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August 31, 2008
Bible Study Today
Contents
I. Introduction
II. Three Approaches to Reading the Bible
A. Before the Reformation
B. After the Reformation
C. 20th Century Bible Study
1. Messianic secret
2. Synopsis of the Four Gospels
III. Additional 20th Century Developments
A. Epistemology
1. Wittgenstein
2. Quine
3. Implications
B. Pentecostal and Charismatic Renewal
C. Apocalyptic Literature and Theology
1. What it means
2. Jewish Apocalyptic
3. Christian Apocalyptic
IV. Conclusion
I. Introduction
The ability to read the New Testament with understanding and confidence is a goal I have pursued over several decades, and has included taking for credit or auditing about 20 semesters of Bible classes in two graduate seminaries, as well as numerous adult Bible classes in churches. Even though I do not have a career in the church, I took the time to get a Masters in Biblical Studies from Fuller Theological Seminary.
What I offer below is my own perspective which I hope will be informative to interested lay people. There are thousands of scholars, preachers, teachers and lay people who have also studied the Bible extensively, some much more than me, so I certainly admit there are other valuable perspectives.
II. Three Approaches To Reading the Bible
First I'll discuss general approaches to the Bible. I limit my discussion to approaches which assume scripture is somehow "from God". In some way the text has its source in / from the creator God, who transcends all His creation, and has revealed Himself to faithful Jews and Christians. There are many other ways to approach scripture; skeptics consider it myths and fables, some regard it as literature and history no more valuable than other ancient documents, those in the more liberal wing of the church regard scripture as valuable because of its foundational role in the Christian cultural tradition but without a supernatural component, and so on. I limit my discussion to those approaches which assume scripture is unique and of significantly greater value than other writing because, in some sense, it comes from God.
A. Before the Reformation
The first approach was widespread before the Protestant Reformation. Everyone agreed the Bible was true, and holy, and the word of God. This was a simple time. There were various sources of authority - the church, church creeds, the Bible, the works of theologians - and no one worried about which source was more authoritative. If ever it was necessary to identify the most authoritative, the church was preeminent. Printing had not yet been invented in the western world, so there were not widely followed public debates that progressed into in-depth biblical scholarship on more and more detailed issues. Certainly there was theological debate, but it was pretty broad-brush. See for example my blog entry on Soteriology, specifically the discussion of Anselm and Abelard. The debates were not about particular Bible passages or how to apply them.
Only a tiny fraction (2% ?) of the population was literate, and the same people who were literate were the ones who shared power, and were not inclined to develop schismatic interpretations of scripture. Sure, everybody who read the Bible had their own point of view, but it didn't generate controversy. In the rare event people outside the establishment came up with novel positions they insisted on pursuing, like the Cathars in southern France, Hussites in what is now the Czech Republic, or followers of Tyndale in England, it was a fairly localized event and the problem was readily solved by murdering the heretics.
So the Bible was honored as Truth and there was little controversy about interpretation. There may have been potential issues beneath the surface, but that's where the issues stayed, beneath the surface.
B. After the Reformation
Gutenberg and Martin Luther ushered in a new era, what I am calling the second general approach.
Martin Luther quarreled with the Catholic Church over the sale of indulgences. In exchange for a generous contribution, the Church arranged for you to pay less for your sins, that is, spend much less time in Purgatory. Luther, on good biblical authority, asserted sins were forgiven by the grace of God, not by the church. In essence he was asserting that the Bible was a higher authority than the Catholic Church and its leader, the Pope. Luther had a name for his doctrinal position, sola scriptura, Latin for scripture alone (as the highest authority in doctrinal matters).
The church was unable to solve this problem in the time honored way of killing Luther and his followers for a couple reasons. One was political support for Luther from the local government, which was tired of Rome taking money out of the local economy and meddling in local affairs. The other was the problem was too widespread. Lots of people were reading about the dispute and taking an interest. In addition other "protestants" were springing up in other parts of Europe. In German speaking Switzerland Zwingli was disputing Catholic doctrine, and lay people, reading the Bible on their own, were questioning infant baptism, among other things.
Protestants were showing up even in hard core Catholic countries like France, Italy and Spain. They read the Bible on their own and questioned one doctrine after another. The Catholic Church responded vigorously with theological debate, debate over interpretation of scripture, political pressure, even the Inquisition, and war. Reformation and counter-reformation shook Europe.
Protestants were fighting with the Catholic hierarchy, so they emphasized scripture over church authority. But they needed all the support they could get, so they did not quarrel with other established sources of authority. They fully subscribed to the creeds of the early church. They claimed the early church fathers, such as St. Augustine, as their own. (Although Catholics trace the origin of the Roman church to Peter and Paul, the Catholic Church really emerged as an independent center of power and authority under Pope Gregory the Great after the collapse of imperial Rome.) Many important doctrinal positions had been developed by the church fathers during the Roman Empire, and Protestants accepted most all of them. Sola scriptura meant the Bible prevailed over the positions of the Roman Catholic church, but did not lead to a reexamination of established doctrines.
So a couple features of what I'm calling the second general approach can be discerned at this point. One is that basic church doctrines like the Trinity and the divinity of Christ are assumed without discussion to be both true and biblical, then are used to interpret and understand the Bible.
A second feature is the idea of many different interpretations of the Bible being valid. Actually each scholar or leader claimed only his interpretation was valid, but there was no central authority (formerly Rome) to resolve the differences. So many different doctrines developed, all with some scriptural basis. Doctrines depended on which verses and issues people focused on, and on how they understood those passages. For example among Protestants, infant baptism was a burning issue for some - on both sides of the issue - and other groups didn't pay much attention to it. To a degree these different interpretations account for the many denominations we have today.
