Jesus is the sinless Son of God, and we are sinful people, so how can we aspire to follow his example? The answer comes here:

we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.
Hebrews 4:15 (TNIV^©, American edition)

What an encouragement! Jesus faced the same kinds of trials and temptations that we do, and emerged victorious through them all! If he did, so can we. This is made clear here:

let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, ² fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.
Hebrews 12:1-2 (TNIV^©)

The word translated "pioneer" here means something like "the first to follow a path", perhaps "trailblazer". Jesus was the first to run the race and to live the life of faith, and, because he did, we too can. (Yes, I know it is theologically controversial to suggest that Jesus had faith, but I won't go into that issue just now.)

Furthermore, if we are called to follow Jesus' example, that must mean that we should expect to do the same kinds of things which Jesus did. This is confirmed in John's gospel, where Jesus said:

Very truly I tell you, all who have faith in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.
John 14:12 (TNIV^©)

Note that although this was spoken to the twelve apostles, the promise is not restricted to them, or even to those who lived in their lifetime, but is a promise to all who have faith in Jesus. There is no room here for cessationism.

What kinds of works is Jesus talking about here? The answer just came as a surprise to me. Jesus is talking about the very same works which, in the previous verse, he was appealing to as evidence that "I am in the Father and the Father is in me" (John 14:11, TNIV). He is not referring to acts of kindness which any person can do, but to the miraculous signs which proved that God had sent him, signs such as turning water into wine, "the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory" (John 2:11, TNIV), and feeding the five thousand, a sign which caused many to believe in him (John 6:14). It seems that Jesus expects "all who have faith in me" to do not just similar works but even greater ones.

The objection that I would have made to this argument is that Jesus performed his miracles, and especially these great signs, because he was divine and so omnipotent. There is, I thought, no way that we humans can do anything even remotely comparable, because we are limited to what our natural human bodies can do. This argument might seem to be decisive, but the Bible clearly does not allow us to take this position. Firstly, it is contradicted by John 14:12, as we have already seen. And then, from a quite different angle, it is also contradicted by this passage:

But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.
Mark 13:32 (TNIV^©)

Jesus didn't know something, so in his ministry, at least at this point, he was not operating in his omniscient divine nature. Yet he did know that the angels didn't know this, something which was not known to everyone. How did he have some supernatural knowledge but not all knowledge? The only answer, it seems, is that he was operating in his human nature but the Holy Spirit was revealing some divine truth to him. (I have taken this argument from Confronting the Powers by C. Peter Wagner, pp.129-130.)

It is of course no coincidence that Jesus' ministry began soon after he received the Holy Spirit. Before his baptism, Jesus seems to have lived a normal life. No childhood miracles are recorded in the biblical gospels, although some implausible fables are found in non-canonical gospels and in the Qur'an. The young Jesus was an exceptional student (Luke 2:46-47) but showed no special powers. Then at his baptism the Holy Spirit came upon him, and immediately led him into the wilderness to be tempted (Mark 1:9-13). Only after that did he begin to preach and to heal in the power of the Spirit (Luke 4:14-15, Matthew 4:23), and to drive out demons by the Spirit of God (Matthew 12:28).

The implication seems clear: Jesus carried out all of his ministry as a human being filled with the Holy Spirit. He exercised the gifts of the Spirit, such as prophecy in his prophetic preaching, healing and miraculous powers. The divine Son of God had voluntarily "emptied himself" (Philippians 2:7, RSV) of his divine attributes like omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence and submitted himself to the limitations of a human body. But as a perfect human, perfectly filled by the Holy Spirit, he could operate perfectly in the gifts of the Spirit, and so do the great works which proved that God had sent him.

So what of us? We too, as Christians, have received the Holy Spirit - whether or not we have had a specific experience of the Spirit's power. We are not perfectly filled with the Spirit because of our sinfulness, and need to seek continual new filling (Ephesians 5:18; the verb "be filled" is in the present continuous tense). But the same Holy Spirit who filled Jesus also fills us, and so in the power of the Spirit we can do the same works that Jesus did, and indeed even greater works, probably because there is, or should be, not one person but the whole church for the Spirit to work through.

This is not all a matter of great miracles. Through the Spirit we can experience the same close relationship with the Father which Jesus experienced. We can hear the Father speaking to us and let him speak through us. We can aim to be like Jesus in this:

the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.
John 5:19 (TNIV^©)

And as we do what we see the Father doing, as revealed to us by the Holy Spirit, we will find ourselves, together as the church, doing even greater things than Jesus did: bringing his power, his compassion, and his saving message not just to one small country, as he did during his life on earth, but to the whole world.

Is Conservative America Waking Up to Global Warming?

2006-08-08T11:47:00.000+01:00

Is conservative America finally waking up to the damage which its lifestyle of unrestricted oil use is doing to our planet? Are the ostriches at last taking their heads out of the sand and looking at the irrefutable evidence that global warming is happening, and is very probably caused by burning of fossil fuels? There are at least hopeful signs of this even in the Bible belt of Kentucky, from the blog of the influential Ben Witherington, Professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary. But then Asbury, with its continuing emphasis on "well-trained, sanctified, Spirit-filled, evangelistic ministry", is sadly not a typical part of the Bible belt. I will be more hopeful for the future of the earth when the same attitude spreads across Kentucky from the Lexington area to Louisville and Al Mohler's Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.

Cessationism Undermines the Bible

2006-08-07T14:14:00.000+01:00

My previous posting about tongues continues a theme which has been developing on this blog in the last few weeks, my argument against the cessationist position that the gifts of the Holy Spirit no longer operate in today's church. Here I want to make what seems to me one of the most telling arguments against cessationism, which is that it undermines the authority of the Bible.

