_awakening

Is the Bible Historical? It Depends.

In the latest issue of Biblical Archaeology Review, Sean Freyne drops this little tidbit:

The problem we are have is trying to distinguish between what is theological reflection and its development, on the one hand, and historical realities on the other. Instead of splitting them apart and saying that's theology and that's history, I think the Bible as a whole gives us theologically interpreted history. There is an ongoing kind of reflection on historical events and rethinking them and reframing them and reinterpreting them, constantly reworking Biblical tradition itself in the process. That's why it's so hard to pull out the historical Jesus or the historical Israel and say there they are. [emphasis mine]

I think Freyne brings up an important point. When we read the scriptures, we need to realize that we are not reading history as we might think of history. We are reading textual traditions that reflect a long process of oral and written stages. These traditions, even in oral form, were tremendously formative for the people who experienced them, transmitted them, and ultimately wrote them down. We would be quite naive to assume they did not undergo redaction, or as Freyne puts it, reframing and reinterpretation. These texts are also "theological" in that they exist to promote a framework for understanding the past, present, and future. To say that the Biblical texts are literal history one runs the danger of actually minimizing their nature and purpose, let alone placing oneself in the dubious position of having to explain certain historical inconsistencies within the text. The scriptural texts were not meant to be historical as we understand the genre of history today; they were formative traditions that emerged out of historical contexts, which were transmitted orally until committed to written form. [Then later redacted into a final form, but that's a post for another time...]

Glenn Beck on the DSS.

Seriously. No joke. Check out this little beauty from a recent radio program:

Beck: You know the… Dead Sea Scrolls. You know what they are? Stu, do you know what the Dead Sea Scrolls are? …

Stu: Well, of course I do.

Beck: No, come on. Most people don’t. I’m not…

Stu: I heard of them. I don’t really know.

Beck: You don’t really know, do you. You have no why they were there.

Stu: Nu uh.

Beck: Sarah, average person doesn’t know. Any idea? Take a guess on what, why the Dead Sea Scrolls are there, anything else.

Sarah: Something religious.

Beck: OK good. Even though I’ve explained this on this program a couple of times, I’m glad to see that, I’m glad to see that even the people that work with me everyday don’t even listen.

Stu: Well, there’s, we were actually talking about American Idol last night. The guy won! It was unbelievable.

Beck: All right. So here’s what happened. When Constantine decided he was going to uh… cobble together an army, um, he did the uh… Council of uh… Nicaea, right, Pat?

Pat: Yea.

Beck: Council of Nicaea. Um… and what they did is brought all of the religious figures, uhh, together, all the Christians and then they said, “Ok, let’s uh, put together the Apostles’ Creed, let’s, you know, you guys do it.” So they brought all their religious scripture together, and that’s when the Bible was first bound and everything else. And then they said, “Anybody that disagrees with this is a heretic and… off with their head!” Well, that’s what the Dead Sea Scrolls are. The Dead Sea Scrolls are those scriptures that people had at the time that they said, “They are destroying all of this truth.” Whether it’s truth or not is, is up to the individual, but that… at that time those people thought that this was something that needed to be preserved and so they rolled up the scrolls and they put ‘em in clay pots and they, they put ‘em in the back of caves where no one could find them. They were hidden scripture because everything was being destroyed that disagreed with the Council of Nicaea and Constantine. That’s what those things are.

[Speechless, mouth hanging open.]

Where does one begin? This is just another example of Beck trying to speak of that which he does not know. He should just stop, really.

[HT: Robert Cargill. His response is brilliant and worth the read.]

Does Prayer Really Change Things?

I used to have a wood carving on my office wall that read, "Prayer Changes Things." It was an ornate carving, one that even looked kind of religious. It used to be a reminder that praying really did matter; prayer really did "change things."

So lately, I've been wondering. What kind of "things" are really changed when we pray? I'm wondering because I really think the answer to this questions makes all the difference in the world.