Contemporaneous with the Reformation something was happening at an even deeper level, although I don't know if it was ever consciously realized or expressed. Print was such a powerful medium, so much more effective in transmitting ideas than oral or handwritten expression, that people came to assume, without reflecting on it, that truth itself could be captured in the written word. The assumption grew that truth, all truth, the totality of truth, was "propositional". It could be stated expressly. On any particular issue, or on the grandest issues, there was one true and correct position, and it could be written down (and printed) as a single, coherent declarative statement.
Naturally people sought that truth, and they assumed it was stated in the Bible. Unfortunately the Bible is not laid out as an express declarative statement of all truth. Paul's letter the to Roman church is a little bit like that, at least the first half of it, but the Bible is full of narratives, stories, songs and poems, history, letters, curious prophecy, visions and dreams ... not quite the format we would expect for a definitive statement of all truth.
As this perspective seeped in over the decades after Luther, the challenge became to systematically restate all truth propositionally, using as raw materials the Bible, church creeds and the theology of church fathers, which were understood to be consistent with the Bible. The first major practitioner of this skill was John Calvin, writing his Institutes of the Christian Religion.
Calvin begins with foundational, indisputable truths; God is all powerful, God is all knowing. Calvin builds a whole theology with a few starting points. It's a bit like Euclid's Geometry starting with a few axioms and postulates, although Calvin uses scripture to support his points all along the way.
One example of a doctrinal position he arrives at is predestination. If God knows everything and controls everything, it's logical to conclude the future is in His hands as well. And Calvin had the verses to support his position. Calvin held fast to his views on predestination, after all he had developed the doctrine with impeccable logic and had the Bible verses for support. Other Christians weren't so sure. They noted the Great Commission which required active spread of the gospel (why send out missionaries if God has already decided who will be saved and who won't?), and the doctrine of free will. So critics set about developing their own statements of All Truth, since in their view Calvin had fallen short. They didn't question the underlying assumption that there was one absolute truth, universally applicable, which could be captured expressly in the written word.
Two other general features of this second general approach can be mentioned. One is the extremely high value placed on scripture. It is the word of God and it is absolute truth. Today the word "inerrant" is used to describe this position. Although not expressly stated, belief in the Bible came to be absolutely essential, like belief in God and belief in the resurrection.
Paradoxically another feature of this second general approach was the very elevated status of systematic theology. It did not seem that the Bible expressed truth in a user-friendly format, so the theologians who, using scripture citations, organize and repackage the scriptural truths into a systematic format are regarded in the second general approach, as foremost among theologians.
The second approach is alive and well today. There are thousands of dedicated scholars and students of the Bible working with essentially the same raw materials as Calvin; scripture, well-established church doctrine, and logic. Most are confident that they are on the right path and everybody else is just a little bit off.
C. 20th Century Bible Study
The third general approach has developed recently, although its roots go back centuries. It involves looking at each book of the Bible individually (or sometimes several books by the same author, like Luke-Acts). As early as the 16th Century Erasmus was saying each book of the Bible should be studied on its own. Spinoza in the 17th Century made a similar point. Early in the 1800's German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (known as the father of liberal Protestant theology) said the goal of study for each book of the Bible was to understand the [human] author's intent.
For believing Christians as well as other scholars studying each book in and of itself is the most valuable approach, but we would not say a Bible book is merely the work of a human author alone. The assumption is that each author was inspired by God, even though each book was written by a specific author for a specific community with specific concerns. For believers as wee as academic scholars the challenge is to understand what the book originally meant, in context, to its original intended audience.
1. The Messianic Secret
The professor of my New Testament Introduction class at Fuller (Dr. Russ Spitler) started started with an early example of the method. A German scholar, William Wrede, published The Messianic Secret in 1901. (Since he was German his last name is pronounced Vray-duh.) Wrede noticed that the gospel of Mark, in spite of being only about half the length of Matthew or Luke, has more verses in which Jesus tells disciples, or commands demons, not to reveal who he is, where he is, etc. Quite simply Mark emphasizes Jesus' commands of secrecy significantly more than the other gospels. (See verses in Mark: 1:23 :34, :43, 3:11, 5:43, 7:24, :36, 8:26, :30, 9:9, & 9:30.) What is going on?
Wrede speculated that Mark made it up! He guessed Jesus never said anything about secrecy, but that the author of the gospel had his own reasons for portraying Jesus as insisting on secrecy, and Wrede then commenced to speculate what those reasons might be. One of the persistent problems with modern biblical scholarship is that many of its practitioners are skeptics, so believers notice the oddball conclusions and throw out the whole discipline. More on that below.
More reasonable scholars came up with a balanced view that Jesus did indeed demand secrecy at various points in his ministry, but because of special aspects of the gospel of Mark possibly having to do with the concerns of the community, the theological points implicit in the narrative, or other reasons, Mark found it appropriate and necessary to emphasize the issue more than other gospels. So Mark was different than the other gospels. Why? In what other ways? How different? Was this true of other books? The search was on to understand the special circumstances and concerns of each book of the New Testament.
Because the uniqueness of a book of the New Testament was likely to be tied to the special circumstances and concerns of the community for which it was written, in a sense this new direction for scholarship was a matter of understanding context. Understanding context was a vital principle of biblical interpretation well before 1900, as it is for fundamentalist as well as other scholars today. It's just that the effort to understand context became much more extensive, deeper and complicated.
