D. Moody Smith’s The Theology of the Gospel of John (Book Review)

D. Moody Smith’s The Theology of the Gospel of John is a topical, but unquestionably scholarly, survey of Johannine theology.

A brief summary of the content will set the stage for the more detailed review to follow.  Smith begins, in the Introduction, by stating the most obvious, but interesting of John’s uniqueness, “John more than any of the other Gospel writers deals with theological matters.”[1]  That is, John while maintaining narrative form, includes a fair amount of theologizing; the kind of stuff more familiar to epistles.  Issues of authorship and origin are treated only briefly enough to assert they are not central to the aim of this book. What is central is the understanding that John makes us “witness to a critical stage in the relationship between Christianity and Judaism.”[2]  What was once one entity, is now in the early stages of clear distinction.  In closing, Smith prepares his readers with his perspective that given this crucial moment, nearly all the themes of John ought to be considered in this light.  In addition, other New Testament thought will be considered, for contrast and for continuity.

Light as a Biblical Metaphor Pt. 2

This is Part Two in my series on Light as a Biblical Metaphor. 

Part One explored the three dominant biblical metaphors for light:
1) Light as Goodness/Virtue
2) Light as Knowledge/Vision
3) Light as Life/Vitality

























In this post, we'll look at how the three primary metaphors for light developed in the Old Testament get applied to Jesus and his followers.

Light as a Biblical Metaphor Pt. 1

In response to a request from a group of artists at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church, the topic my next two posts is Light as a Biblical Metaphor. I will explore how the authors of Scripture use the physical reality of light to illuminate spiritual realities.

To start, we need to know that light is a significant metaphor in Scripture and the word “light” occurs on the very first and very last pages of Scripture, and more than 250 times in between. In order to enter into the way that biblical authors use light as a metaphor, we are going to spend a good amount of time reading passages of the Bible so that they can shape our imaginations. My hope is that by the end of this series we will have entered into the creative and metaphorical imaginations of the authors of Scripture.

Proof-texting and Topical Preaching

"What is proof-texting?"
That is what someone asked me the other day, as I was cautioning against it. I replied:

Proof-texting refers to using Scripture to prove your point, without reference to the context of that Scripture. It is irresponsible exegesis, lazy theology and, I might add, inadequate preaching. (Can you tell I have feelings about this?) When we proof-text we are coming to Scripture to make it back up what we already believe and want to enlist Scripture’s authority to defend. It’s very easy when proof-texting to twist and contort the meaning of a passage so that it says something it never meant to say. For example “May the LORD keep watch between you and me when we are away from each other” (Genesis 31:49), might sound like a nice Christian Hallmark saying (and has been used that way) but the context tells us that Jacob is invoking God’s wrath on whoever breaks the pact he just made with Laban. Good use of Scripture requires us to come with an open heart, to read without an agenda, and allow Scripture not to tell us the answer to our question, but which question it is attempting to answer (known only by literary and historical context) and the answer it offers.

This question was followed up by mention of topical preaching. Here was my reply:

Indeed, topical preaching is prone to proof-texting. Though, in it’s better forms it only enlists passages that (if read in context) do sincerely teach on the topic, it nonetheless tends to dissuade hearers from serious study, and make them prone to irresponsible proof-texting. The best topical preaching, in my inexperienced opinion is to take a single text on a subject, and dive into it deeply enough to discover that the context reinforces the meaning of the text as an example of teaching on the desired topic. I have several times chosen a text with an particular ‘message’ in mind, and after careful study, been forced to abandon this message in favor of what the text (+context) seem to actually be teaching. 

The upside of topical preaching is that it is immediately relevant. The downside is hearers haven’t learned how to find relevance in Scripture themselves. You might say it is giving a man a fish, rather than teaching him to fish. Of course, if you’re trying to persuade someone of the value of learning to fish, feeding them a fish is the right place to start…but it’s not a very sustainable way to make a community of fishermen.

Jesus' Last Meal: A Maundy Thursday Reflection

The Last Supper by Jacopo Bassano, 1542

You’ve heard it called by many names:
The Last Supper.
Communion.
The Lord’s Table.
Eucharist.
The Holy Mass.

But it's a meal that Jesus would have simply called "the Passover."