I am glad that on this matter I can agree with Adrian Warnock, despite our past differences on the position of women in the church. Adrian wrote, arguing against cessationism:

Why, on the one hand, are we at liberty to ignore Paul's clear commands to the Corinthians to “eagerly desire spiritual gifts” and to "not forbid speaking in tongues” (1 Corinthians 14:39) when, on the other hand, we are expected to accept all of his other commands to local churches as applying to us today? If these two commands do not apply to us, which other of Paul's commands also do not apply? How are we then meant to decide which of Paul's commands we are going to obey and which we are going to ignore?

Many of my readers have appreciated my posting on Bible deists, based largely on Jack Deere's book Surprised by the Voice of God. So I will turn again to this book. In it Deere uses much the same argument as Adrian's when he explains, in chapter 18, "Unbelief through Theology", how when he was a cessationist and Bible deist he used to argue against those who claimed that God speaks today apart from Scripture. Here are some extracts from his argument, starting on p.275:

But my opponents were not so easily discouraged. In desperation they searched the New Testament until they came up with some examples of nonapostolic people hearing God's voice just like the apostles did. They used examples where God spoke very specifically about nonmoral matters. For example, Agabus, a prophet, not an apostle, accurately predicted a famine that "spread over the entire Roman world" (Acts 11:28). This prophecy was particularly embarrassing. It concerned food, or better, the lack of food. It was one of the topics about which I said God didn't speak. ... How could I discard examples like these? It wasn't easy. My opponents were now shooting bullets that the shield of the apostles couldn't stop. I needed a bulletproof vest to survive this attack.

Deere continues by finding an argument from "historical necessity" to explain that Agabus' prophecy was unique. But his opponents rejected this, and so he writes, on pp.276-277 (emphasis is Deere's):

My bulletproof vest of historical necessity couldn't protect me against cannon shells. How could I argue that the modern church was no longer faced with "historical necessities" that required answers from the voice of God? ... I needed a fortress or else I was going down before these kinds of biblical examples. At this point, I discovered the very fortress I needed. It was impenetrable!

Only During the Period of the Open Canon

"You have to understand that these kinds of revelations were given before the Bible was completed. Neither Agabus nor the others had all the completed Bible, which tells us how important unity really is," I replied. That was the clincher. In these arguments, the phrase I dearly loved was, "that happened during the period of the open canon." The word "canon" means the list of books that belong in the Bible. The canon was "open" while the New Testament writings were being added to it. Somehow everything was different in this period. It was supernatural, perhaps too supernatural. It was also too subjective. But that was only because it was "the period of the open canon." What a great phrase! I could demolish any argument with it. Any example could be explained away by that profound phrase. Let God speak as often as he wanted during the period of the open canon. Let him speak to nonapostles, even to absolute dummies, or better yet, even through dumb animals. None of these examples was relevant because they all came from the period of the open canon. Now, however, we had the period of the Bible. And the Bible had replaced all other forms of God's communication. There weren't two tracks of revelation - only one, the Bible. So let my opponent use any biblical example from Genesis to Revelation. It didn't matter if the example had the force of an atomic bomb, I had found a theological fortress that could withstand the blast. "Sorry," I would say, "your example comes from the time before the Bible was completed. You can't use it now that we are in the period of the completed Bible." ...

Perhaps by now you've come to appreciate the brilliant character of my methodology. No matter what example you brought to me from the Bible I could discount its contemporary relevance. It never occurred to me that these four arguments actually eliminated the use of all biblical examples in theological discussion. Every biblical example must be drawn from the period of the open canon.

This way of arguing actually meant, "I have made up my mind on this matter and I will not allow any verse from the Bible to challenge or correct my position."

In other words, Deere is effectively showing that his former cessationist position, although on the surface exalting the Bible above fallible human experience, in fact undermines the Bible and robs it of its authority. For his argument about the period of the open canon can be applied not just to biblical examples, but also to explicit biblical teaching. For example, Paul explicitly teaches the Corinthians to "eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy" (1 Corinthians 14:1, TNIV). But if these gifts operated only during the period of the open canon, then this instruction of Paul's applies only to this period. Yet there is no explicit teaching in the Bible about this limitation. So, in this case, as Adrian wrote:

How are we then meant to decide which of Paul's commands we are going to obey and which we are going to ignore?

Answering a Pyromaniac on Tongues

2006-08-06T23:44:00.000+01:00

There is an interesting discussion going on mainly between Adrian Warnock and Dan Phillips (one of the Pyromaniacs) about the gift of tongues. Dan argues against Adrian from the cessationist position which I have mentioned in other recent postings, that this gift and all other gifts of the Holy Spirit are no longer in operation today.

I made the following comment on part 3 of Dan's series - I could have demolished more of his arguments, but chose what seemed to be his weakest points:

Dan, a couple of points to clarify some of your very dodgy exegesis.

First, on Acts 2:17-18, you seem to imply that you understand this to refer to the authoring of Scripture. Thus you seem to restrict "all flesh ... your sons and daughters ... my male servants and female servants" to the Apostles, and the very few others who wrote Scripture. Was the audience restricted to the apostles' parents? Were any of the Scripture authors anyone's daughters? Is "all flesh" to be understood as referring to something like a dozen people at most? No, surely the clear intention of Peter, as reported by Luke, is to say that in these last days (or is today a period after the last days?) this prophecy can be applied to everyone, that all can expect to prophesy. This is of course precisely in agreement with what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 14:1, that all should aspire to prophesy.

