Defining 'the Gospel' and 'Evangelical'

I have been pondering recently how different people define "the gospel" and "Evangelical" differently.

For a lot of people, "the gospel" is a short message of the kind given in gospel presentations. It covers sin, holiness, Jesus, atonement, salvation etc. It is essentially a bit of systematic theology rooted in a particular interpretation of Paul's writings which calls the hearer to some sort of response.

In particular it has been striking just how strong a contrast there is between this Pauline gospel and the "good news of the kingdom of God" that Jesus is depicted preaching in the gospels. A lot of Christians seem to assume that when Jesus preached the gospel he was in fact preaching what they think of as the gospel, without bothering to pay any attention to how the bible depicts Jesus' ministry.

Evangelical is one of those words where everybody seems to have a different definition. It also seems to be one of those words that comes with a built-in value judgment - it's implicitly a good thing to be "evangelical" as it has connotations of committed to God, and believing the gospel. I was browsing this Evangelical Manifesto and was quite surprised to find that throughout the document numerous different (and in my view, mutually exclusive) definitions of Evangelical were given.

One of the definitions suggested that Evangelicals were true to and preached that gospel that Jesus preached. I found that comment surprising, since in my observation, Evangelicals tend to far prefer a Pauline form of the gospel to Jesus' form of it.

Another interesting suggested definition is that Evangelical is the name for any and all Christians in history who are simple stock-standard committed lay Christians. What came as somewhat of a shock to me (as someone who has done of lot of research into the history of the development of doctrine) is that they followed this statement up with a short doctrinal list of allegedly what these average Christians throughout history have always believed... opps. They appear to have taken a list of what Evangelicals today hold to be their defining doctrinal views and arbitrarily assumed that throughout history average Christians also held those beliefs...

Peter Enns' Suspension

Ben Myers has made an interesting blog post discussing the official explanation for Peter Enns' suspension. The whole topic is hilarious, or would be, if the imbecilic stupidity of these people wasn't having a real impact on the lives of others. Apparently “there is no mention of the human authors of Scripture” in the Westminister Confession, so Peter Enns is bad for writing a book dealing with them.

Who knows their bible best?

Thanks Doug for the link to this article. Apparently the Vatican commissioned an independent and extensive worldwide survey in an attempt to gain insight into people's knowledge of the bible.

They found that the class of readers who knew their bibles best were the discerning readers who took the bible as authoritative but felt it was important to apply critical thinking and interpretation skills. Fundamentalists did not score nearly as well.

It seems the study also found high biblical knowledge to not correlate with particular denominations (in other words Catholics are level with Evangelical Protestants, in general!) nor with political voting tendencies. Apparently, also, most people wanted a fair level of assistance in interpreting and understanding the bible, preferring not to do it alone.

The Resurrection of Jesus

In the last week I have been studying passages in the NT (minus the gospels) that deal with the theological significance of Jesus' death and resurrection.

One of the first things that became obvious is that there are significantly more passages that deal with Christ's resurrection than his death. A number of passages also assert that the resurrection is absolutely central to Christianity and without it Christianity is nothing (there are no corresponding statements made about the death of Christ). In short it is safe to say that the New Testament Christians saw the resurrection as more important than the death of Christ. Interesting how times have changed...

The resurrection seems to be so important to the Christians because it proves that death is not the end - that there will be an afterlife, that there will be postmortem judgment and restitution, and in the act of resurrecting Christ God affirms Christ's teachings and publicly indicates the type of behavior God chooses to reward. As a result, the resurrection inspires Christians to live self-controlled lives, imitate Christ, and suffer martyrdom gladly.

Silly quote of the day

From here (italics in original):

The Christian gospel is in serious danger of being melted down into a call merely to do good works here and now in the social and political realms. ...a “gospel” that majors on good deeds and social work to the detriment of the atoning, saving work of Christ is no “gospel” at all. As I’ve put it elsewhere, it winds up making Christianity just another boring moralism that’s no different from any other religion in the world....

I think you’re right to define and emphasize justification by faith alone in Christ alone as the heart of the Christian gospel. That is without doubt or equivocation the fountainhead of everything else, and you don’t get to the rest of the “good news” unless you start there. In other words, to tell someone that it’s not really important to focus on the atonement, but rather that you can be a Christian just by being a “follower of Jesus” and by “living like Jesus” is not Christianity. To be a Christian is to believe in Jesus, repenting of sins and trusting for salvation in his atoning, reconciling, justifying, substitutionary death on the cross.

Okay, so I didn't manage to read through to the end of that before I cracked up laughing.

A message "to do good works here and now in the social and political realms" strikes me as an extremely accurate description of the content of Jesus' public ministry as depicted in the gospels. The gospels present Jesus' ministry as a campaign over social issues, period. The social gospel is certainly well-founded in the biblical accounts of Jesus' ministry. So, according to the above writer, the Christian gospel is apparently "in serious danger" of being reduced to, well, the gospels. Dang, we surely can't allow that, can we? Apparently not, because as our above writer continues, that is "no gospel at all". Excuse me while I go and cut the four gospels out of my bible. One wonders why Christ bothered preaching "no gospel at all" in the course of his three year ministry.

Next, the writer makes the accusation of moralism. 'Moralism' is the most common term historians of doctrine use to describe Christianity in the pre-Nicene period, namely because early Christianity was extremely moralistic. So as I was reading the above I mentally substituted: "it winds up making Christianity just another boring (?!) moralism that’s no different from any other religion in the world early Christianity." Of course, according to the above writer's definition, pre-Nicene Christianity is not Christianity, so maybe the writer wouldn't be concerned by this.

