Ideas should be treated like cats

I hope I’m not one of those ivory tower guys who loves to play around with ideas that never touch down on the tarmac of life. In fact the entire reason I am interested in ideas is for the power they have to transform my experience.

Still, I feel like people these days might be a little too obsessive about their insistence on practicality. Like, unless sermons, books or teaching (“mind activities”) have an immediate payoff, they are disdainfully dismissed as “irrelevant for life.”  So allow me for a moment to speak, somewhat unsystematically,  in behalf of impracticality.

Doctrinal escapism?

One of my former pastors was fond of telling this story as way of cautioning people about being too intellectual: He once met another pastor who had fallen from grace through sexual sin and was in the middle of loosing his family. But rather than deal with his situation, all the the fallen pastor wanted to do was to “talk about the deity of Jesus Christ.” This is what happens, the lesson went, when we take an unhealthy interest in intellectual matters. And beware that doctrines and theological arguments or complicated textual questions do not become an escape from real life. Though this oft repeated anecdote did not make me feel very supported in my own intellectual quest (it was the oftenness of the telling, really), I basically agreed with it: intellectual escapism is no better than any other sort of escapism.

But I ruminated on this over the years and a while back I kind of changed my mind. I thought: is it really so bad retreat into theology when your personal life crumbles? What is wrong with turning ones mind to the big questions when nothing else works? Should we begrudge this fallen pastor his impractical interest? What if it gives him meaning where nothing else does? Why should that be seen as inappropriate or imbalanced? If he had turned to model making, or working on his car, or reading books on physics in order to cope we would arguably have approved.

Why does the life of the mind always have to bear the burden of proof?

Practical impracticality

Back in the day I worked in the trades – painting and carpentry mostly. Even though I wanted to be in Christian ministry I figured it was a good experience for me because it prepared me to identify with the work a day experience of most Christians. My leadership would thus be “more practical” once I got around to it.  I remember a friend who disagreed with me on this point, though. He said that it wasn’t actually so bad for a pastor to lack practical experience. I helped him be more objective about what the Christian life required; it could keep him from caving in to common excuses for avoiding serious discipleship.

Sometimes it’s more practical to not be practical?

Help from those who don’t care

Those of you who have plumbed the depths academic exegesis know what it’s like to read Bible commentators who treat Scripture as a mere ancient artifact: it’s not the Word of God; it’s just a collections of old manuscripts which are nevertheless very interesting from a historical point of view. It can be irritating and intimidating; like watching some very intelligent “swine” rolling in the mud with our precious pearls (with apologies for the implications of the analogy).

And yet, I have often been surprised at the clarity which non-believing exegetes can bring to the text. I remember quite vividly an exposition of Hebrews 6 that I felt cut through all the confusion our theologies have created about the question of  ”losing our salvation.” Yes, the author of Hebrews does envision the possibility of falling away from Christ. This is as “historical fact” we might say.

Those who have little invested in the meaning of the Bible are sometimes more objective about its meaning than those who depend on it for life and doctrine. They aren’t thinking with every question: “What does this mean for me? How does it affect my life? Where is God in this? Will I be condemned as a heretic if I interpret it like this?”

Disinterestedness can achieve a certain clarity.

Beware of theological nerds

People debate and obsess about ideas because they think they are important. Usually it is because they attach a great deal of significance to the implications of those ideas: what they imply about God, about what it means to be human, about the nature of the reality, about the meaning of goodness, and very often (after all is said and done) about how we ought to live. Not to sound elitist  or anything, but people often yawn at ideas because they don’t get where it is all going. If they did get it, they might find themselves suddenly alert. Not all pedantic discussion are so tame as they seem. Remember how the nerds took over the world with computers? Well, theological nerds can also do that while the rest of us are trying to stay awake. Many a revolution began between the carrels of a theological library.

So, while there are indeed some tedious, eye-rolling, and irrelevant debates between intellectuals, there are probably less of these than is commonly thought, and more of them are more important than is mostly realized. Take for example the famous debate about “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.” It turns out that this is not a reall debate anyone ever had, but a manufactured exaggeration to illustrate the perceived irrelevance of medieval scholastic conflicts. But where they that irrelevant? If you are an evangelical Christian there is a very good chance you believe some of the ideas that were forged during that period.

Might irrelevance be in the eye of the beholder?