And then, referring to 1 Corinthians 14:21-22 and Isaiah 28:11-12, you wrote "The "tongues" Paul writes of are the "tongues" Isaiah wrote of, and those "tongues" are human, foreign languages." I don't think so. Look at the context in Isaiah 28. In verses 10 and 13 we have the very words which God uses to speak to his people: צַו לָצָו צַו לָצָו קַו לָקָו קַו לָקָו tsaw latsaw tsaw latsaw qaw laqaw qaw laqaw. These are NOT words in any foreign language, at least as far as I know. Most Bible translations do a disservice by trying to translate the words as if they were Hebrew, although really they are not, they are nonsense syllables (in fact I wouldn't blame you for suggesting that they are something like some modern charismatic "tongues"!). The point is that they are supposed to be some kind of nonsense baby talk - and (in v.13) they are not supposed to be a comprehensible message, because God's purpose is that it should not be understood.

This is of course a rather complex issue, but it certainly does not support your contention that biblical tongues are always real human languages. In fact it is probably a counter-example, to go along with other counter-examples such as 1 Corinthians 14:4. And (apart from your suggestion that Paul is saying that speaking in tongues is something one should not do, refuted by v.18) the only argument you have to dismiss the counter-examples is that they contradict Paul's "own flat-out and in-so-many-words statement that tongues are human languages" - which is in fact not at all "flat-out and in so many words" referring to ALL tongues but a quotation from a rather complex and obscure passage in Isaiah which does not necessarily refer to all tongues or to human languages at all. So, it seems to me, you are using the unclear to explain the clear, the opposite of how you should do exegesis in such circumstances.

In part 2 you wrote, "An ironclad case can be (and has been) made from Scripture that tongues were always supernaturally acquired human languages." Is this your ironclad case? (Where by the way is there any indication that the tongues of Isaiah 28 were supernaturally acquired?) It seems that your iron cladding is in fact very thin and rusty, and can very easily be demolished by the sword of the Spirit, the word of God, which has supernatural power to destroy strongholds. And since all of what you wrote in part 2 depends on this "ironclad case", now that that case has collapsed the whole of part 2 has been invalidated. In fact I don't think much is left of any of your arguments.

And then I wrote the following as a comment on part 4 of the series:

Dan, I won't make a long comment here like I just made on part 3 (which in fact managed to refute part 2 as well). But I do want to object to your caricature of charismatic services. You wrote:
If you've been to many Charismatic services, you don't need me to go on. You could fill in gaps yourself—how the music is geared and chanted to excite the emotions directly, the preaching aimed at working directly on the emotions, the bodily choreography devised to create a mood and a feeling. It's sheer psychological manipulation, though in many cases no doubt with the best of intentions.
This is probably an accurate description of some charismatic services. It is certainly not an accurate description of all of them. In particular, your description of charismatic preaching is so wide of the mark as to be libellous. You can for example download and listen to the sermons from my charismatic Anglican church (I recommend the recent series on Acts by Mones Farah), or Adrian Warnock's sermons (which I admit I haven't listened to myself). Listen and then tell us if these are really "aimed at working directly on the emotions ... sheer psychological manipulation".

I am sure that Adrian and I, as well as very many other charismatics, would agree on teaching that Christians need a proper balance between the Spirit and the Word, avoiding both the over-emphasis on the Spirit of your caricature charismatics and the over-emphasis on the Word of many cessationists. This is the main point I was trying to make in my own recent posting on Bible deists, especially the final passage quoted from the former cessationist Jack Deere who, it seems to me, has now found something like the right balance.

I am repeating these comments here for a clearer record, in other words so that Dan cannot just delete them if he can't answer them, and also to bring others into this discussion.

Many new hits

2006-08-03T23:51:00.000+01:00

I am encouraged to see from my hit counter (click the map on the right side panel, or here) that I am gaining readership from all round the world, from every continent except Antarctica, including something over 70 locations in the USA, one in the Yukon and one right in the middle of the Australian desert - if the higher resolution version of the map is accurate.

I guess my Scholarly and Fundamentalist Approaches series and my Bible Deists posting have been popular. The latter has been linked to from Henry Neufeld's Participatory Bible Study blog - thank you, Henry. This may have generated a number of extra hits. Henry offers a useful, and freely downloadable, introduction "I Want to Study the Bible" - although I would never have the patience to read through a passage his recommended twelve times! And, from a brief look, there is a lot of other good material on that blog.

Taking a short break

2006-07-30T22:39:00.000+01:00

I know service on this blog has been a bit intermittent recently. I had intended to post about Bible deists yesterday, Saturday, but ran out of time to complete it and didn't get the chance to finish it until this evening, Sunday.

I had been planning a two week break from blogging for my trip to Israel. That has not happened, but I am now taking a break for a few days, and announcing it in advance. Tomorrow morning I leave for the Suffolk coast, about 80 miles north of here in Chelmsford, where I will be staying with some friends who have taken a chalet there. This should be a quiet and peaceful time - although my friends' 12-year-old son will stop it being boring! The weather looks promising, mostly sunny but without the excessive heat of the last couple of weeks. I expect to be home on Thursday, but I will be busy with other things on Friday, so I may not blog again, or answer comments, for another week or so.

Bible Deists

2006-07-29T14:21:00.000+01:00

I have just finished reading Surprised by the Voice of God by Dr Jack Deere, from which I quoted in my posting God is Testing Our Availability. In this book Deere, a pastor and once a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, explains how he moved from the position that God speaks only through the Bible to an expectation that God speaks to his people today, if only they will listen to him.

The chapter which struck me most is called Confessions of a Bible Deist (chapter 17). This relates to some of the themes I explored in my series The Scholarly and Fundamentalist Approaches to the Bible, and especially in Part 6: Conclusions.