Sadly, for some reason a popular apologetic tactic at the moment among some groups is to assert the totally arbitrary idea that "human religions" are about man trying to get merit before God whereas "true religion" is about man trusting in God for salvation, and it is usually further arbitrarily asserted without evidence that Christianity is the only religion in world history that fits the category of "true religion". Somehow I doubt the author's implicit claim that all non-Christian religions in world-history are "boring" rests on any evidence or any actual experience of other religions! I also note that if all non-Christian religions are moralistic then it means that the vast majority of humans in world-history felt that moralistic religions are a good type of religion, and suggests that non-moralistic forms of Christianity would generally be considered bad, thus calling the arbitrary value judgment that such religions are good into serious doubt.

As for the claim that "justification by faith alone in Christ alone [is] the heart of the Christian gospel", well it seems then that the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century therefore marks the beginning of Christianity. Can we therefore consign the first 15 centuries of Christians, martyr and theologians to the dustbin?

For me, the most amusing quote in the above is: '[the idea] that you can be a Christian just by being a “follower of Jesus” and by “living like Jesus” is not Christianity.' Excuse me while I go cut the rest of my New Testament out of my bible...

Augustine

I have recently been reading about Augustine (354-430AD). He wrote:
- Just over 100 Books
- Over 250 Letters
- Over 350 Sermons

Western Latin theology of Augustine's time didn't have a particularly large number of influential theologians in the way that the Greek East at that time did. As a result, Augustine completely dominated the theological landscape of the period in the Western church and his writings were massively influential (the Greek East never read Augustine as they spoke a different language and no translations were made). Apparently virtually all theology in the Medieval period was done with reference to the writings of Augustine. Because he writings were so widely used, copies of 95% of them survive today.

What is most fascinating to me, as someone interested in the development of Christian doctrine, is how substantially Augustine's own ideas changed throughout his life. Scholars of Augustine talk about the theological views of the "early Augustine" as compared to the "later Augustine". It's the same person, but during the course of 30 years of writing on theology, studying the bible, and debating with others, Augustine's views slowly and substantially changed.

The theology of his earliest writings reflects the theology that he had been taught by other Christians. It matches the standard Christian doctrines of the pre-Augustinian period in virtually all respects. Most of the theology he held to thirty years later though was quite novel, having been drawn out from the bible and fleshed out by Augustine himself in the course of the various doctrinal arguments he got into. One of Augustine's works written at the very end of his life is titled "Retractions", and in that work Augustine surveys his previous books one by one and comments about how and in what ways he has since changed his mind and in what areas he would now disagree with his previous work.

In the Medieval period through to the Reformation within Western Christianity, virtually all sides claimed Augustine as advocating their position and attempted to prove it by quoting from his works. Since Augustine's works were inconsistent, in many cases two opposing sides could both find ample support for their positions from Augustine's works.

The amazing thing is, from the point of view of the history of doctrine, that Augustine managed to virtually single-handedly introduce so many novel ideas into Christian thought and make those ideas normative and shunt out much of what had before him been see as standard Christianity. Some examples:

* Probably most famous was Augustine's creation of the doctrine of predestination. Prior to Augustine all Christian writers vigorously defended the free will of man as one of the central points of Christian doctrine and predestination was opposed as pagan. The later Augustine advocated double-predestination, and Christians ever since have debated over how to balance God's sovereignty with free will.

* A related issue was Original Sin and the state of fallen man. Pre-Augustinian Christianity had taught that men were not guilty of Adam's sin and that after the fall they retained the image of God and the ability to do good. The later Augustine came to view humanity as a 'mass of sin', teaching a view later called Total Depravity, saying fallen humans were unable to do true good of their own accord. He also taught that people were born guilty before God due to their participation in Adam's sin.

* The early Augustine, like the Christians before him, held a moral exemplar view of the atonement. The later Augustine denied that moral exemplar was sufficient and insisted on the addition of Christus Victor and Satisfaction/Penal Substitution (in a rather bizarre embryonic form).

* The whole concept of "grace" as we are familiar with it today was fundamentally pioneered by Augustine. Previous Christians had typically seen grace as God's actions in the external world which influenced us by normal means. Augustine developed the concept of God's grace being internal - working inside of our heads to create psychological changes.

Augustine's efforts contributed many other ideas to Western Christianity. Ideas such as Purgatory, the importance and power of Baptism for salvation, the precise shape of the Western view of the Trinity (which differs to the Eastern view slightly). Augustine's views of justification were massively influential for subsequent Western Christianity. The strategy of double-justification which Augustine developed for systematizing the place of faith and works in salvation (whereby the believer is saved by their faith at the moment of conversion and then produces works throughout their Christian life which justify them at the final judgment) became standard in Roman Catholicism, and provided a starting point to be developed by the Protestant Reformers.

Scholars, of course, have fun in trying to outline and speculate about why it was that Augustine's views changed etc. It seems generally agreed by all that Augustine's idea of everyone being present in Adam at the time of his sin and thus everyone being guilty of it stemmed from a mistranslation of Romans 5:12 in the Latin bible he used. But is it coincidence that before converting to Christianity, Augustine was a Manichean who believed that "the nature of man can be corrupt to the point that his will is powerless to obey God's commands" (Chadwick, "The Early Church"), only to thirty years later start introducing that doctrine into Christianity?

Adherance to Doctrinal Statements

Westminster Theological Seminary's recent suspension of Peter Enns for his book on understanding the nature of scripture that board perceived as violating the Westminster Confession intrigues me.

It intrigues me because I just can't fathom the sanity of adhering to a creedal statement written in 1642. In 1642 they barely understood Koine Greek, biblical scholarship was only in its infancy, they had next to no understanding of the customs, practices and thinking of ancient world, and they had very few of the writings of the early church Fathers that we now have. For almost every conceivable reason there is evidence to think that people trying to interpret the bible in 1642 could have made serious errors. Indeed, the majority of scholars today would say they did.