Wrede had looked at Mark like an entomologist examining a beetle; he tried to eliminate preconceptions and just observe what was there. He noticed something unusual (Messianic secrecy) and followed it where it took him. Science, whose methods had demonstrated such power in the past few centuries, was being applied to Bible study.
In fact Wrede was not accurately following the example of the scientific method. When scientists investigate physical phenomenon they start with "faith" that the laws of the physical universe apply not just in the one experiment they observe, but in all similar circumstances. Gravity works not just in the laboratory but with apples falling from trees and with the moon orbiting the earth. The experiment the scientist performs today can be repeated tomorrow, because the rules don't change from day to day.
The scientific method requires the observer to put aside assumptions he or she may have about what is being observed and to be as objective as possible. But it does not require the scientist to abandon the "faith" that nature's laws are consistent from place to place and time to time. If the scientist rejects that, the study is pointless.
Wrede, trying to be scientific, doubted absolutely everything. In that he departed from the example of the scientific method. If you are seeking God, faith is essential. You have to believe God exists. If you seek what God has revealed in scripture, you have to believe God was somehow involved in its writing. Those are essential starting points. If you make different initial assumptions you get nonsense results, as did Wrede. Once you make valid initial assumptions then it is good to test, to question, to compare and to speculate.
2. Synopsis of the Four Gospels
There are four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Each is a story of Jesus' ministry, plus Matthew and Luke tell about his birth and a bit about his early life. Before Wrede each was regarded as history and a logical task was to come up with a "harmony" or the gospels, that is to compile all the facts from the four books into one more complete history of Jesus' life and ministry.
Once the realization sank in that something different was going on in each book, the challenge became to compare, to contrast, to identify and explain differences. In my opinion the most useful tool facilitating this study is The Synopsis of the Four Gospels, first published in 1963, by Kurt Aland, a German scholar.
The Synopsis takes the Greek text of the gospels, with many footnotes about which ancient manuscripts are used as sources, and places them side by side in four columns. On the facing page is a translation, which for Aland was originally in German, but you can buy a Synopsis with the translation in English. Every student in my New Testament course bought one.
Only texts that are very similar are placed side by side, so it is rare for all four columns to be filled. On the other hand there is enough similarity that it is also rare for one column to stand alone.
Many interesting things emerge when you look at gospel stories side by side. Particularly when you look at Matthew, Mark and Luke you often see language which is very, very similar. Either one copied from the other or they had the same earlier written or oral source.
I'll discuss a couple of examples where having the texts side by side makes it easier to compare and analyze.
a. The Anointing in Bethany
All four gospels tell this story, although Luke's rendition is different enough that you can debate about whether he describes the same event. The texts are Matt 26:6-13, Mark 14:3-9, Luke 7:36-50 and John 12:1-8.
Matthew tells the basic story. Jesus is at the house of Simon the leper in Bethany. An unnamed woman comes to Jesus with an alabaster flask of very expensive ointment and pours it on his head. The disciples are indignant over the waste, saying the money could have been given to the poor, but Jesus stops them and says the act was done to prepare him for burial.
Both Matthew and Mark include this direct quote from Jesus, "Truly I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her."
Mark has very similar language to Matthew, beginning with the statement that Jesus was in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper. Mark only adds a few details, that Jesus was "at table," that the ointment was nard and its value was 300 denarii.
John adds a lot more detail, one item of which is contradictory. The meal took place in Bethany but was prepared by Jesus' friends Lazarus, Martha and Mary - not Simon the leper. It is Mary who anoints Jesus and it is Judas Iscariot specifically who objects to use of the ointment, rather than its sale in order to give to the poor. John even tells us Judas' motivation (he was group treasurer and a thief).
I believe John describes the same event as Matthew and Mark. The timing is the same, just before Jesus' final week in Jerusalem. The sequence of events is the same, much of the language is the identical, we even have the virtually identical quote from Jesus at the end, "The poor you will always have with you, but you do [will] not always have me." (I doubt Jesus said that more than once.)
At this point could you start writing a harmony? Each rendition added more details but in addition to the Lazarus / Simon problem, a couple of John's other details don't match. In John Mary anoints Jesus' feet, not his head. And Jesus, instead of saying the anointing prepared him for burial, says regarding the ointment, "Let her keep it for the day of my burial." I'm not sure how much of a problem these two details are for people who believe the Bible is inerrant. However the Lazarus / Simon issue would require explanation and might generate talk about lack of the original manuscripts, errors in transmission, or such.
Luke is very different. For one thing he places the anointing early in the story, unrelated to that final week in Jerusalem. He never mentions burial. The meal is at the home of Simon, a Pharisee. I don't know if a Pharisee can also be a leper, but it's important to Luke's narrative that the host be of high status. The whole point of Luke's story is to compare the behavior of Simon with that of the humble woman ("who was a sinner").
The woman is a portrait of total humility and adoration of Jesus. She is in tears, she wets Jesus' feet with her tears then wipes them with her hair, then anoints his feet with the expensive ointment. Simon one the other hand is ungenerous, haughty and judgmental. He offers nothing to Jesus in the way of welcome, looks on the woman with contempt, and condemns Jesus for allowing the woman to touch him.
With compelling prose Luke tells how Jesus rebukes the Pharisee and blesses the woman, forgiving her sins (which forgiveness causes Simon and his pals to murmur about anyone but God forgiving sins, and to condemn Jesus all the more).
The easiest way to explain Luke's passage in comparison to the others is to say different woman, different house, different meal, different story. But are we certain?
Luke's story has details in common with the others. Like Matthew and Mark, the host is named Simon. Like Mark and John, it takes place when Jesus is "at table." Identically with Mark and consistent with the others, it involves "an alabaster flask of ointment." Like in John she anoints the feet of Jesus and wipes his feet with her hair. In all four stories the people around the table are indignant about the event.