For some of you I may need to explain first that a deist is someone who believes that God made the universe but since then has stood back and let it get on on its own. They are perhaps the scoffers of whom Peter prophesied that they would say: "everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation" (2 Peter 3:4, TNIV). It should be clear to all that this is not at all the Christian perspective, although some deists outwardly conform to Christianity. Deism was well known in the 18th century (many of the founding fathers of the USA were deists), and it is still common today. Freemasonry is in fact fundamentally a deistic religion, although its incompatibility with Christianity is made clear only to those who get into it deeply. Deere notes that the 18th century deists worshipped human reason, and it seems to be true today at least that deists give a higher place to human reason than to divine revelation.

Some Christians today, although not quite deists, hold to what is in practice an almost deistic position, that since the days of Jesus and the apostles God has let the world get on on its own, and will intervene again only at the end of time. Some who hold this kind of position are theological liberals. But others are what Deere calls "Bible deists". Deere describes them as follows (pp. 251-253) (emphasis in all of these quotes is as in the original):

The Bible deists of today worship the Bible. Bible deists have great difficulty separating Christ and the Bible. Unconsciously in their minds the Bible and Christ merge into one entity. Christ cannot speak or be known apart from the Bible. ...

Bible deists preach and teach the Bible rather than Christ. They do not understand how it is possible to preach the Bible without preaching Christ. Their highest goal is the impartation of biblical knowledge. ...

The Bible deist talks a lot about the sufficiency of Scripture. For him [PK: what about her? - but then most Bible deists don't let women teach Scripture] the sufficiency of Scripture means that the Bible is the only way God speaks to us today. ... Although the Bible deist loudly proclaims the sufficiency of Scripture, in reality, he is proclaiming the sufficiency of his own interpretation of the Scripture. Bible deists aren't alone in this error. ...

So it is extremely difficult for Bible deists to concede that they themselves might be presently holding an erronoeus interpretation. They refer to their opponents' interpretations as "taken out of context," or as a failure to apply consistent hermeneutical principles. Or, in some cases, where they have little respect for their opponents, they chalk up their opponents' views to just plain sloppy thinking. ...

The Bible deist is so confident in the sufficiency of his interpretation that it is difficult for him to be corrected by experience.

How does Deere know about Bible deists? Because he used to be one, as he admits. (So was I, for my first few years as a Christian before I experienced the power of the Holy Spirit - but that story needs to wait for another time.) Deere notes (pp. 254-255):

I had another motive for being a Bible deist and resisting subjective revelatory experiences. I wanted to preserve the unique authority of the Bible. I was afraid that if any form of divine communication other than the Bible were allowed, we would weaken the Bible's authority and eventually be led away from the Lord. ...

My heart was filled with fear of God - not the biblical fear of God, but a fear of intimacy with him. I wanted a personal relationship with God, but I didn't want an intimate one. ...

So I decided that my primary relationship would be to a book, not to a Person. ... With Bible deism, I could be in control.

Deere goes on to say (p. 257):

One of the most serious flaws in Bible deism is the confidence the Bible deist places in his abilities to interpret the Bible. He assumes that the greater his knowledge of the Bible, the more accurate his interpretations are. This follows logically from a hermeneutical axiom the Bible deist often quotes: The Bible is the key to its own interpretation. In other words, the Bible interprets the Bible the best. Wrong! It takes more than the Bible to interpret the Bible.

The Author of the Bible is the best interpreter of the Bible. In fact, he is the only reliable interpreter.

And if the Spirit's illumination is the key to interpreting the Bible, isn't the Bible deist's confidence in his own interpretive abilities arrogant and foolhardy? How does one persuade God to illumine the Bible? Does God give illumination to the ones who know Hebrew and Greek the best? To the ones who read and memorize Scripture the most? What if the condition of one's heart is more important for understanding the Bible than the abilities of one's mind? Is it possible that the illumination of the Holy Spirit to understand Scripture might be given on a basis other than education or mental abilities?

I could quote a lot more of this, but better still you should read the book. I will summarise just one more section. Deere looks at the story of the Emmaus Road in Luke 24, and concludes (pp. 263-264):

During dinner, "their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, 'Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?' " (vv. 31-32). God supernaturally "opened" the disciples' eyes to recognize Jesus. He wasn't making dumb people smart. He was letting these two disciples see who the Lord Jesus really was. ...

Unless the Lord Jesus opens our eyes, we will never really see him. The disciples used the same word whenever they said that Jesus "opened the Scriptures to us." Unless Jesus opens the Scriptures, we will miss much of their truth. We can read and memorize the Bible without Jesus. We can teach the Bible without him. But our hearts will never burn with passion until he becomes our teacher and enters into the interpretive process with us.

Now it seems to me that Bible deists include both those who use the fundamentalist approach to the Bible and those who use the scholarly approach. What they have in common is that they reject the role of the Holy Spirit in interpreting and applying the Bible to contemporary life. Some of them are cessationists, as defined in The Scholarly and Fundamentalist Approaches to the Bible, Part 6: Conclusions, but there may be others who accept some gifts of the Holy Spirit but do not in practice accept that he speaks today to guide in the interpretation of Scripture.

It seems to me that Bible deists are missing out on a huge amount of what it means to be a Christian. For it seems that, while they may assert that the have a relationship with God, they are missing out on the real benefits of such a relationship, the intimacy in which we not only speak to God but hear him speaking to us. Well, that is the theme of a lot of the rest of Deere's book. I am sad for what Bible deists miss out on for themselves. But they can also do real harm to others, for as Deere writes at the end of this chapter (p. 268):

When someone thinks they have mastered the Bible, or mastered it relative to others in their circle, they inevitably become corrupted through the pride of knowledge. Remember, "knowledge puffs up" (1 Cor. 8:1). ... Instead of operating as the sword of the Spirit, the Bible in the hands of the Bible deist becomes the bludgeon of the bully. They use the authority gained by their superior knowledge of the Bible to bully the less knowledgeable.