In that century, Isaac Newton published one of the greatest works in the history of science. Yet today his work is a historical curiosity, marking the beginning of serious scientific study. In a like manner the Reformation and confessions of faith resulting out of it mark the beginning of serious biblical scholarship. No sane person today would reprimand a quantum physicist for failure to adhere to Newton's theories. Likewise, the thought that someone might reprimand a biblical scholar for failure to adhere to a seventeenth century interpretation of the bible seems like a joke.

It frustrates me that colleges actually exist who adhere to such doctrinal statements and see it as their duty to churn out students who believe such things. Such indoctrination results in a massive amount of bias, propaganda and apologetics contaminating scholarship. Modern interpretations and theories end up judged on their conformance with seventeenth century doctrinal statements! I have learned to steer clear of such biased 'scholarship'. Before reading any book I now attempt to ascertain whether it is written by a person who has been indoctrinated with seventeenth century confessional standards, because their bias so often completely undermines their scholarship and destroys any objective value in their work, as they always twist the evidence in such a way that it just so happens to end up proving the conclusions that they started with. In practice this seems to mean avoiding completely reading 'scholarship' produced by anyone in the Reformed or Presbyterian traditions, and careful filtering of Anglican, Catholic and Lutheran writings.

I think the fact that I myself abandoned the doctrinal teachings of my childhood church as a result of serious biblical study has resulted in me having very little tolerance of people who fail to do likewise and who simply push the party line and doctrinal statements of whatever group happens to have indoctrinated them.

Jesus' Death in Luke-Acts

Browsing the internet I came across this fascinating article by Richard Anderson on the view of Jesus' atonement in Luke-Acts. It's well worth reading in full, but for the lazy here's a short summary of some of what I felt were the important points:

1. Luke contains no statements that give any sort of 'theological' interpretation to the cross. Nor does Acts contain such statements except where it's quoting the speeches of Paul. (In Luke's gospel the sole interpretation of Jesus' death is that he was a martyr)

2. Luke-Acts heavily emphasizes the Jewish concept of repentance and forgiveness to an extent not found in the remainder of the New Testament. The Jews believed that a person who truly repented would be forgiven by God. The importance of repentance occurs regularly throughout Luke-Acts, and a primary function of Jesus' ministry is "to call sinners to repentance".

3. Luke omits all negative statements toward Sacrifices, Temple, and Dietary Laws from the preaching of Jesus. In Acts all such statements are placed in the mouths of certain followers of Jesus subsequent to Jesus' death. Luke's version of Jesus is acceptable to a person who is a Law-following Judean, and Anderson sees them as the intended audience.

4. Overall Luke-Acts is very careful in distinguishing between the theology of the writer and the theology of Paul in terms of what is said about Jesus' death, Sacrifices, the Temple, and Dietary Laws. (This would seem to raise the question, not dealt with by Anderson, of what Luke's own view of Paul's theology is, and how Luke is trying to portray Paul... it had never crossed my mind that Luke (or his audience) might not like Paul or Paul's theology!)

Paul on the Law

It frustrates me when scholars select a poorly chosen category or question and try to force an answer out of an ancient text. They typically then proceed to argue endlessly over various answers that they try to give.

I think Paul's views on the law is an example of one such offender. ("Was Judaism a religion of grace?" is another) In this case, I think the situation is very simple but that scholars have got confused by asking the wrong questions and trying to give answers. Often these issues can be resolved simply by starting with the obvious and seeing what light obvious things can shed on the situation under discussion.

These two statements, I think, may be said to be obvious and universally agreed upon: (1) Paul has certain expectations regarding the moral conduct of Christians. He exhorts his readers to aspire to and achieve moral behavior, and he rebukes his converts when he feels they are falling short of such behavior. (2) Paul is against Gentiles having to follow the rituals of the Mosaic Law.

Those form two poles of Paul's thought. In his rhetoric and arguments he sometimes talks about one, sometimes the other, sometimes both at once. In the course of these arguments he uses the word 'law' in different ways. On the one hand, because Gentiles do not need to follow the rituals of the Mosaic Law, the Law is for them abolished, finished, ended, gone, and irrelevant etc. On the other hand, because these gentile Christians live morally they can be said to meet the moral requirements of the law, obey the commandments, fulfill the law, obey the law of Christ etc.

In other words, the two basic elements of Paul's thought outlined above naturally give rise to him making statements about the law in the course of his arguments that taken literally are inconsistent because he is using the word law in different senses in different arguments. Paul's thinking on this issue is perfectly consistent, but his terminology varies depending of which of his thoughts he is expressing.

A NPP exegesis of Romans 4:4-5

A central part of the New Perspective on Paul has been the recognition that when Paul speaks of the "works of the Law" he does not mean moral good works, but rather the following of Jewish customs such as circumcision, dietary rules, sabbath keeping and so forth, which Paul calls "works of the Law". Paul's belief was that a person did not need to adopt Jewish customs to be acceptable to God, but rather that God accepted both Jews and Gentiles who were faithful to him, who were living morally in accordance with his will. This distinction is needed, for example, to explain Paul's arguments in Galatians where Paul spends four chapters attacking the value works of the law and then turns around and spends the last two chapters affirming the saving value of works of morality.

Paul, sadly, does not meet 21st century standards of using perfectly clear and unambiguous terms in 100% consistent ways. So it requires some level of attention on the part of the reader to determine from the context of his argument when he is talking about morality and when he is talking about Jewish customs, as the words "works" and "law" sometimes occur in the context of each. Romans is certainly no exception to this, as Paul in Romans 2 affirms that God will judge people "according to their works" (of morality) and that it is the "doers of the law who are justified" (ie the moral law) but by 3:28 is asserting that "works of the law" (Jewish customs) are not the criterion of God's judgment. In the second half of chapter 3 and the first half of chapter 4, Paul engages in a somewhat convoluted argument against this idea of Jewishness as achieving righteousness before God.