Now I've heard some well meaning Christians approach the question like this. God is all-knowing and all-powerful [but apparently the all-knowing part seems to be more important]. When we approach God in prayer, we do so seeking to align ourselves with "the plan of God." In essence, this kind of thinking tells us that the "things" that are changed are really internal to ourselves - our hopes, dreams, and what is often called "our heart." [This ideology can inherently lead to a self-centeredness and a subtle form of dualism, but that is for another post.]

So I wonder, within this kind of thinking are things really changed when we pray? Do our prayers substantively change the course of things, or do they merely change how we perceive things, without truly changing them?

What I find fascinating is that nowhere to my knowledge is prayer ever described as it is above in the scriptures. When God's people came before God, they appeared to believe that the course of history could literally be altered. Judgment was not the final word. Exile was not the final word. Prayer did change things. It could bring about a course change or a course correction in how the story played out.

Now if you're shaking our head right now consider this. Psalm 106.21-23 makes this astounding claim:

They forgot God, their Savior,
   who had done great things in Egypt,
   wonderous works in the land of Ham,
   and awesome deeds by the Red Sea.
Therefore he said he would destroy them -
   had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him,
   to turn away his wrath from destroying them.

According to this text, Moses literally changes the course God was going to take with the nation of Israel. If he had not done this, the text intimates that God would have gone ahead with the destruction of his people. Fascinating.

Now I know that positing that God's mind can be changed is dangerous territory for some, as is the thought of the future having an open-endedness to it. Yet the fact remains. Does not the ability of God to have his mind changed, or the possibility of the course of the future being altered lie in direct relation to the issue of prayer? Can we truly believe that prayer substantively changes things and not wrestle with these ideas? [I find it odd that while we often find division here, the ancients of the scriptures felt at ease with the tension.]

I just don't think issues like these are as easy as some people make them out to be. [But isn't that the way it so often is?]

So I guess the question remains, Does prayer really change things, or not?

Once again, just thinking out loud.

The Gospel of New Creation.

"The power of the gospel lies not in the offer of a new spirituality or religious experience, not in the threat of hellfire (certainly not in the threat of being "left behind"), which can be removed if only the hearer checks this box, says this prayer, raises a hand, or whatever, but in the powerful announcement that God is God, that Jesus is Lord, that the powers of evil have been defeated, that God's new world has begun. This announcement, stated as a fact about the way the world is rather than as an appeal about the way you might like your life, your emotions, or your bank balance to be, is the foundation of everything else. Of course, once the gospel announcement is made, in whatever way, it means instantly that all people everywhere are gladly invited to come in, to join the party, to discover forgiveness for the past, an astonishing destiny in God's future, and a vocation in the present. And in that welcome and invitation, all the emotions can be, and one hopes eventually will be, fully engaged."

[Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, p. 227]

Saved For What?

One of the things i love most about Tom Wright, is his ability to see the big picture and articulate in ways that captures the imagination, bringing together the larger narratives of scripture into a clear vision. Case in point, his thoughts on what it really means to be saved:

As long as we see salvation in terms of going to heaven when we die, the main work of the church is bound to be seen in terms of saving souls for that future. But when we see salvation, as the New Testament sees it, in terms of God's promised new heaven and new earth and our promised resurrection to share in that new and glorious embodied reality - what I have called life after life after death - then the main work of the church here and now demands to be rethought in consequence. [Surprised by Hope, p. 197]

In other words, how we envision "salvation" has much to do with what we see as the work of the church in this world. If it truly merely about "going to heaven" [which the New Testament does not see as the focus], the work of the church can easily be reduced to a future-oriented, escapism. At odds is whether the present really matters. Is salvation merely for the future? Wright summarizes it thusly:

Life after death, it seems, can be a serious distraction not only from the ultimate life after life after death, but also life before death. [Surprised by Hope, p. 198]

Salvation, as embraced by the first Christians, was not about "going to heaven someday," but about being raised to life in God's new heaven and new earth, the new creation. It was about a future rescue beginning to take place in this world, a saving not of the soul for some disembodied state, but the saving of the whole person, being raised as new creations, of which Jesus went before us in his resurrection.