Unscientific impractical postscript

We can be so heavy-handed with ideas. If they don’t perform immediate wonders we throw them out on the street. We are like abusive parents, overbearing, ungracious, always ready to disprove at the slightest sign of irrelevance. I suggest we treat ideas more like cats. Take them in, speak to them in soft kitty language, feed them and pet them. Soon they will begin to purr.

Sometimes ideas have to be impractical before they are practical.

1. An Appetite for Meat – As someone who is invested in studying and teaching the Bible I have to resist the temptation to cheer too strongly here or make more of this than it is. I also will try to avoid the common mistake of confusing things that are hard to understand (ex: academic theology) with spiritual meat. A common enough mistake. Hard to understand does not necessarily = “deep.” Still, I have to say that if interest in the meaning and implications of biblical themes (“meat”) is a sign of spiritual maturity… we’ve got a long way to go folks. I say that with humility, some frustration and a measure of hope.
2. An Imperviousness to Personal Offence – I’m not sure I would put it this way because the quality here is probably more like forgiveness than hardening. Maybe that’s just semantics. Still, I have to agree that spiritually mature people have internalized the deepest relational lesson the gospel has to teach us, which is that regardless of how offensive others may be to us, we are to be graceful and forgiving in return. It’s not brain science, so it’s not hard to understand. It’s just hard for us to do. We need good examples of this to help us know that it is possible.
3. A Conscience Informed by Scripture, not Opinions – This is a hard one to disentangle, isn’t it? Our sense of right and wrong is in many ways ingrained in us by culture, even when we think it is not. It’s easy to read the Bible in a way that encourages those cultural biases without even realizing what we are doing. This is especially the case for those of us who grew up in the church. I also think that these days some of us Christians have a bit of a moral inferiority complex. People used to assume that Christians were the moral ones. Now we are being accused of homophobia, fundamentalism, mean spiritedness, insensitivity, narrow mindedness and even of being Republicans. I have seen two common responses to this from Christians: (1) dig in and persist in given ideas and behaviors even if the criticism is correct and (2) give in to the critiques even if they are not accurate out of a sense of guilt.  What a maze. Spiritual maturity is required to track it well. Where are our examples?
4.  A Sense of Humble Surprise when used by God in Ministry – I’m not actually sure about this one. That spiritual maturity handles notoriety humbly, YES. Agreed. But I tend to get a fakey vibe when people pretend that they are not aware of how they are being used.  I think that part of maturity is recognizing our place (even if it is an important one) while at the same time avoiding the trap of pride. Can it be done?
5. Tendency to give Credit for Spiritual Growth to God, not People – No doubt this speaks to the tendency to hero worship in Christian subculture. Some say “I am of Rob Bell,” others, “I am of John Piper,” and, “I am of NT Wright,” while still others say “I am of Christ.” (See 1 Cor 1) It’s obviously an issue that is as old as the church. Though perhaps today’s “media darling factor” makes it even worse. Perhaps this should be generalized to: spiritual maturity means not gaining our significance from our association with well known figures or not becoming figures that encourage that sort of response. Piper may have planted and Wright may have watered, but God gives the growth.

Any more thoughts on this?

The insane man jumped into their midst and transfixed them with his glances. “Where is God gone?” he called out. “I mean to tell you! We have killed him, you and I! We are all his murderers! But how have we done it? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the whole horizon? What did we do when we loosened this earth from its sun? Whither does it now move? Whither do we move? Away from all suns? Do we not dash on unceasingly? Backwards, sideways, forwards, in all directions? Is there still an above and below? Do we not stray, as through infinite nothingness? Does not empty space breathe upon us? Has it not become colder? Does not night come on continually, darker and darker? Shall we not have to light lanterns in the morning? Do we not hear the noise of the grave-diggers who are burying God? Do we not smell the divine putrefaction? – for even Gods putrefy! God is dead! God remains dead! And we have killed him! How shall we console ourselves, the most murderous of all murderers? The holiest and the mightiest that the world has hitherto possessed, has bled to death under our knife – who will wipe the blood from us? With what water could we cleanse ourselves? What lustrums, what sacred games shall we have to devise? Is not the magnitude of this deed too great for us?