In 3:9-26 Paul has argued that there is no distinction between followers of Jewish customs and followers of Greek customs before God: Anyone who is faithfully obedient to God's moral commands is acceptable. Paul asks about what happens to "boasting" (3:27). If the Jews are they elect of God then they can claim to have been honoured above the Gentiles, but if God honours anyone who is faithful then the Jews don't have any privileged status to boast about (3:27-28). Paul clarifies that this would be analogous to God being "the God of the Jews only" and argues that God is not the God of the Jews only and will justify both those who follow Jewish customs and those who follow Greek ones (3:29-30).

Paul then turns to Abraham in chapter 4 and argues that when Abraham was called righteous by God it was at a time when Abraham was not a follower of Jewish customs and his righteousness was due to his faithfulness. Paul observes that if Abraham had been chosen arbitrarily by God because of Jewishness then he could have claimed to have been honoured above Gentiles by God (4:2), but he could not have claimed honour in God's sight because God would have been arbitrarily gifting him honour. (Paul's comment about Abraham not being able to claim honour from God would make no sense if he was talking about moral good works) Paul reiterates that Abraham's righteousness came from his "faithfulness" (4:3). Then follows 4:4-5, to which I will return shortly.

Paul says David teaches that people can be righteous apart from Jewish customs, arguing that God's forgiveness and acceptance is available to both those who are circumcised and those who are not (4:6-9a). Paul argues that Abraham did not follow Jewish customs when God first called him righteous (4:9b-11a). God calling him righteous was because of his faithfulness not his Jewishness. He argues that like Abraham, those who now have faithfulness but do not follow Jewish customs are righteous (4:11b-17). Paul argues that God's promise to Abraham that his descendants would inherit the world would not be true if Abraham's descendants were limited to those who followed Jewish customs. Rather Abraham's true descendants are peoples of all nations who share the faithfulness that he exemplified.

Paul in the course of this argument has created a distinction between two groups of ideas. In one group are "Jewish Customs", "Law", and "works". In the other group are "faithfulness" and "justification". The average Jew of Paul's time would have argued these two groups of ideas are identical, saying that a person's faithfulness to God is demonstrated by their performance of God's commands - and that faithfulness to God and following the Jewish customs laid out by the law are therefore interchangeable. Paul however, is trying to make these two groups of ideas stand in a contrast throughout his argument. As a rhetorical ploy, in 4:4 he employs an analogy from everyday life in the ancient world that contrasts these two groups of ideas.

In 4:4 he gives this analogy which draws on two contrasting economic systems that ran side-by-side in Paul's day relating to work and payment. One was an informal system in which favours were exchanged as gifts and faithfulness was key. The other was a formal legal system in which work was performed contractually and a legal obligation for repayment existed. It is these systems which provide the separation Paul is looking for between his two categories. This contrasts faithfulness, favour, non-law, and non-work against law, and work. This provides the contrast that Paul is looking for between his two groups of ideas. Thus in 4:4 he references briefly the everyday-reality of these dual systems, which his Roman readers understood well (but which can seem strange to us today).

In 4:5 Paul draws this contrast into his argument, restating again his thesis that the person who does not follow Jewish customs but who is faithful to God is righteous. In this sentence, Paul speaks of God as being the God who justifies the "ungodly". This seems to be a somewhat derogatory Jewish term to refer to those who did not follow Jewish customs. Paul elsewhere speaks of "Gentile sinners" in the same vein. For Paul, God is a God who will call righteous these 'ungodly' Gentiles that do not keep the Jewish customs because they are faithful to God and keep God's moral law. He is the God of the Gentiles and not just the God of the Jews.

Romans 4:4-5 in my view, is thus a small part of Paul's wider argument advocating that what matters to God is a person's moral behavior and not their cultural customs. It is a brief reference to the everyday practices of the Roman world, and this reference is lost on many today. By failing to perceive this reference, and by misconstruing Paul's use of the word "works" in this argument, and by taking the passage out of the context of Paul's wider argument, the passage has often been interpreted incorrectly by pre-new perspective protestant scholars. The (mis)interpretation of this passage has all too often been used to proof-text against Roman Catholic, and new perspective interpretations of Paul's writings (as they do with Phil 3:9 also).

Judging historical theology

For some reason it cracks me up when modern scholars pass judgment on ancient theologians for failing to have "correct" or "biblical" doctrine. (In other words, failing to agree with that scholar's own denomination's theology, especially their interpretation of Paul's writings) I think part of why I find it hilarious is because I so often agree with the ancient theologians' interpretation of the bible and think the modern scholars are wrong (as, for example, the NPP has demonstrated).

The apostolic fathers is the title given to a dozen or so Christian writings in the period 90-150AD. Here is an example of one biased commentator's negative views of them:

"...occasionally these fathers of the generation after the apostles gave the gospel their own unique interpretations that began to turn it way from the great themes of grace and faith so strongly emphasized by Paul and the other apostles and more toward the gospel as a "new law" of God-pleasing conduct and behavior. Justo Gonzalez takes nothing from the apostolic fathers' importance or value when he rightly notes that "not only in their understanding of baptism, but also in their total theological outlook, one senses a distance between the Christianity of the New Testament - especially that of Paul - and that of the apostolic fathers. References to Paul and the other apostles are frequent; but in spite of this the new faith becomes more and more a new law, and the doctrine of God's gracious justification becomes a doctrine of grace that helps us act justly." Of course this shift was subtle and not absolute. It was a barely but definitely perceptible turn in these second-century Christian writings toward legalism, or what may be better termed "Christian moralism.""