My first experience with the Passover was during my junior year in college, I had decided to fast for a couple of days before Easter as a way of mourning the sadness of Jesus’ death. So I fasted Good Friday and I fasted Saturday morning and afternoon and then my roommate invited me to a Passover Seder. When I stared at him blankly he graciously reminded me that the Passover was the meal that Jews ate every year to remember their last night in slavery, the night of the 10th plague, when all the first born sons of Egypt died, but the Lord passed over the houses with the blood of a lamb on their doorposts and I thought, “This is great, I can break my fast early, and avoid feeling guilty because its a religious meal!”

So there I was on Saturday night standing around a table, because the Passover was originally celebrated standing, and I haven’t eaten in 48 hours and I’m just dying for a good hamburger or some lasagna but what I saw on the table was all kinds of funny looking and funny smelling foods.

The host filled all of our glasses with wine and we passed around several foods that were symbolic of our slavery. We dipped parsley in salt water to remind us of our sorrow and tears. We scooped enough horseradish onto unleavened bread that it brought tears to our eyes, like the tears our forefathers cried in Egypt, we ate this kind of apple sauce with raisins that was reminiscent of the mortar with which we built.

And I’ll be honest by this point, my inner biblical history nerd had emerged and I was really getting into it.

And then the host said it was time for the second cup, I'm thinking, “Second cup? I’ve hardly touched my first cup, shoot, I must have been so caught up in the moment that I have fallen behind!” so I did something that seemed reasonable at the time, but now I can only attribute to having not eaten anything for 48 hours: I grabbed my cup and pounded the whole thing. Before I even put the glass down I knew I had experienced a significant lapse of judgment. As I struggled to keep my balance and not spill anything, I was saying to myself, “I don’t think this is the Holy Spirit I’m feeling.”

Well, I made it through the night and despite the mishap, honestly, the whole experience made me curious about the significance of these ritual cups of wine.

In the next post, I'll tell you about the first one, and then another each post to follow.
You can watch the video of this sermon here.

The NT in 60 seconds

After a period when it seemed that God had stopped speaking to his people, Jesus was born. The story of the New Testament is a combination of two stories: 1) the story of Jesus and 2) the Story of the Christian Church. The story of Jesus is told four times, with slight variations in the four gospels, but it basically goes like this: the Virgin Mary gets pregnant via the Holy Spirit and has Jesus in Bethlehem and Shepherds and Angels celebrate it. Wisemen from the East come to worship Jesus too. When Jesus is thirty John the Baptist, baptizes him and the Holy Spirit descends on Jesus and God says “This is my son.” For three years Jesus goes around with his twelve disciples preaching about “the Kingdom of God”, healing people, and casting out demons. Because he’s such a rebel, the Jewish religious authorities get Pilate to crucify him. Three days later, Jesus rises from the dead, and his disciples remember that he’d foretold all of that. Jesus tells them to go make disciples all over the world, but first to go wait for the Spirit in Jerusalem. That’s where the story of the Christian Church begins. While the disciples were praying and waiting on Pentecost, fire and wind rush into the room and they start praising God in foreign languages. Which the people around hear, and are amazed at, so thousands become Christians. Persecution breaks out in Jerusalem, so they all flee, spreading the message wherever they go. One of the chief persecutors was a zealous Jew named Saul. He supervised the stoning of the disciple Stephen. On his way to persecute more, Jesus appears to Saul, now called Paul, and he becomes a Christian missionary. He preaches to Non-Jews (Gentiles) all over the Mediterranean, and writes letters (epistles) to the churches he started. Other Christians, like Peter and John and James also write letters to encourage Christians during persecution as well as to help them understand how they ought to live. John has a vision, written in Revelation, in which he sees the Jesus give victory and life to the Church in the End. The story ends with the Christians waiting for Jesus to return and right all wrongs. (We’re still waiting...)