For Nietzsche the death of God was not a cause for great rejoicing, but rather tragedy of unprecedented proportions. Nietzsche saw with complete clarity that life without God meant life without meaning. But there is something about this passage that I think has gone unnoticed. Christians tend to read it with a combination of shock and caution (like, “did he really say that?!”) and just digesting it can be an effort. Maybe we miss a crucial point: Nietzsche is actually addressing atheists here. Thus, “We have killed him, you and I” and “…ourselves, the most murderous of all murderers” and “has bled to death under our knife.” The plural “us” is the rationalist enlightened nineteenth century European individuals for whom Christianity is no longer credible, the supernatural unlikely, and the Bible nothing more than a collection of religious myths. Chief among these was the biblical scholar David Strauss who in his book on the life of Jesus had argued to the satisfaction of many that there was a purely historical and entirely natural explanation for the gospels. Nietzsche agreed with all these atheists. God was not even remotely an option for  him.  And, of course, he was not saying that God had literally died but rather that “they” (all those enlightened Europeans himself included) had made him unbelievable. God was not longer part of their thinking. He has been displaced from culture.

It is not God himself that Nietzsche mourned, but God as the foundation upon which human culture could thrive. With God at the root of all things, life, society, politics, the future, the past and the present and all the other threads of the net of civilization worked. Without Him, that complex network of meaning fell apart. And what was left? Empty, directionless wandering. But Nietzsche was upset that most people who had rejected God seemed to think it was a kind of liberation.  Like, “What a relief. Now we can get on with really living.” He wants to remind them that if God is dead “really living” is also dead.  Meaning also died when God was dispatched with their knifes. But nineteenth century atheists were too high on their success to realize the devastating implications of the deed. They were living off the borrowed capital of the very idea they had rejected. They had cut off the root of but were still basking, contentedly, in the shade of plant. Nietzsche ruthlessly paints the picture of what will happen – it’s irreversible now – when the plant withers. He also hurls a nice insult a at David Strauss who is a shameless Philistine optimist for pretending he has any moral advice to offer once he has destroyed the Bible and its God (on this see Hans Kung, Does God Exist, 350-351).

All this reminds me of a little story by G.K. Chesterton called When Doctors Agree in which an atheist unrelentingly  argues a theist into a corner and truly convinces the believer that there is no God, nothing to believe in, no morality. As the newly born atheist takes stock of his situation, his first act is consistent with his new convictions: he murders the other man. After all, what is to stop him?

Nietzsche’s polemic against “optimistic atheism” makes this Antichrist of philosophers an odd bedfellow with theists.  When we theists point out that life without God is meaningless, it might sound empty – like, “of course you would say that since you are clearly invested in the idea that God exists.” But others have noticed it as well, and despaired. Case in point: Nietzsche. Of course, this does not prove that God exists. Possibly, he does not and everything is indeed meaningless. And yet, so much that we take for granted depends on him that it does bring a pause. Maybe it even becomes a sort of argument. Something like: there is too much meaning in the world for God to not exist.

Just because someone is a pastor does not mean that he or she is an expert on sex…or money or relationships or marriage. Christian couples struggling in their marriage should seek professional counseling, and not rely exclusively on a single pastor (or his or her interpretation of Scripture) for help.

Meanwhile, evangelicals in particular need to do something about our celebrity-pastor culture. Mark Driscoll is simply not qualified to serve as a sex therapist—most pastors aren’t! (Mark Driscoll “Real Marriage”)

It’s true that popular pastors get permission to opine on all manner of things that they don’t necessarily know anything about. I’ve experienced it as a Bible teacher. People assume that since you appear to know a lot about the Bible, you will have insight into why their church is dying, why their kids are rebellious or even (this was via email) what sexual acts a husband may legitimately ask a wife to perform (a Monty Python reference is apt here: “run awaaaay….”).

Still, I think Rachael is going too far. While it is true that pastors are not necessarily experts in all the big questions of live (love, finance, success, relationships), neither are they unqualified to address such matters.

First, remember that pastoral training does include a significant dose of counseling and that counseling is part of a pastor’s job description. Rare is the pastor who lacks experience in helping people with personal relational and even intimate problems. Dysfunctional would be the church where the pastor never discussed such matters with the people under his care. No doubt Mark Driscoll has spent considerable time working through such matters during his career.

Second, the Bible does claim to show us how to live in the light of God’s will and purposes. This means that biblical ethics apply, at least generally, to all areas of life. Therefore, pastors, whose job is to lead others in the way of Jesus, should indeed have biblical wisdom related to the big questions of life.  I think we should be careful about over-specializing these challenges: if your kid is giving you trouble, go to the child psychologist  (the pastor knows the Bible, not child psychology); if you are depressed go see your therapist (the pastor knows about discipleship, not emotional illness); if your marriage is falling apart, go to the family therapist (your pastor can preach a good sermon, but he’s not an expert on relationships).