To this I would add only that sometimes this supposedly superior knowledge of the Bible is in fact very superficial, of the fundamentalist kind in which verses are wrenched out of context. Even where lip service is paid to Hebrew and Greek it is clear that the interpretation is in fact dependent on a misleading English translation.

Let me finish with the following from Deere, which is more or less the end of his book (p. 358):

Somewhere along the way, though, the church has encouraged a silent divorce between the Word and the Spirit. Divorces are painful, both for the children and the parents. One parent usually gets custody of the children, and the other only gets to visit occasionally. It breaks the hearts of the parents, and the children are usually worse off because of the arrangement. Many in the church today are content to live with only one parent. They live with the Word, and the Spirit only has limited visiting rights. He just gets to see and touch the kids once in a while. Some of his kids don't even recognize him any more. Some have become afraid of him. Others in the church live with the Spirit and only allow the Word sporadic visits. The Spirit doesn't want to raise the kids without the Word. He can see how unruly they're becoming, but he won't force them to do what they must choose with their hearts.

So the church has become a divided family growing up with separate parents. One set of kids is proud of their education, and the other set of kids is proud of their freedom. Both think they're better than the other.

The parents are brokenhearted. Because unlike most divorces, they didn't choose this divorce. Their kids did. And the Word and the Spirit have had to both honor and endure that choice.

God is Testing Our Availability

2006-07-27T23:40:00.000+01:00

I wrote the following to the other members of the team with whom I was going to Israel. I now want to share it (slightly edited) more widely:

I just came across the following in Surprised by the Voice of God by Jack Deere, p.312. I hope it helps anyone who may be confused about the cancellation of our Israel trip:

If we want a deep friendship with God, it is important to cultivate a state of mind where we view all of our time as God's time, a state of mind where we are totally available to him. It is necessary to do this because God speaks to us at the most inconvenient times. Sometimes he even lets his favorite servants spend time, energy and money in organizing a mission journey. Then he waits until they get in the middle of that journey and forbids them to engage in ministry. Paul and his friends made plans to minister in Asia, but God wanted them in Europe (Acts 16:6-10). He let them "waste" time, money, and energy before he redirected them there.

It seems to me that God almost delights in speaking to us at the most inconvenient times in order to test our availability. ...

I am also reminded of how God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, and then at the last moment told him not to. He is testing our availability to him for whatever he would call us to do. Whatever happened, it was not an accident.

Appeals to Authorities

2006-07-27T18:53:00.000+01:00

My change of plans has left me with unexpected time to blog this week. But the blogosphere seems quiet, no doubt because of vacations as well as the drought and record high temperatures (despite some unscientific doubts at the Daily Duck) here in England and also, I understand, in much of the USA. Actually as I have been writing this a thunderstorm has brought our first noticeable rain since May, but then moved on.

So I have turned to the southern hemisphere, where it is winter - not quite as far south as the Antarctic, where Suzanne's post to Better Bibles Blog certainly does not belong, but to Tim Bulkeley's SansBlogue from New Zealand. It turns out that Tim has been suffering from winter blues like flu, but he has recovered enough to make an interesting posting on the role of "authority" in scholarship - see also my comment on this posting.

In my series on the scholarly and fundamentalist approaches to the Bible, I criticised (in the scholarly rather than the negative sense of the word) the way in which fundamentalist Christians appeal to "the clear teaching of Scripture", claiming that this is sufficient to settle disputed issues and implying that proper scholarly study of the matter is unnecessary.

Tim's posting reminds me of another technique which is often used by fundamentalist Christians, as well as by others who are not fundamentalist or even Christian. That is to quote from their favourite authorities, and presume that what they said is the last word on the matter in question. The authorities which Christians cite are very often their favourite preachers from the present or the past. For example, those in some Christian traditions might cite John Piper and CH Spurgeon - both favourites of Adrian Warnock although Adrian is not as guilty as some of using them as authorities. Those in other traditions might cite their favourite Reformer or the Church Fathers.

This method of arguing was normal in the Hellenistic and Roman world and in mediaeval Europe, where few people dared to think for themselves. But during the Renaissance period western thinkers regained the confidence that they could think as well as ancients like Plato and Aristotle and to question their conclusions. As part of this movement the Reformers realised that they could think as well as the Church Fathers and interpret the Bible for themselves. Perhaps, like modern scholars, they relied too much on their own intellect and not enough on the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but at least they broke the old pattern of thinking that Christian teaching must always be based on the authority of some teacher of a previous generation. They did not of course reject the teaching of the Fathers and the mediaeval Schoolmen completely, but they accepted only what they found to conform to their own interpretations of the Bible.

For the Reformers did not reject authority completely, but they accepted only the authority of God and of Jesus Christ, as revealed and presented in the Bible. Thus their principle was sola Scriptura, only Scripture as an authority for Christian belief and practice.

But it seems that some Christians today have returned to the mediaeval method of citing others as authorities rather than having the confidence to think for themselves. Now this is understandable when those who cite authorities consider themselves to ignorant and uneducated, and when the authorities they cite are proper scholars - and not just popular preachers, or authors who claim to be scholarly but whose argumentation is in fact on the level of advertising copy. And it is of course proper to cite those to whose work we refer, as sources of information rather than as authorities. But is dependence on authorities the proper Christian way of thinking?

As I commented on Tim's blog, the crowds loved Jesus' teaching

because he taught them as one who had authority, not as the teachers of the law.
Mark 1:22 (TNIV^©)

The teachers of the law, or "scribes", endlessly quoted other authorities, as is seen in the Talmud which is full of rabbis citing earlier rabbis. But Jesus cut through their verbiage with his repeated "Truly I tell you", citing no authority but his own. And this had far more impact on the crowds. Could it be that our own preaching and evangelism have less impact than they might because we rely on other authorities rather than on the authority which has been given to us as Christians?