The OT in 60 seconds

God created everything good. But Satan led Adam and Eve into disobeying God and ruining everything. Eventually it got so bad that God sent a flood and wiped out everyone except Noah and his family. When the people got cocky, and tried to make the Tower of Babel, God confused their language, so they scattered all over the earth. God chose Abraham and made a covenant with him to bless him and use him to bless everyone else (Gen 12:1-3). He has a son Isaac, who has Jacob, who has eleven sons. Jacob, after wrestling with God, gets the name Israel (it means “wrestles with God”). His sons become the fathers of the 12 tribes of Israel. The whole family moves to Egypt and are subjected to slavery for 300 years. Then God uses Moses to save them by bringing 12 plagues on Pharaoh and Egypt. Finally in the Exodus they escape through the parted waters of the Sea. On the other side, God gives his people Israel the Ten Commandments, and a bunch more. God wants to give them the Promised Land that he promised Abraham, but when they get to the edge of it, they’re afraid of the inhabitants, and so God makes them wander in the wilderness for forty years, where God provides for them. Joshua takes over for Moses and brings Israel through the parted Jordan River and they conquer a whole bunch of people and land. For a while God rules the nation of Israel through Judges, but the people were not obeying God. They followed other gods, so God let them be conquered. They repented, and God restored them. This happened seven times. Finally the people demand a king like all the other nations. The prophet Samuel appoints Saul king first, then David, the best king ever, despite some major sins. After that it’s pretty much downhill. The Kings after that are mostly rotten and the people too. Prophets keep telling the people to return to the ways of God, or else God will punish them, but they don’t listen. The kingdom gets divided into two kingdoms, Israel and Judah and eventually God let’s them both get destroyed by foreign armies. Israel is sent all over the place, dispersed in the Exile. Daniel serves the occupying Kings. The prophets tell the depressed people of Israel that God has not forgotten them and will send a Savior, a Messiah, and will restore Israel. Finally the King of Persia gives permission for the Israelites to return to the Land, and Ezra and Nehemiah help to rebuild, while Esther saves the Jews from being wiped out. The story of the Old Testament ends with the Jews waiting for the Messiah, to more fully restore Israel, as the prophets have predicted.

The Good Book: Genre and Context

Here are some reflections on proper interpretation of the Bible -- by no means comprehensive, but hopefully able to spark some new thinking...

There are at least four crucial considerations in attempting to interpret the Bible: genre, context, purpose and biblical antecedents. This post will offer some thoughts on the significance of the first two.

Genre is simple to illustrate. We all know that a love letter, with its flowery exaggerations is read differently than a math textbook, and a historical novel is read differently than a historical biography. The 66 books of Scripture contain a myriad of genres. Consider the Psalms and Song of Songs, which are poetry. Poetry is not to be read literally, but metaphorically. Love is not a rose literally, but it is one metaphorically. The question of genre is particularly relevant for Genesis, the Gospels and the Epistles. Genesis’ early chapters, contrary to popular belief, were never meant to be a historical scientific account of the creation of the world. It was a polemic response to the competing creation narratives, offering stark contrasts on the central questions “What is God like?”, “Why were we created?” and “What is God’s posture towards us and what is to be ours to God?” It is not history, it is myth. But myth which tells the deeper truths than fact. Truths regarding the deepest questions of life, which are not scientific (“How did it happen?”) but teleological (“Why did it happen?”).
The Gospels are difficult because they immediately appear to fit into a genre that is familiar to us: historical biography. And the Gospels do contain reliable biographical historical information about Jesus, but they are not written with the kind of preoccupation with historical factual accuracy that characterizes Modern biographies. Like Genesis, the Gospels tell the truth, with less concern for the facts. Of course, some of the facts are the very foundation of the truth claims made by Scripture. The resurrection, as a historical factual event, is the only basis of making the truth claim that Jesus was the Son of God whose death atoned for the sin of the world. But if we apply a strict inerrantist view to the Gospels, the contradictions become apparent: Did Jesus overturn the tables in the temple at the beginning of his ministry, or the end? Did Jesus heal so and so in Galilee or Nazareth? Inerrantists are forced to strain credulity and argue for both. In this way, inerrancy contains an impulse for the anathematized attempt of Tatian in the 2nd Century to merge all the gospels into one, in the Diatesseron. This gospel ‘harmonization’ destroys the ability of each Gospel to highlight different truths about Jesus and in place of a harmony of different voices offers a stale melody.
Moving on to the Epistles we have to keep in mind that these are letters from an apostle to a congregation, or region, with its own challenges. Epistles are not manuals with timeless rules of the church. The Epistles are not written to us, they are written to the 1st century churches in Corinth, Ephesus and Colossae. When we read the epistles as letters, we have to always ask, “What was going on in this church that made Paul say so-and-so?” Because what Paul commanded there, for that church in that situation, may or may not be God’s will for our churches in our situation. And that leads us directly to the third crucial element of Biblical interpretation, context.
I have already stated the significance of context. All the books of the Bible were written by a specific person or people in a specific time, place and culture and for application in a specific community in a time, place and cultural location. The Epistles, with their teaching on women, are the most fruitful place to see the significance of context.
Paul told Timothy that the women in his church were not to “teach or have authority over a man”(1 Tim. 2:12), and yet at the same time, Paul referred to Junia (a woman) as “prominent among the apostles” (Romans 16:7). So what explains Paul’s apparent inconsistency? Inerrantists are compelled by their understanding of Scripture as loaded with timeless principles to go to great lengths to deny Junia’s gender – a futile attempt according to the historians and scholars I find credible on the matter. Just as they attempt to ‘harmonize’ the Gospels into singularity, they attempt the same with the teachings of the Epistles. But if we allow Paul to be the pioneer and pastor of many congregations, as he was, then it makes all the sense in the world that he would have specific instructions for some congregations (given their needs and context) that were not incumbent on all others. (Some scholars believe that Timothy's church had a problem with female heretics from the cult of Artemis, goddess of the Ephesians.)