Lurking here are some pretty serious implications. Something like, “the Bible is not relevant to real world problems” or “when you really need help, it’s not to be found in the church, but in the assured results of the psychological sciences” or “just because the Bible tells us about God and heaven, it doesn’t mean that its principles apply to our daily lives.” I think many Christians (perhaps even Rachael) would disagree with these types of distinctions.  And rightly so. Let’s not specialize the biblical worldview into irrelevance.

Bible and Counselling?

Let me see if I can point a way forward while at the same time sidestep the counter criticism (I can feel it coming!) that I’m “against counseling” or that I think we should just “read the Bible and pray” when we have problems.

While the Bible is not a technical manual on the ins and outs of human behavior, it does teach some foundational truths which speak to the entire complex of relationships. Particularly, I’m thinking about love, which is the key to all human interaction, even, yes, sex (go figure). We could also highlight such Christian virtues as: peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (See Galatians 5:22-23).

But it is still true that psychology may offer helpful insights for emotional or relational problems. For example, we learn from counseling that when a child has suffered abuse the first thing they need to hear is “it’s not your fault.” That is something that we may not have realized without specific training. It is a welcome insight, and caring about hurting people means being well versed in this sort of insight.

But Biblical insights can and should still be part of counselling. In my brief career as a sexual therapist, here’s how biblical thinking affected my advice. The person who wrote to me about the propriety of certain sexual acts got this response: love says, whatever you do must be consensual (this was clearly the root issue as one part of the couple was trying to convince the other that something was “biblical”).  If you love your spouse, don’t force her to do something  she finds distasteful in order to satisfy your own needs. This is not rocket science. If you love her, focus on pleasing her, not on manipulating her into pleasing you. I am not saying this broad insight will resolve all problems.  But I think that, if heeded, it does set the stage for a more positive outcome. I even venture to say that the principle of being others-oriented could put a lot of therapists and counselors out work. And it is decidedly a biblical principle; it is unambiguously within the purview of the pastor to teach such things.

So, in conclusion, I don’t think it’s so crazy that pastors and Bible teachers should opine on the big questions of life such as sex, money, success and relationships. These are not the sole purview of the experts. The Bible does speak to them. The Christian tradition has deep resources to address them. Now, whether or not Mark Driscoll’s advice is in continuity with those resources is an entirely different question (I don’t even know what his advice is). But given that he seems to speak out of some deeply experienced challenges, I suspect it is actually quite valuable.

• He makes no bones about the fact that PhD level study is difficult and trying. But trying and working hard, says Witherington, is a good thing. Just be sure you have counted the cost and that you have what it takes. Of the 13 PhD students that began their studies when Ben did, only half completed the degree (apparently one of them got divided into two).  I was interested to see that his dissertation on Jesus and women in the gospels was sent back for revisions. So, just when he thought he was done, he had to go back again and work on it for another year. Can you imagine? But in the end, he claims it was the best thing that happened to him. It forced him to write better and think better. BTW, this dissertation is available in a more popular format in Women and the Genesis of Christianity.
• The theme of intellectual and ethical consistency comes up in repeatedly throughout the book. A biblical scholar, he claims, must exhibit the transformed life that the biblical text models and promotes. It would be inconsistent for a biblical scholar to lack the personal and ethical depth that is such a crucial dimension of the Bible. I’m glad to see this because these days Christian leaders and teachers are often given a pass, as if just because they are leaders it doesn’t mean that they are necessarily wiser or “holier” people. It’s in keeping with our society of lowered expectations. But I agree that there should be a difference. There should be higher ethical expectations for leaders and teachers. It’s not just that they ought to be good representatives. There is also the question of the credibility of the message: is it really livable? If the people who know the most about it and are the most invested in it, don’t practice it, then who can? And if they who teach it don’t practice it, who can call us to live it?
• Along with this, Ben Witherington is clear about the purpose of biblical scholarship. The primary goal is to serve the church. Odd connection here, but I remember having a kind of revelation about this at the 2003 meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. I’m not sure what tripped it, but I walked around thinking about it a lot and it really stuck too.  Witherington is fairly critical of “research scholars” in the biblical field who are content to limit their vocation to the academy. Biblical scholars can also succumb to the temptation to promote their own egos or academic instead of their  calling to serve the church. “Research by a Christian is never done just for its own sake, or even just to advance knowledge in a given field. It is done in the service of the Lord and to his church.” (83)  I just want to offer one caveat, though: the relationship between research and application is by its nature ambiguous. Sometimes completely “impractical” research bears enormous practical results, for good or ill. So let’s not be too hasty about dismissing so called impractical research or researchers. Still, i agree about the basic direction and calling.
• As you might imagine, Ben Witherington is not the sort of person to downplay the importance of knowledge for the church and the individual Christian. After all he has dedicated his life to the pursuit of biblical knowledge. But it is part of a whole. “Christian thinking and believing must be fleshed out in Christian living, or we are like barren trees with on fruit.” (110) He has a crazy example of the places ignorance can led. He recounts a conversation from his youth when an Appalachian couple (stereotypes aside…) expressed that the moon landings were all faked. Why? Because the Bible says that the earth is flat. You can read about it in “Revelations” (the way it was pronounced) where it talks about the four angels standing on the four corners of the earth.  ”God bless their hearts,” as they say in the south.

