Sunday, July 31, 2005

Jesus and Sin

I was reading through a gospel presentation... The first point it lists is to "establish universal sinfulness". That the person is a sinner and needs saving. Christians are well-known for condemnation.

Did Jesus condemn sinners? Consider Jesus in his actions toward the prostitutes, the tax collectors, etc. Is he ever once recorded as trying to convince them they were sinners? Far from it. It was the Pharisees, the religious leaders who were continually labelling such people as sinners - they kept saying to Jesus "why do you associate with such people?".

That is not too different to today. Today it is the religious leaders who say loudly that prostitution is wrong, that homosexuality is wrong. Our churches are enthusiastic in labelling and attacking sin. They lead the way in the condemnation of sin. And yet... that's what the religious leaders of Jesus' day were doing. Jesus never once joined in with them in condemnation: it was the religious leaders themselves that he condemned in response.

Everyone likes finding faults in others, attacking sin in others. It is an easy step for us to fall into... to focus on sin and condemnation. To say "you are wrong to do this, you are a sinner, that is sin" comes all to easily to human lips. It makes us the judge, we become condemners.

I have been told several times by enthusiastic evangelical speakers that everyone deep down knows they are sinners. Well, if indeed we believe that they already know that, why put effort into telling them? Why rub it in? Jesus didn't go to the prostitutes and tell them how they were sinners. We don't see in the New Testament a gospel of sin being preached. In each instance the preacher does their best to put as positive a spin as they can on the gospel. Consider Paul's sermon to the Athenians in Acts 17. We are told that Paul was horrified by the Athenians idol worship... so what does he say to them? He says that he can see that they are very religious people - he turns the negative into a positive quality and commends them for it.

Instead of focusing on building people up, and on the positives of the gospel, like we see happening in the New Testament we seem to focus on the negatives and try to grind people's noses into the dirt. Instead of being Jesus to the prostitutes we are the Pharisees, condemning the women caught in adultery, condemning sin left right and center. It's so easy, it's natural, and we enjoy doing it. Jesus spent a large proportion of his time attacking the religious leaders over their condemnations of sinners... I'm inclined to wonder if the best medicene for the church today wouldn't be a modern day Jesus.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Christian Theology's Great Mistake

The fundamental mistake that I believe has been made in Christian theology, has been to read deep and complicated metaphysical ideas into the Bible. We have over-spiritualised it all. What do I mean?

Let’s use the example of “sin”. Say I sin by killing someone, what’s the result?
At one end of the spectrum, we have a tangible, physical result: The person is dead, I get put in prison, I possibly feel bad about it.
At the other end of the spectrum, we have an intangible, spiritual result: We can imagine a giant big fuzzy black cloud of spiritual “sin” that exists in some spiritual dimension and blocks my relationship with God.

We have a continuum:
This-worldly <--------------------> Other-worldly, Spiritual dimensions

What Christian theology has done is tended, over time, further and further to the right on the spectrum. Judaism was a very down-to-earth “this is how you should live, these are the rules you should follow” type religion near the left end of the spectrum. But over the centuries, as theology has developed and changed, Christianity has quite progressively and steadily moved further and further right. Bit by bit each individual theological concept has slid further right, and today when we read our bibles the terms invoke in our heads complicated abstract and theoretical ideas that we have been taught which happen in spiritual dimensions, rather than the far more tangible and practical ideas that happen in this world that they were intended to represent. It’s possible to trace these changes throughout the last 2000 years of Christian history and see this right-ward slide into the other-worldly and metaphysical, and finally see the appearance of the most abstract and theoretical system yet: Evangelicalism.

What does the theology we are taught today say? Our sin is an intangible spiritual force which creates a spiritual barrier between us and God, which must be removed before we can make it into heaven (a not-of-this-world place). Christ fixes this problem in a complicated theoretical way: His spiritual separation from God caused by the metaphysical transfer of sin onto him on the cross, etc. Looking at the continuum above, these concepts all fall on the extreme right end of the spectrum: Everything of importance happens in some spiritual dimension that we can only know about through reading it in the Bible. This, I believe, is simply a mistake. Over the centuries, as our reading of the bible has slid toward the right, we have moved further and further away from what the authors meant. They were writing about practical things, things they had experienced, and we’ve constructed a complex and theoretical theology that has only a vague relation to the actual world - everything of importance happens in some spiritual dimension somewhere out there.