From The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition & Reform by Roger E. Olson, pg 40-41

One particularly amusing commenter is Seeberg in his Textbook of the History of Dogma:

"It may be said, indeed, that Clement [of Rome] has not grasped the saving efficacy of the death of Christ in its full biblical significance" (pg 57)

[In the Apostolic Fathers] ""Righteousness" is always merely an active, actual righteousness." [and not the imputed righteousness of Protestant theology] (78)
..."the Pauline idea of justification was lost sight of, and a moralistic element readily became interwoven with them." (79)

"Thus we note the second great defect in the doctrinal conceptions of this period. As the work of Christ is not understood as having directly in view the forgiveness of sins, so there is naturally a failure to obtain this forgiveness as an essential object of faith. Good works are considered necessary in order to become sure of the forgiveness of sins. It is perfectly proper to speak of the "moralism" of such views. Faith is more and more robbed of its significance. Love assumes the leading place in the soul, but, having by the depreciation of faith lost the inner impulsive power, it turns to the fulfillment of the commandments and the performing of good works. Thus was lost, however, the attitude of soul which distinguished primitive Christianity, the sense of receiving everything form God by his gift. Instead of this man's own works now occupy the foreground. This moralistic modification of the primitive Christian position was, indeed, brought about by means of the popular Greek-Roman ideal of human freedom. It Hellenized, but at the same time it proved a doorway through which Judaic legalism forced its way into the church." (80)

He doesn't seem quite to know what or who to blame it on, so he spreads the blame far and wide:

"A lack of comprehensive understanding and profound apprehension of the gospel itself is here undeniable. And this defect certainly reaches far back into the apostolic age. The legality which here appears is not of the Jewish sect, but it, nevertheless, without awakening suspicion, prepared the way for the intrusion of Judaic influences. The moralism is that of the heathen world, particularly in that age, and has its origin in the state of the natural man as such. The misconceptions of the gospel may be traced directly to the fact that the Gentile Christians did not understand the Old Testament ideas presupposed in the apostolic proclamation of the gospel. But moralism always serves the interests of legalism. Making much of man's own works, the age accepted the legalistic works of the later Jewish piety." (115)

When he gets to the Apologists he is no happier:

"It may be said of the majority of these writers that they had no clearer conceptions of the gospel than had the Apostolic Fathers... In defining the work of Christ, it is first of all emphasized that he became a teacher of the [human] race, as he had already shown himself before his incarnation. The content of his teaching is found in the ideas of the One God; the new law, requiring a virtuous life; and immortality, more strictly speaking, the resurrection, bringing with it rewards and punishments... Man has the ability to keep these commandments, since God created him free. Although man, by disobeying the commandments of God, fell and became subject to death, he is nevertheless still free to decide fore God through faith and repentance" (115)

"The Apologists... make it evident that the general conception of Christianity in that day labored under the same defects and limitations as in the generation immediately preceding them (the work of Christ; moralism)." (118)

He is also upset they don't hold the Protestant interpretation of 'grace':

"Grace is no more than the revelation of doctrine and of the law." (116)

Comments on Daley's article

One of the articles in the recent work The Redemption: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on Christ as Redeemer is Brian Daley's article "He Himself is Our Peace' (Eph. 2:14): Early Christian views of Redemption in Christ'.

Rather than survey early Christian views about redemption comprehensively, Daley begins by asking what it is about the atonement that requires Jesus be fully divine. In asking and answering this question he seems to assume that the correct view of Christ's work would require Jesus be fully divine. I don't think that such an assumption is warrented. The New Testament writers do not seem to see a "need" for Jesus to be God in order for the salvation of man to be accomplished, and references to Jesus as God are few and far between.

In the pre-Nicene writers three distinct answers are given to the question of why Jesus was divine. (1) Justin Martyr's answer was that an important part of Jesus' teachings was to teach men the truth about the divine nature, and Justin therefore sees Jesus as being the "Word" of God, a Greek philosophical term to refer to a divine entity that conveyed knowledge of God to humanity. In other words, only God can truly teach accurately about the divine nature. (2) Lactantius' answer was that Jesus' teaching of moral virtue would only be perfect in all respects if Jesus was God. (3) Athanasius' answer was that Jesus had to be divine in order that by means of his human incarnation humanity and divinity could be metaphysically joined.

In the Christological councils of the fourth to sixth century it was the third view that was most influential, advocated by a vocal Alexandrian party. According to their soteriology, Jesus had to be fully divine and they succeed in legislating this idea. Daley's line of questioning hence strikes me as going backwards when he starts from the premise that Jesus is fully divine and tries to work to a conclusion about soteriology, when in fact it historically worked the other way around.

Daley then proceeds to outline major ways the Fathers speak of Christ's saving action. He lists and explains four views: The second and third of the three ideas I list here, and also Ransom and Christus Victor. That is a fairly comprehensive survey save that it is missing the most common view in the Fathers - Jesus as a teacher of moral virtue (see here and point 1 here and here and examples of that theology here and here).

Daley uses this survey to conclude that for the Fathers, generally speaking, salvation is not something Jesus "achieved or earned for the human race by acting on our behalf... Rather they all presuppose that salvation... is first of all something Jesus brought about in his own person". That idea appears to be Daley's thesis for which he wants to argue - that salvation is about who Christ is rather what what Christ did.