This is a fun book! I highly recommend it. You can see a different take on it at Mark Corte’z blog too. He thinks that it is too broad and he might be right in terms of its stated purpose (“becoming a biblical scholar”). But I think this is a case of something being outside the box and still being effective. Plus, it will be an accessible read for people who might be thinking about a life in biblical scholarship who have not even started down the road yet. I’ll take any advice I can get from a scholar of this stature.

As a sceptic, I tend to agree with Dawkins’s conclusion regarding the falsehood of theism, but the tactics deployed by him and the other New Atheists, it seems to me, are fundamentally ignoble and potentially harmful to public intellectual life. For there is something cynical, ominously patronising, and anti-intellectualist in their modus operandi, with its implicit assumption that hurling insults is an effective way to influence people’s beliefs about religion. The presumption is that their largely non-academic readership doesn’t care about, or is incapable of, thinking things through; that passion prevails over reason. On the contrary, people’s attitudes towards religious belief can and should be shaped by reason, not bile and invective. By ignoring this, the New Atheists seek to replace one form of irrationality with another.

Reading this as someone who is used to thinking in the Christian context, it is hard not to make some uncomfortable connections. Christian discourse which is aimed at bolstering the Bible, Christian practice or belief in God is at times guilty of similar offenses: patronizing, superficial, more emotive than rational. Perhaps a distinguishing feature of the “new atheists” is that they tend to confuse their own hubris with intellectual rigor. We Christians on the other hand can be guilty of confusing our opinions with God’s.

Last year Mike Licona wrote a large theological tome defending the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus (The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, IVP 2010), which appears to have been well receive in the evangelical community.  But Geisler, a well known conservative apologist and theologian, has taken loud exception to Licona’s treatment of the passage in the Gospel of  Matthew where  it says that some people rose from their graves when Jesus died. Here is how Geisler expressed his concern in his open letter:

You speak of the resurrection of the saints in Matthew 27:52-53 after Jesus’ resurrection as a “strange little text” (548 cf. 556). Indeed, you call it “poetic” or “legend” (185-186)…You conclude that “It seems best to regard this difficult text in Matthew as a poetic device added to communicate that the Son of God had died and that impending judgment awaited Israel” (553). [N.B.: the passage in question actually comes after Jesus' death, not his resurrection]

There is nothing terrible about Geisler expressing his disagreement. What is strange is that he was put out by not receiving a response and expressed such publicly.  When Licona did respond, he didn’t say very much; only that in a large work such as his (over 700 pages) there are some minor points along the way which one does not state as well as he might have. He also granted that he would probably be just as happy to take the passage in question as historical.  He just is not sure, exegetically, about the intention of the biblical author. Geisler was not happy about this either. After complaining about not receiving a response he went into attack mode stating that “Licona has not recanted his denial of the historicity of the resurrection of the saints in Matthew 27.”

It is telling that Licona’s brief response included a list of Evangelical scholars who supported the propriety of his view, even if they did not necessarily agree with it. This is probably due to the fact that Geisler has a history of heresy hunting which I am fairly certain evangelical leaders are fed up with it and they want to send the message that Licona is really OK.

Back in 2003 Geisler conducted something of a witch hunt against Clarke Pinnock at the Evanglical Theological Society’s annual meeting, which I commented on back in the day. The case was similar: focusing on a few statements that might be construed as denying inerrancy (but Pinnock  did not agree) and demanding here also that the offender ”recant.” When I heard Geisler talk about this I thought, “People actually still use the word ‘recant’? Amazing!” In that case the majority vote was against Geisler and for Clarke Pinnock. The next day Geisler quit the ETS.