For Jesus has given authority to us who believe in him. Explicitly, he gave his disciples - not just the twelve apostles but the 72 (or 70) representing all believers - authority over evil spirits and all the powers of Satan (Luke 10:17-19). Implicitly, he has also given authority to teach in his name, for on the basis of the authority which he has himself he commanded believers to do this (Matthew 28:18-20). Our teaching does not have to depend on any authority other than that of Jesus and the Bible. (It should not be done independently of the church, but its content does not come under the authority of church leaders, compare Galatians 2:6-14 where Paul opposes the recognised church leaders.)

As the apostle John wrote to ordinary believers,

you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. ... the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you.
1 John 2:20,27 (TNIV^©)

These verses show that it is not just the apostles but all Christians whom the Holy Spirit guides into all the truth (John 16:13). Thus we all have in our hands

the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
Ephesians 6:17 (TNIV^©)

What the apostle Paul wrote should apply to us as well as to himself:

³ For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. ⁴ The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. ⁵ We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.
2 Corinthians 10:3-5 (TNIV^©)

Let us not rely on how others in the past have wielded this weapon, the Word. But let us first protect ourselves with the rest of armour of God (Ephesians 6:10-16) and then go out, as the Spirit leads and under the authority only of Christ, to win the world for him!

The Scholarly and Fundamentalist Approaches to the Bible, Part 6: Conclusions

2006-07-26T12:46:00.000+01:00

At last I am bringing this series (part 1; part 2; part 3; part 4; part 5) to a conclusion.

In part 1 I looked at how Al Mohler rejected the scholarly position on women's leadership in the church apparently because he was persuaded by a fundamentalist appeal to "the clear teaching of Scripture", on a matter where the biblical teaching, if properly understood, is in fact far from clear. In part 2 I looked further at this fundamentalist approach to Scripture, and showed how this method is fundamentally flawed and could in fact be used to give supposedly biblical support to almost any teaching.

In parts 3, 4 and 5 I looked at the scholarly approach to understanding and applying the Bible, as taught at evangelical Bible schools. By using this approach I explained why the Bible, at least at Titus 1:6, should not in fact be taken as prohibiting women elders.

Now it should be clear that I have a lot more sympathy with the scholarly approach to the Bible than I do with the fundamentalist one. But I also have some serious reservations about the scholarly approach.

I mentioned in part 5 how the cessationist position, that the gifts of the Holy Spirit are no longer in operation, can be used to negate any applicability today of any biblical command. But ironically the whole scholarly approach to the Bible is based on cessationist assumptions, and usually the fundamentalist approach also is, because both ignore the role of the Holy Spirit in interpreting and applying Scripture. (Some interpreters follow the fundamentalist approach and claim to do so under the guidance of the Holy Spirit; this is likely to be even more dangerous than attributing a fundamentalist interpretation to one's own intelligence.) Even Gordon Fee, who is not a cessationist, carefully avoids any suggestion, in chapters 3 and 4 of How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, that the Holy Spirit has any part in the exegesis or application of the New Testament letters. Presumably this is because any appeal to the Holy Spirit would immediately lead to his book being rejected by the scholarly establishment as well as by cessationist readers.

Nevertheless, I strongly recommend How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth; the link at this point is to the current edition at Amazon.co.uk.

But, whereas scholars and fundamentalists ignore the role of the Holy Spirit in interpreting Scripture, the Bible itself teaches that this is the key to how it can be understood today. It is clear from the gospels that neither the scribes and Pharisees for all their scholarship, nor Jesus' disciples before the Resurrection despite having Jesus with them for three years, had a clue about how to interpret the Old Testament Scriptures properly. It was only after the Resurrection, for example on the Emmaus Road (Luke 24:13-35), that the Scriptures started to open up to the disciples. But Jesus promised that "when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth" (John 16:13, TNIV). Fifty days later the Holy Spirit was poured out on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1-4), and the apostles seem to have been filled immediately not only with boldness but also with a completely new level of understanding and application of the Old Testament Scriptures. In a similar vein, Paul taught:

⁷ No, we declare God's wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. ⁸ None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. ⁹ However, as it is written:
"What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived—
these things God has prepared for those who love him" —
¹⁰ for God has revealed them to us by his Spirit.
1 Corinthians 2:7-10 (TNIV^©)

Now I recognise that there is some validity in the cessationist counter-argument that John 16:13 was spoken to the 11 apostles, some of whom under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit wrote the New Testament books; and that what was unclear before Pentecost was the Old Testament, which has now been made clear to Christian believers through the New Testament which is clear.

But can the Bible, even the basic Gospel message, really be understood today apart from the guidance of the Holy Spirit? Paul did not teach this, but he wrote:

³ And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. ⁴ The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
2 Corinthians 4:3-4 (TNIV^©)

Thus he implies that the same veil which prevented the Israelites from understanding the Law of Moses (3:13-16) prevents unbelievers from understanding the Gospel. But, Paul taught, only the Holy Spirit can take away this veil and reveal the meaning of the Scriptures to those who come to believe:

The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.
1 Corinthians 2:14 (TNIV^©)

But concerning those who thought that they could understand the things of God through their own studies apart from the illumination of the Holy Spirit, Paul wrote:

¹⁸ For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. ¹⁹ For it is written:
"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;
the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate."
²⁰ Where are the wise? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? ²¹ For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe.
1 Corinthians 1:18-21 (TNIV^©)

So where does this leave us? Does it imply that each individual Christian can claim the authority of the Holy Spirit for their own interpretation of Scripture, however invalid it may be from a scholarly viewpoint? Surely not! Does it imply that the church can interpret and apply the Scriptures under the guidance of the Spirit? In principle, I would say "yes", but unfortunately the actions of church leaders through the centuries show that there is no guarantee that the church, in any form visible on earth, is in fact being guided by the Spirit.