Consider the following: “They went out of the house”
Now, you could read that and think that the house represents an enclosure in which sin spiritually entraps us, and that this phrase means that these people have escaped the spiritual clutches of sin. Or you could read it and think it means that some people left a house. It sounds stupid, but that’s exactly the sort of thing that we’ve been taught to do to our bibles. We have been trained to fill the words with as far to the right end of the spectrum meanings as is possible. We are happy seeing the Old Testament in the left end – when God “saves” Israel from her enemies, we see immediately the left-end meaning of a physical rescue from invading nations. Yet when we come to the New Testament we have been taught to change mental gear – if we see “saved” in the New Testament we pull out our complicated spiritual concepts of “salvation” and start stuffing those meanings into the words without thinking twice. Quite simply, we are deceiving ourselves if we do this, and we will misunderstand what the author meant.

Another distinction a lot of people are more familiar with is the
Literal <--------------------------> Metaphorical
distinction. We are generally taught today that "taking things metaphorically" is a cop-out, and that you've got to take the text literally. For example you could take the stories about Abraham, and either say "these are literal stories about a real person called Abraham", or say "Abraham is a symbol representing the Church... etc" and explain it away as metaphorical. But perhaps the lesson we should be taking for this is not to avoid metaphor, but to avoid over-spiritualising the text when there is plainly an every-day normal meaning we could be taking out of it - the lesson isn't to tend left on the literal <-> metaphor spectrum, but to tend left on the this-dimension <-> other-dimension spectrum.

Consider another example I see a lot: Paul's dying and rising with Christ passage in Romans 6. We can either take it literally and think that on some spiritual plane of existence that is somewhere out there in the aether our spirits which exist on that plane died and rose again in some sort of ethereal union with Christ. (I have seen plenty of people take this view) Or we can say that Paul is using a metaphor to describe the this-worldly fact that our lives ought to undergo a radical transformation when we become Christians (ie we change our behaviour). We have a choice of interpretation between literal & spiritual-realms versus metaphorical & concrete. A similar issue applies to many of the more theologically deep passages of the NT.

I find it interesting that our ingrained tendency toward literalism often forces our reading toward the spiritual end of the spectrum. I believe this is a mistake. A good rule is this: A reading that is at the concrete end of the concrete <-> spiritual spectrum is to be prefered over a spiritualised reading. The mistake has been to focus on the literal <-> metaphorical spectrum and insist on literalness. Metaphorical interpretation is only bad when it is clearly contrived, or leads to over-spiritualising. Literal interpretation is equal bad if it leads to over-spiritualising. When we read passages we need to think about the full meaning of our interpretation, and if we find ourselves inventing whole spiritual planes of existence then we are interpreting it wrongly.

We know Judaism was at the concrete end of the spectrum. We know scholars for years misunderstood Jewish apocalyptic literature because they took it too literally & spiritually, rather than metaphorically & concretely. We know by Occam's Razor (a philosophical rule that says "don't make theories that involve the existence of unevidence entities if you don't need to") that we ought not to posit the existence of entire planes of spiritual existence simply to explain a sentence that could quite easily be a metaphor for something concrete. So when we see "dying and rising with Christ", or "the blood of Christ cleanses us from sin", or "the righteousness of God", or "saved" or any of the other theological statements or terms in the New Testament, we ought to be careful not to get carried away imputing over-spiritualised meanings to them and look for the most concrete way to interpreting them, even if it involves ~gasp~ a metaphor.

Friday, July 22, 2005

"Believe in me" in the Gospel of John

In the Gospel of John, Jesus says "Believe in me" often. In the other gospels he doesn't do this. What's going on?