This militant approach to ideas is attractive to some because it provides a great sense of self-importance: here you are defending the Truth against Error. But it is not really in keeping with the ethics of discipleship where truth and love cannot be separated. Discipleship implies camaraderie in the journey towards understanding, not ongoing conflict. We are fellow travelers, not fellow soldiers marching under a totalitarian general.

The militant approach to theology is also ineffective. People don’t “recant.” They might adjust towards your position, they might rethink, they might restate. But we do not live in a society in which people can be forced to change their opinions about things, as the term “recant” implies. And rightly so. No one should be asked to violate the dictates of their own conscience. This is the great principle for which Martin Luther fought when he was told to “recant” by the Roman Catholic establishment of his time. I think Geisler is missing the spirit of the reformation in a big way.

In theology, as in most other areas, the goal of argumentation is to win people over to the reasonableness, coherence and beauty of your position, not to force them to take back what they have said. But theology ought to be more than a debating club (even if the debate is conducted appropriately). The same Holy Spirit operates in different individuals, all of whom have a something to contribute (and all have areas of growth). A Spirit-filled theological dialog moves everyone closer to God. The only real effect of Geisler’s “take no prisoners” approach to theology is to harden the minds and opinions of those who already agree with him. But that seems like such a petty goal.

Ironically, I actually land on Geisler’s side in terms of the interpretation of this passage about the raising of the dead.  I do think that it describes something that happened. But note that most of Licona’s supporters do as well. They are concerned that he be allowed to express a legitimate opinion which arguably does not contradict inerrancy. Licona’s position is that there is a literary question about the intention of the author. Think of the parables, for example. No one will be accused of denying “the literalness of the Bible” for claiming that parables are not historical accounts. Of course not! Their literary genre tells us this.  Licona is wondering whether the passage in question is similarly a literary device and not a literal recounting of events. The Bible is true in what it intends to affirm. If it did not intend to affirm that people actually rose from the dead, then denying that is not denying the Bible.

Personally, I don’t think his interpretation works.  I guess if he could show a couple parallels in Matthew where this type of thing was done I might be more open to it. In any case, it is a shame to make so much of this minor issues in such a large and positive book.  To do so represents a serious lack of discernment on Geisler’s part, IMHO.

UPDATE: You can find Mike Licona’s own defense of his position (both the exegesis and whether it contradicts innerancy) in this paper, When the Saints Go Marching In (Matthew 27:52-53): Historicity, Apocalyptic Symbol, and Biblical Inerrancy.

“In a devastating critique Raymond Tallis exposes the exaggerated claims made for the ability of neuroscience and evolutionary theory to explain human consciousness, behaviour, culture and society.

While readily acknowledging the astounding progress neuroscience has made in helping us understand how the brain works, Tallis directs his guns at neuroscience’s dark companion – “Neuromania” as he describes it – the belief that brain activity is not merely a necessary but a sufficient condition for human consciousness and that consequently our everyday behaviour can be entirely understood in neural terms.

With the formidable acuity and precision of both clinician and philosopher, Tallis dismantles the idea that “we are our brains”, which has given rise to a plethora of neuro-prefixed pseudo-disciplines laying claim to explain everything from art and literature to criminality and religious belief, and shows it to be confused and fallacious, and an abuse of the prestige of science, one that sidesteps a whole range of mind–body problems.

The belief that human beings can be understood essentially in biological terms is a serious obstacle, argues Tallis, to clear thinking about what human beings are and what they might become. To explain everyday behaviour in Darwinian terms and to identify human consciousness with the activity of the evolved brain denies human uniqueness, and by minimising the differences between us and our nearest animal kin, misrepresents what we are, offering a grotesquely simplified and degrading account of humanity. We are, shows Tallis, infinitely more interesting and complex than we appear in the mirror of biologism.

Combative, fearless and always thought-provoking, Aping Mankind is an important book, one that scientists, cultural commentators and policy-makers cannot ignore.”

Thanks to Faith Interface for the description.

In any case, there have been a few attempts at engaging “the theology of OWS,” such as it is. Bobby Grow at The Evangelical Calvinist has thrown some thoughts into the pot to the effect that OWS shares too many features with liberation theology and Marxism which are “deleterious to the human soul.”  It’s a strange post because he repudiates OWS on the basis that no human ideology can can overcome the human condition and “movements without Christ as their shepherd only lead to destruction in the end.” This begs the question of why the current fallen system ought to be privileged. Though this is not necessarily Bobby’ position, I have seen this response before: acknowledge real social, political or financial problems and then condemn any “human attempts” to deal with the situation in the light of total depravity. It just so happens (pure coincidence!) that many people who make these claims are getting along just fine with the current fallenness.