It seems to me that the scholarly approach does have value in providing an exegetical and hermeneutical framework within which to evaluate any claim to guidance by the Spirit. Thus I would reject any such claim if it contradicted the teaching of Scripture as discovered by the scholarly approach. There is also a lot of room within the hermeneutical approach taken by Fee, and described in part 5 of this series, for the Holy Spirit to guide the church and individual believers. This is particularly true of matters which may be culturally relative.

To apply this to the issue of women in leadership in the church and Titus 1:6, I would come to the following tentative conclusions. Paul may well have expected Titus to appoint only men as elders, within the specific cultural situation in Crete. But he did not lay down a clear teaching for every situation that only men could be elders. This is therefore a matter on which believers and churches need to rely on the guidance of the Holy Spirit. And on such matters this guidance is not necessarily the same for all. I would thus accept it as valid for any one church or church grouping to decide to accept or reject women elders, or pastors or priests, as guided by the Holy Spirit within their specific cultural context. But churches and individuals should not claim that their decision on this is absolutely morally binding on all people or churches for all time. They should certainly not allow this to be a barrier to fellowship with Christian brothers and sisters who have taken a different position on this matter.

The Scholarly and Fundamentalist Approaches to the Bible, Part 5: Scholarly Application

2006-07-25T21:31:00.000+01:00

I introduced this series by looking at Al Mohler's change of mind. In part 2 I described the fundamentalist approach to the Bible, and in part 3 and part 4 I looked at the first of the two main stages of the scholarly approach, exegesis. In this part I am moving on to the second main stage, application.

I will start by continuing the quotation which I started in part 4 from Think Again about Church Leaders (1 Timothy 2:8-3:16) by Bruce Fleming, now from p.88 and concerning "husband of one wife" in 1 Timothy 3:2:

The instructions in the Bible apply to all people in all
cultures. However, in my work as a missionary
professor I came across three different, distinct and
mutually exclusive interpretations of this phrase in 3:2:

In the United States I heard:
No divorced and remarried man may be an
overseer – one may have only “one wife.”
In France I heard:
Bachelors may not be overseers because they
are not “husbands” and do not have “one wife.”
In Africa I heard:
No polygamist may be an overseer because
one must have only “one wife,” not many.

When the original meaning of verse 2 is understood
as a comment on being a “faithful spouse,” it applies to
all marriage situations wherever one may live. Single
persons may be overseers. If married, either husbands
or wives may be overseers, but in married life they must
be a “faithful spouse.”

This is a good illustration of how the same exegesis of a passage, as meaning literally "husband of one wife", can lead to different applications. Fleming seems to consider that his alternative exegesis, "faithful spouse", solves the application issue. Well, maybe it does in this particular case, but the problem is not solved in principle.

Study of the principles of how a Bible passage (or any other text) may be applied today is known as hermeneutics. And this is a very complex field of study. All I can do here is to outline some of the issues which relate to Titus 1:6 and its near parallel 1 Timothy 3:2.

The first thing which needs to be established is whether the text has any kind of authority today. Christians accept the New Testament as in some sense the foundation document of the church, but there are many different views on how far it is authoritative today. I take the evangelical position that what is explicitly taught in the Bible is authoritative for Christians today, and that anything in it which is intended to be a normative or binding rule for Christians should be obeyed - although I would not take the stronger position that the Bible is inerrant on all matters of fact. Some scholars argue (and with some good reasons) that the Pastoral Letters (1 and 2 Timothy and Titus) were not in fact written by the Apostle Paul and so should be seen as less authoritative than other parts of the New Testament. While I would not be dogmatic about authorship, I accept these books as part of the Bible and so authoritative regardless of authorship. Where in this series I write "Paul", this should be understood as "Paul or whoever actually wrote this letter".

It is then necessary to establish whether the rules laid down in these letters are to be understood as normative for the church today. At this point I need to lay to rest one argument. Christians who hold the cessationist position, that the gifts of the Spirit ceased to operate in the church at the end of the apostolic period or when the canon of the Bible was closed, apparently argue that certain commands of the apostle Paul, such as "eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy" (1 Corinthians 14:1, TNIV) and "be eager to prophesy, and do not forbid speaking in tongues" (1 Corinthians 14:39, TNIV) no longer apply to the church today. Concerning these passages, Adrian Warnock writes to cessationists:

Why, on the one hand, are we at liberty to ignore Paul's clear commands to the Corinthians ... when, on the other hand, we are expected to accept all of his other commands to local churches as applying to us today? If these two commands do not apply to us, which other of Paul's commands also do not apply? How are we then meant to decide which of Paul's commands we are going to obey and which we are going to ignore?

Perhaps someone could argue that Paul didn't allow women elders while spiritual gifts were in operation, because they were not equipped to direct these gifts, but there is no reason to continue this prohibition in the post-apostolic era. With this kind of argument cessationism can be used to negate any biblical command. But, as I am not a cessationist, I will assume that there is no time limit on any biblical command.

But there is a more difficult issue here. Should Paul's instructions to Timothy and Titus about elders and overseers be understood as applicable only to the recipients' specific situations, in Ephesus and Crete respectively? Here the issue becomes very complex. Paul's original intention in writing may have been only for the specific situations. But the letters were preserved by the church and incorporated into the Bible on the understanding that this was authoritative teaching for all situations, not just the specific one which Paul addressed.

At this point I turn again to Gordon Fee, and to chapter 4 of the excellent book which he wrote together with Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth (the link is to the edition which I have, which is not the latest). Fee sets out two rules for proper hermeneutics, in the context of the New Testament letters:

a text cannot mean what it never could have meant to its author or his or her readers (p.64).