I would argue that this concept Daley proposes has only a very small amount of truth to it, and that by and large it is simply wrong. In the Fathers' generally it is not Jesus' divinity in and of itself which saves humanity. Rather the fact that Jesus is a divine being is seen as enabling and empowering him to do things that normal humans would not be able to do. Due to being divine, Jesus is able to perform actions to save humanity. For example, because of his divinity he can fight and defeat the devil, or is able to rise from the dead, or is able to teach humanity about the true nature of God, or is able to teach and exemplify perfect virtue. These saving actions that Jesus is seen as performing, he is capable of performing, empowered to perform, or can perform perfectly, due to being divine. But in these cases, humanity would not be helped if Jesus became incarnate and then did nothing.

Further I would argue that none of these ideas require Jesus to be divine: An arch-angel could potentially teach moral behavior, reveal the nature of God, be resurrected from the dead by God, offer his soul to Satan in exchange for humanity, or battle and conquer demons. A divine Christ might indeed accomplish these things better or more effectively, but divinity is not required in order to accomplish them.

The only view of Christ's work in the Fathers which absolutely demands and requires Jesus' divinity as absolutely essential to the very fundamentals of the theory itself is the Alexandrian view of Jesus uniting humanity and God metaphysically in the incarnation. In this view it is, just as Daley says, the very fact that Jesus is God and man which causes redemption. In this view, Jesus doesn't need to do anything or take any action in order to redeem humanity, but simply be who he is. Taken to its logical extreme, in this view Jesus could have lived a perfectly normal life with no one ever in history ever knowing that he had been God and his life would still have redeemed humanity because of who Jesus was. This explains why historically it was the Alexandrian party who held the divine-human-joining theory who were so adamantly against Arianism (which taught Jesus was a super-angel who was 'like' God rather than being one-in-essence with God himself). The Alexandrians' view required Jesus be one-in-essence with God as otherwise in his incarnation in which he united himself with human nature he would not be metaphysically uniting human nature with the divine.

So I see three fundamental flaws in Daley's approach:
1. He starts out by begging the question, asking why Christ "needed" to be fully divine. This presupposes that Christ did in fact "need" to be divine and that this was not simply an arbitrary decision on God's part as, for example, the Parable of the Tenants ("They didn't listen to my servants but maybe they will listen to my son?") might suggest.
2. In his survey of patristic views of the atonement, he omits the most commonly held one - that of Jesus as a teacher of moral virtue.
3. His attempt to draw the conclusion that the Fathers' saw Jesus as having saved humanity simply by virtue of being divine and not because of anything Jesus did or achieved is not supported even by the evidence that he presents. Daley's conclusion applies only to the Alexandrian theory about uniting divine and human natures, and while this theory was very popular in the East from the beginning of the fourth century onward, it was hardly the main patristic idea of the atonement.

The Theology of the Apologists

The "Apologists" is the name given to the group of about 12 Christian writers in the second century AD who wrote public works to pagan audiences defending and explaining Christianity. Here's a selection of some of my notes on what a few Patristics scholars have to say about the writings of the Apologists.

Harnack, History of Dogma writes:

1.3.3.2 The moralistic view, in which eternal life is the wages and reward of a perfect moral life wrought out essentially by one’s own power, took the place of first importance at a very early period.

2.4.3 The essential content of revealed philosophy is viewed by the Apologists ... as comprised in three doctrines. First, there is one spiritual and inexpressibly exalted God, who is Lord and Father of the world. Secondly, he requires a holy life. Thirdly, he will at last sit in judgment, and will reward the good with immortality and punish the wicked with death. The teaching concerning God, virtue, and eternal reward is traced to the prophets and Christ; but the bringing about of a virtuous life (of righteousness) has been necessarily left by God to men themselves; for God has created man free, and virtue can only be acquired by man’s own efforts. The prophets and Christ are therefore a source of righteousness in so far as they are teachers. But as God, that is, the divine Word (which we need not here discuss) has spoken in them, Christianity is to be defined as the Knowledge of God, mediated by the Deity himself, and as a virtuous walk in the longing after eternal and perfect life with God, as well as in the sure hope of this imperishable reward. By knowing what is true and doing what is good man becomes righteous and a partaker of the highest bliss.

2.4.3.2 To the gift of imperishability God, however, attached the condition of man’s preserving... the knowledge of God and maintaining a holy walk in imitation of the divine perfection. This demand is as natural as it is just; moreover, nobody can fulfil it in man’s stead, for an essential feature of virtue is its being free, independent action. Man must therefore determine himself to virtue by the knowledge that he is only in this way obedient to the Father of the world and able to reckon on the gift of immortality.

...moral goodness consists in letting oneself be influenced in no way by the sensuous, but in living solely, after the Spirit, and imitating the perfection and purity of God. Moral badness is giving way to any affection resulting from the natural basis of man. The moral law of nature of which the Apologists speak, and which they find reproduced in the clearest and most beautiful way in the sayings of Jesus, calls upon man to raise himself above his nature and to enter into a corresponding union with his fellow-man which is something higher than natural connections.

2.4.3.3 [In the Apologists' view:] Christ has also made special provision for the spread of the truth and is himself an unequalled exemplification of a virtuous life, the principles of which have now become known in the whole world through the spread of his precepts. These statements exhaust the arguments in most of the Apologies; and they accordingly seem neither to have contemplated a redemption by Christ in the stricter sense of the word, nor to have assumed the unique nature of the appearance of the Logos in Jesus. Christ accomplished salvation as a divine teacher, that is to say, his teaching brings about the [change] and [return] of the human race, its restoration to its original destination.