It is true that many of Paul’s letters were cyclical – and meant for passing on to all the other congregations nearby, but if we take this to mean the intended audience was equally all churches throughout time and space including ours, we are guilty of ignoring the theologically loaded significance of Paul’s greetings almost always indicating which church or churches this particular letter was for. The rest of us are blessed eavesdroppers, allowed to listen in as God, through Paul or another Scriptural author, guides brothers and sisters of ours in a different time/place with whom we have relevent similarities and differences of character, situation and cultural context.

Francis Collins, leader of the human genome project and Christian apologist conveys some of this as it relates to Genesis as he sits on the Colbert Report.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Francis Collins
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Dr. Francis S. Collins Pt. 2
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

The Inerrancy Heresy

What follows are some thoughts I captured after a troubling experience with a Christian School some time ago...I welcome your comments.

The doctrine of Scriptural inerrancy, and the popular misconception (both in the church and outside of it) that inerrancy is THE Christian doctrine of Scripture, is one of the greatest hindrances to contemporary Christian ministry. As such, it could be called a heresy -- especially when it lifts Scripture to the level of divinity, subtly making it the fourth member of the trinity and perpetuating Bibliolatry. By denying inerrancy, I do not wish to imply that Scripture contains errors, but that if and when we read Scripture as at all points historical, factual and literal, our erring approach will lead us to find errors there.

 Scripture faithfully and sufficiently communicates what it’s authors intended, namely the truth about who God is, who we are, and what God has done, preeminently in Jesus Christ. The flaw of inerrancy is that it ties the credibility of the truth claims of Scripture to a modernistic understanding of truth, which is limited to fact. Facts are important but they are not everything--they aren't even the most important thing. The Creation account does not have to be factually, historically accurate for it to be true in the deepest sense. One of the enlightening meanings of Jesus statement “I am the truth” is that truth does not reside in facts, but in a person. Jesus is the truth about God, and the truth about humanity, because he is the God-man. He shows us God’s love for us. He shows us what it means to be truly human.

Inerrancy goes hand in hand with the idea that Scripture was written by human hands but, ostensibly, without human minds. It imagines that the authors may well have been writing in a spirit induced trance. And that what they transcribed was the timeless will of God for humankind at every time in every place. But this is not a Christian doctrine, it is (as far as I understand Islam) a Muslim one. Muslim’s accept the Koran as essentially lowered from Heaven. All it’s cultural teachings indicate that culture ought always to be as it was at the time the Koran was received. This is not how we understand the Bible. We believe in an incarnation, the true Word of God came first and foremost in human flesh. Jesus is the Word of God – the image of the invisible God, the one who makes God known to us. Scripture is God’s word when it effectively leads us to God’s Word, Jesus. It is the doctrine of infallibility that teaches us that Scripture is faithful to lead us to the Word of God, Jesus.