Travis McMaken has answered in defense  of OWS with some ideas from Karl Barth.  Travis thinks that Barth’s “pious egocentricity” is an apt descriptor for the use of theology to counsel social inactivity:

Barth’s concept [of pious egocentricity] is directed primarily at those who shun the missionary vocation of the church due to a preoccupation with possessing and cultivating their own salvation. It is a way to speak of a Christianity that is focused inward rather than outward, a Christianity that occupies itself with the relatively safe examination of the inner life as opposed to shouldering the task of engagement in the world for the sake of gospel proclamation.

Occupy the inner life!

Travis supports OWS because of “the incredibly inequitable wealth distribution in the United States, and the way in which the political process has become dominated by the sliver of the nation’s populace that controls an incredibly disproportionate share of the nation’s wealth.”  He cites some of the many passages in Scripture about God’s heart for the the oppressed and although he does not say so explicitly, he seems to be suggesting that theologically speaking the OWS’ socialist agenda is more in continuity with the biblical vision than the capitalist system it criticizes.

From other Christian friends I have sometimes felt the vibe that OWS and revolutionary / socialist leaning movements are thought to be biblicaly respectable because of their interest in justice, financial inequality and the plight of the poor. And I sympathize. I have a thoroughly underlined copy of Gutierrez’ Liberation Theology and a blog post or two out there to prove it.

My point of caution about socialism and liberation, however, has to do with some practical realities.

I like socialism but I’m not convinced that purer versions of it work. And when socialism does not work, it is not just – no matter what the rhetoric might proclaim. This is crucial. Having visited countries that have a more pure version of socialism or even communism, I haven’t seen anything that would lead me to believe that this system produces greater justice. Where the government  is given the power to manage the finances of its citizens the outcome seems to always be nepotism and favoritism. People who work hard for what they own find that the businesses and systems they have created are taken from them and given to others who don’t know how to use them or run them. Productivity decreases and resources shift from businesses owners to politicos (not, I add, to “the people”). It’s an old story. I’ve visited Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela and similar stories are told in each country. It’s not all dismal and there are varieties. Some good things as well. But there is a basic pattern that resonates.

So it’s not so much ideology as practical observation, then, that leads me to be a bit stand-offish about the OWS agenda and maybe even give a nod to the above mentioned notion that any human movement is bound to be flawed.  And I have to admit that I’m a little more comfortable with the sorts of problems engendered by our “capitalist socialism” than those which crop up when government is given too much control over private property or takes too much control of the redistribution of resources. The inherent difficulties of such a task are illustrated by the fact that pure socialism and communism has usually been sustained by localizing power in the hands of a few “defenders of the revolution.”

Am I saying we should do nothing about corporate greed? Hardly. You are talking to a long term Walmart boycotter here (a small gesture, to be sure). There are many things we can do to address corporate greed which do not involve the sort of top down socialist restructuring that OWS seems to be aiming at.

But to conclude I want to reiterate my theological ethical point so that it doesn’t get lost in the pile of observations I’m tossing in here: while socialism is arguably premised on principles that are in continuity with the biblical vision of justice, socialism in practice is often not in continuity with biblical justice. I think this is a huge issue.

An interesting post over at Andrew Perriman’s blog complains about the tendency of preachers to use the parable of the prodigal son as a salvation message. Perriman’s point is that this parable, along with the two which precede it, is an answer the complaint of the pharisees, “Why are you partying with sinners, Jesus?” (Luke 17:1) The answer that develops in the three stories is that when something is lost and then found, it’s time to partey (Amen). Thus, says, Perriman, this is not a good place from which to preach the gospel.

Fair enough. Sort of.

I agree with the interpretation, but I’d like to hold back a bit on the claim that we should not preach the gospel of forgiveness of sin based on the story of the prodigal. After all, in the parable itself the prodigal son’s return does stand as a picture for salvation. It has to for the parable to make any sense: the older brother is a parallel to the pharisees who were complaining about the return of sinners – so there has to be a return of sinners in the parable too.  Maybe this chart will help make my point:

Jesus’ ministry                 | the parable

sons return to God               | son returns to father
said return is celebrated   | said return is celebrated
pharisees complain             | older brother complains

So the return of the son is very much a salvation parable, and this is very much a gospel passage. (I should mention that Perriman agreed with me in a subsequent comment).