2.4.I [According to the Apologists] the redemption merely enables us to redeem ourselves

Here's a few other scholars on the subject:

"[The Apologists] are unanimous that man is endowed with free-will." (Kelly, Early Christian Doctrine, 166)

"Undoubtedly the principal purpose of the incarnation… strikes him [Justin Martyr] as having been didactic. Having forgotten the truth and having been inveigled into ignorance and positive error by the demons, men desperately need the restoration of the light they have lost. As ‘the new law giver’ or again, ‘the eternal, final law, the faithful covenant which replaces all laws and commandments’, Christ imparts this saving knowledge. It was to bestow such illumination, in particular the realization of the oneness of God and the belief in the moral law, and to restore men by it, that the Logos in fact became man." (Kelly, 168-169)

"We have already noted the popularity of redemption as enlightenment among the Apostolic Fathers. It reappears in the Apologists..." (Kelly, 169)

"[In the Apologists] his chief vocation as Savior was to teach men the truth about monotheism and the moral life." (Pelikan, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition 100-600AD, 153)

"The Apostolic Fathers. We can hardly overstress the importance in their writings of the idea of Christ the Teacher. Indeed it appears to be their principle contribution to the doctrine of Redemption... The Apologists take up the same theme." (Turner, The Patristic Doctrine of Redemption, 43-44)

"It is clear, then, that... we are on firm ground in treating the concept of Christ the Example, Teacher, and Illuminator as the starting-point in our study of the patristic doctrine of Redemption..." (Turner, 46)

'Grace', a mistranslated word and misunderstood concept

The word charis, often translated 'grace' is quite heavily used in the New Testament. For many Christians and denominations, particular understandings of 'grace' shape their understanding of Christianity. Even though it means different things to different Christians, 'grace' (charis) is commonly heavily used and an important theological and emotional term. It is therefore, in my view, immensely important to accurately understand the meaning of the Greek word charis as it was understood by the original writers and readers of the New Testament. A multitude of sins, eisegesis, and bad theology, can be built on a misunderstanding of this word.

Amongst Classics scholars there is no debate as to what this word means. Surviving documents from the ancient world contain hundreds of passages that give us great clarity about their understanding of charis and the role this word and its concepts played in their society. Charis was the key-word in what scholars call "the reciprocity system". This system operated according to time-delay exchanges where goods were given and then at a later time goods of relatively equal value were returned to the giver. These goods could be tangible (money, material goods) or intangible (public acclaim, authority). An obligation existed to repay favors owed, they were not 'free' in the sense we would understand it - it is just like when a bank gives you a loan the money is not 'free'. (It is due to this reciprocal nature of the transactions that scholars label it the Reciprocity System.) Essentially the system was an informal system of economics. The word charis itself is best translated with the English "favor" in the sense of talking about favors given and favors repaid. Greek makes no linguistic distinction between the first favor given and the second favor to repay it, calling each a charis. Greek also uses charis to refer to a positive attitude toward someone - we would speak in English of this as "regarding them favorably" or "having their favor".

Of course, a century or more ago, such information simply wasn't available. People interpreting charis in the Bible had to use what information they had and try to make some sense of it. Reformation Christianity is famous for seeing charis as being "free grace" and being the opposite of human effort. These concepts have heavily influenced many Christians' understandings of 'grace' today, but have nothing to do with the actual meaning of charis in Greek. The translation 'grace' is not a good one, it is not 'free', and it isn't the opposite of human effort.

These historical misinterpretations of 'grace' have led to correspondingly incorrect interpretations of passages that use charis. Romans 4, for example, contrasts the Reciprocity System to a Contractual system (a rather subtle contrast) which has historically been exegeted as the difference between human effort and reliance on 'grace'. Similarly Ephesians 2:8, due to the ambiguity in Greek about givers and receivers of favors clarifies that God is the giver of the favor and we the receiver, and yet this has historically been exegeted as speaking about lack of human effort.

Unfortunately, nothing endures and propagates quite like bad theology. At certain points in history, theologians have constructed theologies based on certain incorrect understandings of 'grace' and these theologies remain influential today and taught as biblical even when scholarship regarding the meaning of these words has long moved on. Mistaken ideas about charis continue to influence many Christians who are convinced that 'grace' means salvation is in no way by human effort.

A proper Bible translation

Dave Warnock introduced me to very recent NT translation by a scholar of Classics who is an expert in ancient Greek Lexigraphy. A Lexigrapher is a person who studies of the meanings of words and writes dictionaries. In my opinion, that is exactly the sort of person who should be writing Bible translations! The translation is (somewhat strangely) titled The Source by Ann Nyland. There is an interesting interview with her here from which I will quote the most interesting parts:

In the late 1880s and again in the mid 1970s, large amounts of papyri and inscriptions were discovered. These impacted our knowledge of word meaning in the New Testament dramatically. Why? Well, the papyri and inscriptions were written at the time of the New Testament. They were non-literary sources, that is, they touched upon all aspects of life - everyday private letters from ordinary people, contracts of marriage and divorce, tax papers, official decrees, birth and death notices, tombstones, and business documents.

Why is this important? Prior to these discoveries, people who made up New Testament dictionaries didn’t have a clue what many of the words meant, as I said. But now, these rare words appeared commonly in different contexts, and everyday contexts too. We would use formal language in a letter to a politician, but we use everyday language in letters to friends. It is this everyday language that appears in the New Testament, and up popped hundreds of examples of these words. Large numbers of previously uncommon words found in the New Testament now appeared commonly in everyday documents as well as on inscriptions. Many mysteries of word meaning were thus solved.

15 volumes of new papyri were published in 1976. This meant that the meanings of a large number of words previously unattested were discovered. In the last 20 yrs, 4,000 inscriptions have been found at Ephesus alone. These discoveries have been largely overlooked by Bible translators. The problem is that laypersons and a significant number of Bible translators alike are unaware of all this as it is tucked away in technical journals. Available Bible dictionaries do not have this scholarship to any useful degree. BDAG has a little of it, but not much at all. In other words, Bible translators rely on dictionaries. The dictionaries are wrong, for many words.