Luke wrote not only the gospel but also Acts. It appears Luke joined Paul in Troas (Troy) before Paul went to Macedonia because the narrative switches from what "they" (Paul's party) did to what "we" did (Acts 16:6-10). This was decades after Christ. It was even years after the meet-up at Troy when Luke accompanied Paul to Judea. Paul ended up in prison and Luke presumably spent the time talking to Christians, researching his two books. How plausible is it that all those years there were two different stories circulating about two different women who anointed Jesus, where many details are similar?
On the other hand you could say the passage of decades helps explain how the stories of two different events became conflated, with details mixing and matching. In any event looking at all four passages side by side makes the issues impossible to ignore.
b. Celebrating the Passover meal
The Last Supper is described in all four gospels. See Matt 26:17-29, Mark 14:12-25, Luke 22:7-20 (plus conversation which evidently occurred at the meal through v. 38), and John chapters 13 through 17.
The narratives of Matthew, Mark and Luke are quite similar and could be used to write a harmony. It is clear that Jesus celebrates the passover meal with his disciples, and that he initiates the ceremony which much of he Christian church calls communion, eating the bread and drinking the wine, as Luke says, in remembrance of him.
John is remarkably different. Looking at the four columns on the pages of the Synopsis, John's column is largely blank when the others describe the event, and vice versa. John alone describes Jesus washing the feet of his disciples, the new commandment of love, and the long "farewell discourse" taking up chapters 14 through 17. In a couple of areas the narratives overlap; when Jesus talks about the fact that one of his disciples will betray him, and when he predicts Peter will fall away. The passages are generally consistent, but with added details. All in all, even with the addition of John's gospel, what they say about the last supper could be used to construct a harmony. Except for one thing.
The last supper in John is not the passover meal. John's only reference to the time of the meal (i.e. whether it was the passover dinner) is a bit vague, in 13:1 he starts the chapter at a point "before the passover" then it's not certain how much time passes as the narrative goes forward. However we know from later in John that passover had not begun when Jesus was brought before Pilate, then crucified (18:28, 19:14).
How can John be so different on this point? Wouldn't people remember whether or not the last supper was the passover meal?
c. Reflections
People who believe the Bible is inerrant may be offended that I point out apparent inconsistencies. Their position is there are some things we don't understand now, but eventually we will and the absolute truth of scripture will, in due course, be vindicated. In the meantime it is not helpful for a believer to point out unresolved problems that may shake the faith of new Christians or give ammunition to critics.
The illustrations I give facilitate a discussion of differing assumptions about the Bible. I think the inerrantists are making a series of assumptions, some of which I agree with and some of which I do not: (1) There is a God and He is perfect, omniscient and omnipotent. (2) God, through the Holy Spirit, has generated scripture, and safeguarded that process of generation so the Bible too is perfect. (3) The Bible is absolutely true, so regardless of the culture of the reader or the time in history from which one approaches scripture, its words are truth and are accurate in describing whatever is being addressed in the text.
Furthermore if you reject these assumptions you are abandoning faith, taking away the foundation for Christianity, and ultimately rejecting God. Call it a slippery slope or what you will, rejecting the Bible leads to unbelief. It is essential to hold fast to the Bible.
I agree with the first assumption; faith in God is essential to get anything of value out of scripture.
The second assumption, sometimes described as the Holy Spirit dictating to a faithful scribe, is probably more complicated than the Holy Spirit giving dictation. There is a human element. The Bible originally was written in three different languages, Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. Why not just one? Why those three? Did this result from God picking exactly the best language to express each section, or did those happen to be the languages that the people who were most intently seeking God spoke?
Paul's letters often contain intense personal emotion, about rejection from churches he founded, about followers going astray, about the Jews not all accepting Christ... those passages don't sound like something dictated to Paul.
Much of the Bible requires knowledge of unstated, culture-specific background and context for full understanding. I think the issue of transmission of the message, from God to man, to the person we identify as the writer of a book of the Bible, is significantly more complicated than the Holy Spirit giving dictation. My operating assumption is not that God safeguarded the process so it was flawless, but that God safeguarded the process so the Bible is our best available source for the things of God, and He safeguarded the process enough to transmit His truth to us.
What is truth? This third issue is a tricky one, after all, wasn't that Pontius Pilate's question? I doubt truth is absolute. Yes, absolute truth exists, God understands it. We human beings, with our limited minds, limited languages, living in space and time, and in all manner of specific circumstances, do not utter or comprehend universal, eternal, unchanging truth. Five years ago I could have told you, and written in a letter, that my car was white. That would have been a true statement, no question about it. But if you find and read that old letter today, it's false. I now own a black car. I'm told Eskimos have a couple dozen words for snow. Imagine I went to some arctic society that had two dozen words for white. Perhaps I would be telling a falsehood when I said my car was white. Imagine I went to a society that had never seen a car. How might they understand my statement?
My operating assumption in reading the Bible is that truth is specific to the topic being addressed and to the audience for whom the passage was originally written. If a passage is about theology, but touches on issues of geology and biology, and I learn that the original audience for the passage had never heard of geology or biology because it was written many centuries before those two branches of science had been invented, then I do not make the assumption that the passage conveys absolute truth on those scientific topics.
Inerrantists, by asserting God's authorship and attributing universal truth to the Bible, appear to be greatly honoring scripture, but they are imposing their own preconceptions on the text. Is that really respectful? My position is to begin with belief that God inspired the writing of the text but to keep an open mind and learn about that process of inspiration. In any particular book of the Bible, I want to understand the truth the writer was conveying to his intended audience, with their own pressing concerns and special circumstances, and then ponder its universal applicability.