When people get turned on to exegesis it is not uncommon for them to start making these sorts of observations. They have learned that “you have to interpret the Bible according to context” and they eagerly pounce on the abundant tresspasses against this principle that are available in our churches. However, there are times when this sort of thing overreaches itself and trips on its own shoe laces. The above case is an example I’ve run across many times.

If my people…

But here’s another overly eager limitation to context I’ve come across. There’s the famous verse in 2 Chronicles 7:14 that says,

“If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

It is used and abused ad-nauseum by prayer warriors across the land who would have us claim America for Jesus or return our nation to its bygone Christian heritage. A common criticism of this use of the passage is to say, “Hey, wait a minute! This was written to the Jews of ancient Israel. It’s no about America. It’s being used out of context!”

Again I’ll say, “fair enough. Sort of.” If you think about this claim it actually imports a pretty huge theological idea into the discussion without perhaps even realizing it. It seems to imply that Old Testament actions and statemtents cannot be relevant to us today; they were written “for the Jews;” they applied “back then;” the are not meant for us today. But really?  I’m hard pressed to state matters so starkly. Surely the OT gives us models and paradigms that show God at work. Surely the notion that God’s praying people will receive a blessing from him is not to be limited by its contenxt as though it only applied back in the day when the events described in 2 Chronicles transpired.

I think the problem here is not the principle of prayer and blessing. Rather, given the NT’s teaching about the identity and nature of the people of God, we should apply 2 Chron. 7:14 to the church (the people of God), not to America, Algeria, or Antarctica. That’s not to say that we cannot pray for our nation as such (presumably we can pray for anything!), but it does mean that this passage does not support the sappy Christian nationalism that it is often used to promote.

It’s important to make these distinctions. Otherwise it’s just incoherence countered by more incoherence.

Behold I stand and knock

Back in Bible college we had an evangelism class. I gotta say that it was a bit of a joke in terms of academics, and the hermeneutics were horrible. Being at that time one of these overly eager hot shot exegetes who would gladly strain out a textual gnat to choke a camel (how does that go?), I was paralyzed with astonishment when my teacher took up the topic of using Revelation 3:20 in evangelism. Of course, “everyone” knows that when Jesus says in the passage, “I stand at the door and knock,” it doesn’t mean that he is knocking at the door of your heart waiting for you to let him in to be saved. Rather, he is very clearly knocking at the door of a luquewarm church saying, “Get it together people. You’ve left me out in the cold.”

And yet the phrase is irresistible to evangelists. Some speculate that our use has been influenced by the famous painting of the (white Teutonic) Jesus knocking at a door. In any case, the thing that shocked me speechless in the Evangelism class was that the teacher freely admitted “I stand at the door and knock” was not an evangelistic invitation in the Bible.

The hermeneutical move he devised to get around this was a very simple one: “I just use it anyway,” he said.  My head must have spun around several times and constricted my throat because I very uncharacteristically made no objections. Though later Cathy and I hashed it out, you can be sure.

While I don’t recommend my teacher’s interpretative maneuver, however, it might be a bit obsessive to insist that this verse not be used in evangelism, as many “hot shot exegetes” do. Let’s attend to the actual wording of the passage, and note that it does appeal to the individual:

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and will dine with him, and he with Me.”

Granting that it is pretty clearly written to Christians, not non-Christians, I’m still hard pressed to say that it is wrong to use this invitation as part of a gospel message or conversation. The reason is that there is continuity between the invitation to believe in Jesus and the invitation to return to Jesus.  Additionally, the invitation in Revelation 3:20 is very close in structure and meaning to other passages that we would never hesitate to use in a gospel message:

• John 9:51 - I am the living bread that bcame down out of heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever
• John 10:9 - I am the door; if anyone enters through Me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find pasture.
• 6:35 - I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me bwill never thirst.
• 8:12 - I am the Light of the world; bhe who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.

In conclusion, then, let’s be careful, my fellow exegetes, about using our interpretative skills too narrowly and perhaps even too arrogantly. Also beware of being a “one exegetical trick pony” that can only attend narrowly to the immediate context (and often just to negate a claim rather than to build up). Interpretation is wider, broader, not less than, but certainly more than attending to the immediate context. One can imagine the Pharisees watching Jesus at a distance partying with the sinners, complaining to each other that “he used that verse out of context.” How sad that would be.