Nearly every recent New Testament dictionary is based on this outdated work while older ones are based on work prior even to that of Moulton and Milligan.

the resources for translation have not been available to the Bible translator. Translators need decent dictionaries, and the current New Testament lexicon project (going on in my town, although work has stalled) won’t be in print for many, many years. As a lexicographer, I had to do my own dictionary work.

every New Testament translation of today, apart from The Source, follows the traditional translations of the earlier versions, which were published centuries before the evidence from the papyri and inscriptions revealed to us the actual meanings of numerous New Testament words!

The disregard of this evidence for word meaning has had a terrible impact on Bible translation. Many words suffer, but technical terms and idioms suffer particularly. For example, the term mistranslated “husband of one wife” is actually “faithful to their partner” and has been found on the tombstones of women. It is also clear that many modern translators have followed the KJV, whether directly or through the lexicons (dictionaries).

The translations of most New Testament versions are based on a lack of understanding of Greek word meaning. Available translations do not sufficiently regard the abundant evidence from the papyri and inscriptions and thus in many cases present a far from accurate translation of the New Testament ... because the tools are not available to the translator – the tools being published lexicons

In many cases, the trouble is that religion based on mistranslation has laid down certain things in the Christian community on the whole and tradition is a very powerful thing.

The Source is different because: The meanings of many words in other available Bibles are, quite bluntly, wrong. These meanings were discovered only recently but have been published only in technical academic journals related to the classics discipline in secular universities. The lexicon to replace Moulton and Milligan will not be published in fascicles [=multiple pieces over time], and is years away from publication. The Source is the only translation to date to take account of these word meanings. My field of research is lexicography.

“Believe in (someone)” is an appalling mistranslation and I would happily mark a student wrong for such a translation.

That's an interesting explanation which explains why I'm so often upset at the poorness of Bible lexicons and translations which seem to ignore evidence. I intend to buy a copy of her translation - which comes in a normal form or as a study bible with extensive notes on Greek word meanings. Apparently her study bible has been vetoed by some Christian groups because she performs the 'unbiblical' acts of explaining why Greek words traditionally translated "homosexual" in our bibles do not in fact mean that and why gender neutral terms are the correct English rendering of Greek words.

Of course, even with the best lexigraphy there's still plenty of translation decisions that have to be made that can be right, wrong or just matters of taste. So I'm not under any illusions that this translation will be 100% right for me, but it should at least be a breath of fresh air.

Homosexuals shall not inherit the kingdom of God?

1 Corinthians 6:9-10 gives a list of those who shall not inherit the kingdom of God. There are two different Greek words in this sentence sometimes translated "homosexual", but there are translation difficulties with both these words.

Various ancient Greek writers discuss homosexual behavior quite a bit, and so we have a good knowledge of what the culture of the time thought about homosexuality and what words they used to describe it. The words Paul uses are not the normal words used to speak of homosexuality.

The first of Paul's two difficult words is "malakos" which literally means "soft" and is a fairly common Greek word that depending on context can mean virtually anything: (1) "soft" grassy meadows, (2) "gentle" or "mild", (3) "cowardly", "lacking self-control", (4) low pitched music, (5) poor logic or reasoning (6) "weak", "sickly". The context of Paul's list is moral vices and so meanings from definition 3 above are appropriate ones and thus "lack of self control" seems best. Some people appear to have decided that the word can mean 'soft' in a sexual sense and thus mean 'effeminate' or 'passive homosexual partner', which I suppose is possible. There seems no reason to think the context here merits such a translation though.

The second of Paul's difficult words is "arsenokoites" (literally "man-bed") which has the opposite problem - this word does not occur enough times in surviving documents for us to tell clearly what it means. The evidence provided by these occurrences is confusing. It appears in some listings of economic sins. Elsewhere it is said to be something mainly done by men with men but which can even be done to a woman. A meaning that explains a lot of the evidence (but not all) is "anal rape" or "having sex with someone in order to prove dominance over them" (bear in mind that in the ancient world this was a somewhat common practice for heterosexuals to engage in). In short, Greek usage provides no reason at all to think that the word means "homosexual". No study I have ever seen has concluded that the word meant "homosexual" in Greek.

However Christians who have studied Greek are rather infamous for never reading or paying attention to any Greek documents outside of the Bible. So often their policy is: Using the Bible alone, what does this word mean? I would like to stress that such methodology, in general, is incredibly bad. The bible was written in Koine ('common') Greek and it uses normal words from the common Greek of the time. It was NOT written in some heavenly language that came into being for the sake of writing the bible and then immediately disappeared (as a few scholars once wildly speculated!). Its original readers when reading it would have understood the meanings of the words it uses because they already knew what the words meant from their knowledge of Greek, just as we who read it in English understand it because we already know how to speak English.

At any rate, people have searched the bible from top to bottom to see what arsenokoites (man + bed) means in the 'bible' language and discovered a passage that uses 'man' and 'bed' in the same sentence in the bowels of Leviticus. Therefore it must be a reference to that, right? (Because, of course, Paul would invent a word his Corinthian readers didn't know and expect them to search the bible from top to bottom to find the sentence that most closely matched it... not!) The sentence in Leviticus is generally believed to be condemning homosexuality and therefore "arsenokoites" in Paul's writings is translated "homosexuality".

In short, I see no reason to think either malakos or arsenokoites in 1 Cor 6:9 have anything to do with homosexuality whatsoever. Such translations are simply a result of poor scholarship.

PS. It has been brought to my attention that a lot of the evidence regarding ancient usage of 'arsenokoites' was only discovered in the last 30 years, and that therefore the scholars who in the past concluded it meant homosexuality based on the above-critiqued argument were engaging in reasonable speculation based on the lack-of-evidence they had at the time.