In my opinion what is "going on" in Matthew, Mark and Luke is narrative theology, rather than a history of what Jesus said and did. I can't convince you of that without a lengthy digression but it is something I hope to do in a later blog entry. My sense is that Matthew and Mark discuss pretty much the same topic that was the center of Jesus' preaching; the establishment of the rule of God, against opposition and obstacles, and Jesus' role in the rule of God.
Luke differs in that his intended audience was gentile, would be unfamiliar with Jewish religion, history and culture, and would be wary of any power other than Roman. So Luke emphasizes the blessings of the rule of God, such as good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, the oppressed go free (Luke 4:17), and portrays Jesus as a prince of peace. Luke could be expected to want to tell a story, such as the anointing of Jesus by the woman, which illustrated his championing on the humble over the haughty.
In think John was writing for a community under stress, urging them with arguments selected for their emotional impact rather than theological precision, to remain loyal to Jesus and to stay in the community. It was natural for him to describe an event like the anointing which emphasized personal connections and community, Jesus eating with his friends. And regarding the passover, John had placed an extremely powerful image near the start of his book, Jesus as the passover lamb, "the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). John stayed with that metaphor and did not contradict it when he described the last supper.
I have not proven my assertions in the preceding three paragraphs, but I hope they illustrate how the Bible might convey truth, truth of vital importance to specific communities, without following factual history in detail.
III. Additional 20th Century Developments
Other developments in various areas during the 20th Century also support what I call the third general approach to Bible study.
A. Epistemology
I'm going to write a few paragraphs on secular philosophy. I do not look to secular philosophers for information about God, but they do offer information about what humans are able to understand. In any communication, including God's word, there is both an encoder and a decoder, a speaker and a hearer. Limitations of the hearer will affect how the speaker constructs the message.
I have not completed even one semester of philosophy, and what I will say below could be ridiculed by experts for its simplicity and generality. I hope those experts would allow that, for my very limited purposes here, what I say is generally valid. I am primarily in debt to Prof. Nancey Murphy of Fuller Seminary who gave some excellent lectures on this topic.
Prior to the Reformation intellectual life in central and western Europe thrived within the church. The greatest universities, e.g. Paris, were schools of theology. The Reformation, with its wars, upheaval and irreconcilable disputes caused a yearning for a return to a unified worldview. Since theologians were in endless disputation, secular philosophers responded to the challenge. About a century after Martin Luther, a brilliant French philosopher and mathematician, Rene Descartes, proposed that reason be the foundation for a new unity. He tore away every assumption until he was left with an undeniable (for him) truth, that he was a thinking being ("I think therefore I am") then using reason built up a whole structure of truths about reality. In a way it was a bit like John Calvin reasoning from the foundational principles that God was all-powerful and all-knowing.
Using reason involved using language, obviously, and it involved what I'll call foundational thinking; starting with a few foundational principles and building a structure of ideas on top of them. For several centuries philosophers engaged in this process and made advancements. In the 20th Century some paused to reflect.
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy dealing with how we can know things and what we can (and cannot) know. A number of great thinkers have contributed in this area. I'll discuss two to make my limited points.
1. Ludwig Wittgenstein
Wittgenstein was an Austrian who moved to England and became a professor at Cambridge. His major work was published in 1921, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. He was a pioneer of what has been called the linguistic turn, a movement in the 20th Century turning to language as a main subject of study in many disciplines, including philosophy, anthropology, sociology, literature and even in branches of ethics.
Language is the tool for expressing ideas and communicating ideas to others. In a very limited context, a specific situation, there is room for emotion, intuition, and non-verbal communication, but for both understanding and communicating ideas, and reaching across space and time, language is essential. For dealing with complex concepts or thorough analysis, language is essential. Wittgenstein wrote, "the limits of my language mean the limits of my world."
Until the linguistic turn language was assumed to be an effective tool when used skillfully. Wittgenstein saw that language had it limits. He concluded "what can be said at all can be said clearly and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence." He studied the logic of language to draw the limits to the expression of thought and to avoid "nonsense."
Words and expressions mean slightly different things to different people. The problem becomes more serious as you bridge cultures, languages or centuries. Wittgenstein pointed to this truth when he said, "if a lion could talk, we could not understand him."
2. W. V. O. Quine
Quine was a 20th Century American philosopher. He was a full professor at Harvard from 1956 to 1978, and was associated with Harvard from his student days (1930) to his death in 2000. He was active in many areas of philosophy but I want to talk about him regarding foundational thinking, exemplified by Descartes, where you doubt everything until you reach some indisputable, irreducable truth then build your worldview on that foundation.
Quine was not the only one to point out the obvious problem, people don't agree on the starting point. For Descartes the starting point was reason and the fact that he was a thinking being. For Calvin it was that God is all powerful and all knowing. For a muslim it would be that there is one God and Mohammed is his prophet, and so on...
Quine pointed out an additional problem regarding foundational thinking. Almost no one's beliefs are assembled that way. For our worldview, our system of beliefs and values, Quine posited a grand metaphor, the web of belief.
Imagine a giant, tangled web in three dimensions, or four if you will, with knots or nodes everywhere two or more strands intersect. Each node is an idea, a concept, a memory or experience, and the strands between nodes are the relationships between ideas, usually mutually supporting or reinforcing. Toward the outside of this web are nodes of personal experience and uncomplicated facts. Deeper in the interior, with many more connections, are the deeper thoughts, such as basic values of our culture that we learned at an early age, strong commitments we have made based on experience and reflection, issues of vital self-interest, and so on.