Whenever we share comparable particulars (i.e., similar specific life situations) with the first-century setting, God's Word to us is the same as his Word to them (p.65).

Fee warns that we must be very careful with extending applications into areas beyond comparable contexts. But he does accept that even where there is no directly comparable modern context there may be a principle which can be applied to

genuinely comparable situations (p.68).

Fee then turns to the problem of cultural relativity. He notes that some Christians do not seem to recognise cultural relativity but

argue for a wholesale adoption of first-century culture as the divine norm (p.71).

My own take on this is that whereas many Muslims take this approach, with the 7th century Arabian culture of Mohammed as the norm, in practice the culture which Christians take as normative is something from the 19th or early 20th century, which they read back into the New Testament. As an example, I would cite John Piper's Vision of Biblical Complementarity, discussed on the Better Bibles Blog; it seems to me that Piper is not so much Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood as recovering Victorian manhood and womanhood. But my position is the same as Fee's, that

there is no such thing as a divinely ordained culture... the recognition of a degree of cultural relativity is a valid hermeneutical procedure (p.71).

Fee notes that there are basic lists of sins concerning which the New Testament witness is consistent and unambiguous, and that these prohibitions should be considered applicable to all. But in other matters such as women's ministry and the retention of wealth there is more variation, and this suggests that these are cultural rather than moral matters. He also writes that

The degree to which a New Testament writer agrees with a cultural situation in which there is only one option increases the possibility of the cultural relativity of such a position (p.73).

Thus slavery is accepted in the Bible because it was accepted by all in the cultural context, but this does not imply that it is normative for Christians.

On these principles Fee argues that the prohibition on women teaching in 1 Timothy 2:11-12 may be culturally relative and so applicable only to Timothy's specific situation (p.75).

But I think it would be much harder for him to argue the same about "husband of one wife" in Titus 1:6 and 1 Timothy 3:2,12. For this condition for church leadership is repeated in several places in relation to differently named church offices and without any restriction to specific contexts. So I would conclude that this phrase is applicable to church leaders today, and without restriction to specific named offices. But it can only be applied today in accordance with its meaning as determined by good exegesis.

As I have previously concluded, Paul's teaching at this point is not about the gender of church leaders but about their sexual activity. Titus 1:6 did not mean to Paul or Titus that women must not be elders, so it cannot mean the same to us today. What it does mean today is what it meant to Titus, that married male elders must be faithful to their wives - and by extension to genuinely comparable situations, it may also mean that married female elders must be faithful to their husbands, and that single and widowed elders must be celibate. At least, this is the conclusion to which I am led by the scholarly approach to the Bible.

This concludes my discussion of this scholarly approach, but I do have some more, possibly surprising, things to say about approaches to the Bible in part 6: Conclusions.

Speaker of Truth (Old version)

New "Speaker of Truth"

Ethnic and Gender Diversity in Pastoral Appointments

Not much to say

Our Parent, who art in heaven?

Adrian is back

Molly's paradigm shift

Smenita is back

Driscoll's God: only metaphorically Father?

Mars Hill Church: on a different planet?

Happy Christmas to you all!

Helen Roseveare and Elizabeth Fry

Does God know what time it is?

Updated website and blogroll

Adrian Warnock closes his blog to comments...

Adrian Warnock censors those who find an error in Grudem's words

Post 100

In An Advisory Capacity

The Original Gospel Manuscripts in Washington?

Women in Ministry: Stan Gundry could change

Simeon and Wesley on Calvinism

Paul, Sex and Marriage 6: Conclusions and Bibliography

6. CONCLUSIONS

Semantic display of 1 Corinthians 7:1-16

Paul, Sex and Marriage 5: Semantic Analysis of 7:1-16

5. SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF 7:1-16

Paul, Sex and Marriage 4: Discourse Structure of 1 Corinthians

4. DISCOURSE STRUCTURE OF 1 CORINTHIANS

Paul, Sex and Marriage 3: The Letter from the Corinthians and Paul’s response

3. THE LETTER FROM THE CORINTHIANS AND PAUL’S RESPONSE

Paul, Sex and Marriage 2: The Presupposition Pool

2. THE PRESUPPOSITION POOL

Paul, Sex and Marriage 1: Contents and Introduction

WHAT DID PAUL REALLY SAY ABOUT SEX AND MARRIAGE?1 CORINTHIANS 7:1-16

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Gradually breaking through

Kingdom Thermodynamics 4: The Crunch

Kingdom Thermodynamics 3: The Boundaries

Kingdom Thermodynamics 2: Beyond Causality

Kingdom Thermodynamics 1: Introduction

House For Sale in High Wycombe

Breakthrough: Discovering the Kingdom

Away for three weeks

The non-negotiables of the faith, including gender distinctions?

Dawkins is wrong: a scientist can believe in a real God

Deborah and a woman from Bethlehem

The acceptable face of charismaticism?

Bibles from China

Theology, language or world view?

Adrian defends charismatic experience of God

My church's new website launched

God is not a God of disorder but of peace

God is not a spot in the brain

Singleness: Köstenberger versus Maken

Theology quiz results

Getting The Momentum Going

Bible Puzzler

I'm a PneumaBlogger!

Post-Charismatic?

Jesus is Our Fully Human Example

Is Conservative America Waking Up to Global Warming?

Cessationism Undermines the Bible

Answering a Pyromaniac on Tongues

Many new hits

Taking a short break

Bible Deists

God is Testing Our Availability

Appeals to Authorities

The Scholarly and Fundamentalist Approaches to the Bible, Part 6: Conclusions

The Scholarly and Fundamentalist Approaches to the Bible, Part 5: Scholarly Application

WHAT DID PAUL REALLY SAY ABOUT SEX AND MARRIAGE?
1 CORINTHIANS 7:1-16