For the first Christians, the ultimate salvation was all about God's new world, and the point of which Jesus and the apostles were doing when they were healing  people or being rescued from shipwreck or whatever was that this was a proper anticipation of that ultimate salvation, that healing and transformation of space, time, and matter. The future rescue that God had planned and promised was starting to come true in the present. We are saved not as souls, but as wholes. [Surprised by Hope, p. 198-9.]

This has all sorts of ramifications for us. If we see salvation as mere escapism, our goal is to take as many people with us away from this world of decay. This world is seen as something that is destined to be discarded, or better yet destroyed. Unfortunately this is not the picture we are given in scripture, as the end of Revelation notes that there will be a new heaven and a new earth, joined together once and for all here on earth, not somewhere else. God will be present with his people, here on a newly transformed earth. In a real sense, heaven actually comes here. Salvation, therefore, is not about escape, but about being raised to a new kind of life.

It is the story of God's kingdom being launched on earth as in heaven, generating a new state of affairs in which he power of evil has been decisively defeated, the new creation has been decisively launched, and Jesus' followers have been commissioned and equipped to put that victory and that inaugurated new world into practice. [Surprised by Hope, p. 204]

As it has been said, we have been saved not from something, but for something. We have been invited to join a movement - a movement of those who have been rescued and are in process of being made whole again, who in turn are about trying to make all things new again. They are people who are trying to put into practice what Jesus said when he taught his followers to pray, "Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven [or as it is in your realm, where things are as you want them to be]."

What if we saw it this way? Imagine the kind of things that could happen.

Heaven as Confrontation and Conviction.

"Note, though, something else of great importance about the whole Christian theology of resurrection, ascension, second coming and hope. This theology was born out of confrontation with the political authorities, out of the conviction that Jesus was already the true Lord of the world who would one day be manifest as such. The rapture theology avoids this confrontation because it suggests that Christians will miraculously be removed from this wicked world. Perhaps that i why such theology if often Gnostic in its tendency toward a private dualistic spirituality and toward a political laissez-faire quietism. And perhaps that is partly why such theology, with its dreams of Armageddon, has quietly supported the political staus quo in a way that Paul would never have done."

[Tom Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, pp. 133-4]

Seriously?

Apparently Glen Beck is now urging people to leave their churches if their leaders begin to speak about social justice. [Seriously, I'm not making this up.] To make matters... 'er... worse, he notes that the term "social justice" is really just a code word for Communism and Nazism.

You can read more about this here and here.

Honestly, I find this kind of heartbreaking. The scriptures are filled with references to what could be deemed as "social justice" - both the Hebrew Bible, as well as the New Testament. The message of the gospel is something that changes society, bringing about justice and hope. It is about bringing heaven here, and praying, "your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." To devoid the gospel of it's social justice component is to cheapen the gospel itself, reducing it to a personalized message of self-help.

My hope is that someone would help Beck nuance his thoughts and rhetoric a bit, as he seems to be quickly becoming the Pat Robertson of political punditry.

[HT: Zach]

Second Sunday of Lent.

O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy: Be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways, and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast the unchangeable truth of your Word, Jesus Christ your Son; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

[from The Book of Common Prayer]

Lenten Prayer for the Week. [part 2]

O God, the strength of all who put their trust in you: Mercifully accept my prayers; and because in my weakness I can do nothing good without you, give me the help of your grace, that in keeping your commandments I may please you in both will and deed; through Jesus Christ my Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

[from The Book of Common Prayer]

First Sunday of Lent.

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on this armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which you Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

[from The Book of Common Prayer]