Each person strives to have coherence, where a great many nodes are interconnected and in harmony, and consistency, where few if any ideas or experiences contradict one another. If a new fact or new idea threatens core beliefs a complex process is necessary, adjusting numerous connections, before the core belief is modified or the new matter explained and contained.
Everyone has a web of belief and no two are identical. People in the same family may have belief systems that are similar, people of the same culture or country have beliefs that are generally more similar than in comparison to people in another culture, and people in the same century would be more similar when in comparison to people in another century.
Some overlap in webs of belief is needed for communication. Two educated, middle class Americans could communicate well even if one is an atheist and the other a believer. There would be some areas where they just couldn't understand one another. If one of them tried to communicate with an Australian aborigine, or for that matter a 1st Century Judean, it would be a lot harder.
3. Implications
Quine's web of belief helps us understand Wittgenstein's statement about not understanding a talking lion. Words mean slightly different things to different people. They evoke different connections in the web of belief, different associations. The more complex the idea or experience, the more different the individual perspective. Our ability to communicate and our ability to comprehend communication are limited, and those limitations are related to our culture, our experience, our own perspective on reality, our language, and any number of other factors.
God knows how he made us. He knows the limitations of human language and our ability to comprehend. I believe the truth He reveals in scripture, the words he inspired, were specially constructed by God to be understandable by a target audience, the original community for which a text was written. Context is vital. A message that is universal without specific meaning to any one community could be devoid of meaning, or worse, susceptible to misunderstanding.
I can imagine an inerrantist objecting: "I read Genesis chapter 1 and it says the world was created in six days. What's complicated about six days? What's not to understand?" Well, when the story was originally constructed, perhaps 4000 years ago, for an audience of mostly illiterate shepherds and farmers in Israel, who had never heard of any kind of science (because the Greeks had not invented it yet and certainly not the science of geology), what did it mean to them? I suggest what the story meant to its original audience was that God was the creator, the source of all things, that He created in an orderly manner, that His creation is good, and that He is sovereign over his creation. Claims about geological time would not have any particular meaning for such folks.
The inerrantist can insist: "Who cares what they understood? The text can be true for them and contain other truths for us." Maybe so, but God knows us. He created us as hearers with significant limitations and without the capacity to grasp absolute truth. The idea that God expressed truths in concrete situations, in context, seems more consistent with the way He created us.
Furthermore, imposing your own view on the text - that its truth is universal without regard to the original intent of the human writer or the understanding of the original audience - can lead to unnecessary problems. You may end up finding "truth" about a topic where God did not choose to offer an opinion. Bible-based Christianity, employing the third approach, has no quarrel with the geological or biological sciences, or with evolution, but people who impose their own preconception of what scripture is about do have a conflict.
B. Pentecostal and Charismatic Renewal
The Pentecostal renewal at the start of the 20th Century and the Charismatic renewal starting around mid-century gave a new dimension to experience of the Christian faith. It gave believers a sense of a living God, present and active in their lives, with whom they communicate back and forth. In the church community people hear from God via prophecy and anointed preaching. In personal and prayer life people hear from God via dreams, visions, flashes of insight, ideas spontaneously formed in the mind, and a number of other means.
To me these kinds of experience give a tentative insight into the process by which scripture was generated. I imagine that scripture was written when people strongly devoted to God felt an urgency to write on some particular topic or issue. The Spirit then was involved in generating their ideas and shaping their words. I am not equating the sermons of today, or the prophecies by church leaders of today, with scripture, but I am saying our experience today with anointed sermons, prophecy in the church, personal discernment or insight, and so on make the process of generating scripture seem more explainable, more comprehensible. Before the Pentecostal / Charismatic renewal the generation of scripture was a total mystery. All we could imagine was God dictated and the words appeared.
From decades within the Pentecostal / Charismatic movement I can make a couple observations. One is that receiving a word from God can be hard to understand, that is you cannot know for sure where the dividing line is between what the Spirit of God has inspired and where the human component, the mind of the person bearing the message, is involved. God knows but we cannot be absolutely sure. Testing, judgment, experience, skepticism, and consulting with Christian advisers can all be helpful to know what a word form God really means to you and how much you should rely on it. What this implies to me is not that scripture is somehow untrustworthy but that the human element is there and needs to be considered as you ponder the meaning of a text.
A second observation is that every communication from God, at least in my experience, is specific, concrete, and addressed to an issue or concern of importance to the individual or the community. I have not been exposed to general messages from God on universal topics. It has always been about something specific that mattered to a target audience of one or more. That has become my initial operating assumption as I approach a passage of scripture as well. The two observations together imply that overall context is absolutely vital for understanding.
C. Apocalyptic Literature and Theology
Imagine you could sit down with a group of people in Jerusalem 2000 years ago to talk about religious ideas. Modern scholarship, by studying writings from that era, gives us a pretty good idea of what people were thinking in that distant time and place. As I discuss the fruits of this scholarship, I am indebted to Prof. Ron Allen of Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, who covered apocalyptic theology in several of his excellent New Testament classes.
The Old Testament canon, the books of the Old Testament, stopped being written centuries before Christ. Evidently prophecy ended; weird guys in odd clothes no longer proclaimed (at least with any credibility) to speak for God. But in those centuries Jewish religious writing did not cease, in fact it poured out. There was a great deal of theological speculation and it formed the background, the cultural and religious milieu, in which Jesus preached and conducted his ministry.
This is very important because Jesus did not conduct his preaching and teaching in a vacuum. He spoke in ways the people could understand, not just the language but the currency of ideas, concepts, points of view and so forth that people of his time held routinely.
1. What Apocalyptic Means
"Apocalyptic" immediately brings to mind end-of-the-world cataclysm and that imagery is well deserved. But the word itself simply means revelation. The Greek word apokalupto (spelled phonetically) means reveal or make clear.
An apocalypse is a type of literature in which some figure, usually prestigious or exalted, passes along otherwise secret knowledge. For example the Book of Enoch, a short book written roughly in the 2d Century BC, was purportedly written by Enoch, the grandfather of Noah, and the 7th generation of human counting Adam. Enoch "walked with God" so he was one of the good guys (Genesis 5) and he also had enormous authority because of his antiquity. The book of Enoch, like most apocalypses, is not scripture. It's authorship is obviously (to us) made up, in order to impress. But the authors are not always made-up. The most famous apocalypse is Revelation, the last book of the New Testament, written by John, a servant of Jesus Christ. John himself is not necessarily a prestigious or authoritative figure, but what he writes was revealed to him by an angel, direct from heaven. That's pretty high on the authority scale.
Frequently the author indicates he received the revelation in a dream, a trance, or a vision. Daniel chapters 7 - 12 is an apocalypse, an example of the specific literary genre, and Daniel repeatedly says the information came to him in "a dream and visions" (Dan 7:1), "a vision" (8:1), "a trance" (8:18), "a vision" (10:7), and so forth.
Apocalyptic literature is extensive and diverse, so no one book embodies all the concepts that are common in the genre. Yet one way or another the texts all relate to the same topics.
2. Jewish Apocalyptic Theology
Centuries before Christ, when the Kingdom of Judah was still intact, and even for some years after the Babylonian exile, there were three general theological traditions in Judaism; wisdom, law, and prophecy. Wisdom literature, perhaps best exemplified by Proverbs, embodied the idea that God revealed Himself and His will in His creation and in the behavior of His creatures, including people. The law tradition held that God revealed Himself and His will in the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament. Prophecy held that God revealed His will in the words of men whom he inspired to speak, such as Samuel, Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and so on.
More than a century after the return from exile these three traditions evolved into two. The wisdom and law traditions grew together. A forerunner is Psalm 19. Both traditions shared the perspective that God had revealed what humankind needed to live properly, the world would continue on basically unchanged into the future, and the task of people was to learn God's will and live accordingly. This tradition tended to appeal to people with education or social status, although everyone in society was generally aware of the requirements of the law.
Beginning just before the exile and to a greater degree after Babylon, prophecy tended to focus on re-establishment of the Kingdom with its capital in Jerusalem. It was not enough that Jerusalem continue to exist as a vassal state with a small territory around it. Jerusalem was to have a glorious future, while its enemies would be brought low. Examples may be found in Isaiah 24-27, Ezekiel 38-39, Joel 3 and other Old Testament books.
The years went by and that didn't happen. Jerusalem was conquered and oppressed by Greeks and Romans, Egyptians and Syrians (both of which had Macedonian royal dynasties). Prophecy may have ended but the prophetic tradition carried on, struggling with this problem and generating extensive apocalyptic literature. The prophetic / apocalyptic tradition was universally understood but generated greater interest among the less educated, more credulous segments of society.
a. The core issue
Apocalyptic theology struggled with the issue of why Israel was in such low circumstances. The promises of God, and the covenants with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their descendants were not being fulfilled. The prophecies of glorious restoration after the exile in Babylon were not coming to pass. Godless nations prospered and grew ever more powerful. The God of Israel was the creator and God of the universe, all powerful. Why did He not act?
This is the problem of evil. Today we ask why bad things happen to good people. Two thousand years ago the Jews had a much more nationalistic focus. Their greatest concern was the collective well-being of the nation of Israel. Today evil in the world is an excuse for agnosticism or atheism. People say, if there was a God he would not let the terrible things happen that do happen. Two thousand years ago Jews were believers; agnosticism was not an option. The problem of evil had special intensity.
I'll give an example from the literature. In the Apocrypha, which is a collection of writings found in Catholic Bibles between the Old and New Testaments, we find 2 Esdras. The book was purportedly written by Ezra, a leading figure in post-exile Jerusalem, although the book dates from centuries later. In chapter 1 Ezra responds to a prophetic call, placing the text within the prophetic tradition, then in chapter 3 it gets down to Ezra's complaint. He is troubled by the desolation of Zion in comparison with the "wealth of those who lived in Babylon." In chapter 4 (v. 23) he focuses on "those things that we daily experience: why Israel has been given over the gentiles in disgrace; why the people whom you loved has been given over to godless tribes, and the law of our ancestors has been brought to destruction and the written covenants no longer exist."
Ezra, in the text, looked forward to a new age when everything would be set right. Apocalyptic theology generally explained this problem of evil with its view of history. Unlike the law-wisdom tradition, apocalyptic theologians saw history as moving toward a point when God would intervene in the world with great power. Taken as a whole the apocalyptic writings provide a detailed picture of history from (they assert) God's perspective.
b. History
Stated very simply, the answer to the problem of evil was that God will act, at the time of His choosing, to set everything right, to judge and punish evil people and nations, and to reward and bless the godly. This answer is supported by the apocalyptic perspective of history, history as it continues into the future.
In apocalyptic history there are three ages: the beginning in Eden when everything was idyllic and in accordance with God's will, the present evil age when the forces of evil and evil people are ascendant, and the age to come, the new age when God's will once again is dominant. The three ages are punctuated by two great events: the Fall when mankind lost its favored relationship with God in Eden, and the (future) day of the Lord, the day when God will act with great power to set things right.
These ages and turning points have various alternative names, for example sometimes reference to Eden is omitted and highly dualistic language is used. Reference is made to the present and the future, the old age and the new. The present evil age could be referred to as the old creation, this world, the kingdom of this world... and because the end was believed to be near, the present evil age was also referred to as these last days, or something very similar. Once you understand the overall time line, context will give you the age that is being referred to.
The transition from the old age to the new was expected to be abrupt and cataclysmic. This is the source of the end-of-the-world scenarios we associate with the word apocalypse. The literature is diverse enough that there are many variations in detail, but one way or another God Himself, His Holy Spirit, would intervene on earth. Even though the day of the Lord was primarily a collective, national event individuals knew that unless they were righteous, they would be consumed simply by being in God's presence. The Old Testament idea was that if you simply saw God you would die. To be in His presence was awesome. That's why in Jesus' day people flocked to John the Baptist, to repent and be baptized in the Jordan. In modern parlance they wanted to "get right with God." It was a matter of personal survival because the day of the Lord was immanent.
In the great day of the Lord God would judge evil doers and destroy them, bless the righteous, and restore Israel to glory. The earth would become much like Eden, a reprise of that marvelous existence.
c. Why things are so bad now
Apocalyptic theologians are the source of the New Testament view that there are evil spirits which oppress people, that they are arranged in some kind of hierarchy, that evil goes beyond mere disobedience to God, and that it is a force in the world opposing God and harming and oppressing people.
In the Genesis story of Adam and Eve the snake is a deceiving villain, but from the text we do not know more. The snake's identity and role are not further developed. The notion of a devil and a host of evil spirits was not present in the early days. Israel's understanding of the nature of evil grew over time.
Israel is famous as the source of monotheism, but in the centuries prior to the Babylonian exile monotheism was a functional matter. There were other gods but your allegiance was owed to the God of Israel (the first of the Ten Commandments). Other gods might rule over other nations, but the God of Israel outranked all the others. We get a glimpse of this in Psalm 82 where God sits at the head of a divine council. There were also deceiving spirits, for example King Saul is deceived in 1 Samuel 28, but not much is said about them.
About the time of the Babylonian exile Israel became truly monotheistic, believing no other gods existed. Isaiah is particularly forceful on this point, see chapters 44 and 45. But this pure monotheism brought with it a conceptual problem, namely, why is there evil? The apocalyptic theologians developed the idea of an adversary to God, the evil one who seeks his own dominion in place of God's. The adversary is not a god - there is only one God - but a creature, a powerful spiritual being, in rebellion against God.
It is the apocalyptic thinkers who characterize the story of Adam and Eve as The Fall, in which humans are deceived by the adversary, disobey God, and thus surrender their intended role of dominion over creation to the deceiver, who usurps humanity's role in God's created order. It is the adversary and legions of his minions who now exercise over creation the authority they have stolen, oppress humanity and keep people separate from God, and generally work to implement their own evil intentions.
In the apocalyptic perspective things are especially bad "now." Now is whenever the person happened to be writing or speaking. Now was always regarded as being near the end, the Day of the Lord. Things were especially bad and evil especially active now. The adversary and his minions are aware of the direction of history. They see the end coming and react with fear and hatred, redoubling their efforts to implement all manner of evil.
So the apocalyptics see the world as having a very active spiritual dimension populated with all manner of forces or beings, who oppress humanity and are the source of all manner of evil. These are not gods but are spiritual beings, creatures in rebellion against their creator. Individual disobedience to God's laws is still a basis for human culpability, but evil is primarily an oppressive force acting against people, a force from which we need to be liberated.
The focus is on this world and its problems. Even though there was a spiritual dimension to reality, it was what happened in this world, the world of space and time, that mattered. There is a heaven and apocalyptic writers have made many a spiritual journey to heaven to learn what the future holds, but heaven is a peripheral matter. What mattered is what will happen to Israel in the here and now.
d. Agents of God
There were diverse ideas about how the day of the Lord would occur. God, by His Holy Spirit was expected to intervene in history with great power, fire and devastation. But He would also act through an agent, someone specifically anointed for the purpose of implementing God's dominion. (Messiah and Christ are words meaning "the anointed one.") The nature of that agent is where the diversity of ideas comes in.
Even though much apocalyptic thinking is found in books written after the Old Testament canon, the Jews searched the Hebrew scriptures for clues about the identity of and events in the life of the messiah. The messiah was expected to be a great military leader who would conquer Israel's enemies and institute rule by Israel from Jerusalem. Probably the most common expectation was that the messiah would be a descendant of David who would restore the Davidic dynasty. Another possibility was a great national leader like Moses. Such a leader was promised in Deuteronomy 18:15.
A third possibility was that God would send an agent directly from heaven, although the agent would have the appearance of a human being. This is the "one like the son of man" prophesied in Daniel 7:13-14. In any event whatever form the messiah took, his appearing was expected to change everything in a fairly short span of time, and the transition was expected to be violent and cataclysmic.
e. Imagery and metaphors
Jewish apocalypticism provides many images and metaphors which appear again in the New Testament, such as Judgment Day when, finally, justice is dispensed, the idea of a great banquet where those acceptable to God celebrate and enjoy plenty, and the idea of a kingdom. The exact word "kingdom" almost never appears in apocalyptic literature but the idea of national revival and glory for Israel most often was associated with restoration of the Davidic dynasty.
3. Christian Apocalyptic Theology
[ I have run out of space on this blog entry. Please go to Bible Study Today (continued, part 2) ]
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