Firstly, I wish to make the point once again that pistis "believe" ought to be rendered "faithful" or similar, and has notions of allegiance and faithfulness rather than intellectual belief. Further evidence on this subject has recently come to my attention: The second century AD writer Arrian of Nicomedia, twice writes in his biography of Alexander the Great that certain people remained "pistis" to Darius (Darius was their king), and the Loeb English translation renders this "loyal to Darius", which is clearly what is meant in the context. (Anabasis III.21.4 & III.23.7)

How are we to make sense of "be loyal to me" in the mouth of Jesus? Why is it in John and not the other gospels? The answer I think, is that it is in the other gospels, it's simply worded slightly differently: as "follow me".

One of the things I think Jesus was intentionally doing during his ministry was forming a movement/group/sect/cult around himself. He and his disciples recruited followers into this movement and we see in the gospels in the form of Jesus asking people to "follow me".

So why does John have "be loyal to me" rather than "follow me"? Part of the answer is probably that Jesus spoke in Aramaic and the gospels are written in Greek, and the gospel authors used slightly different Greek words in their translation.

However, I would go further and suggest that here the Gospel of John is being anachronistic. ("Anachronistic" means not keeping proper account of time differences, eg reading an ancient text with modern assumptions, importing your own meanings into an ancient writing etc) Jesus in his own day would have want people to physically follow him around and/or actually join a movement physically led by him. For later Christians this would obviously be impossible. Their equivalent of "following" Jesus was to be loyal to his name and cause. They could not physically follow him, but they could be loyal, committed and faithful to him. And so, the writer of John, understanding this as what Jesus would have said to the Christians of the writer's time, records Jesus as saying "be loyal to me" rather than "follow me" to those around him. This is a fairly basic anachronism, which the Gospel of John is recognised to be particularly prone to.

Thursday, July 07, 2005

The Potter and his clay, and questioning God

One of the most difficult passages in the Bible to interpret is Romans 9. This is primarily because the chapter quotes scripture virtually every second verse, and every time scripture is quoted we need to look at what it meant in its original context with a view to determining what Paul understood the scripture he was quoting to mean, in order to understand what point Paul was trying to make. So lets go on an inconclusive exegetical ramble through one small bit of it:

Romans 9:19-21
You will say to me then, "Why then does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?" 20 But who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God? Will what is molded say to the one who molds it, "Why have you made me like this?" 21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use?

So, without further ado, let’s turn to looking at some of the other passages in the Bible that are similar to this:

Here is the chronologically oldest usage of the Potter imagery, so I have quoted it here at length:
Jeremiah 18:1-12
1 The word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 "Come, go down to the potter's house, and there I will let you hear my words." 3 So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was working at his wheel. 4 The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter's hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as seemed good to him. 5 Then the word of the Lord came to me: 6 Can I not do with you, O house of Israel, just as this potter has done? says the Lord. Just like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. 7 At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, 8 but if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it. 9 And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, 10 but if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I had intended to do to it.
11 Now, therefore, say to the people of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem: Thus says the Lord: Look, I am a potter shaping evil against you and devising a plan against you. Turn now, all of you from your evil way, and amend your ways and your doings. 12 But they say, "It is no use! We will follow our own plans, and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of our evil will."
Point of the wider passage:
The lengthy quote is fairly self-explanatory. God is effectively saying “look, I have the power to destroy you if you don’t turn from your evil ways, so you better, or I will”.
Meaning of the Potter imagery:
If a nation doesn’t do good and stubbornly does evil instead, God will destroy that nation and turn to another nation to start building up and using in his plans.
Thoughts on possible misinterpretations:
This passage clearly depicts the potter (God) responding to man’s (the clay’s actions), when the clay goes wrong God alters his plans dynamically to account for it. Ironically, this is the exact opposite of the meaning that I see often given by default to the potter imagery. The idea that potter imagery in general depicts God’s unconditional power and man’s lack of free will, is clearly shown to be false in this instance.


Isaiah 29:16
You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay? Shall the thing made say of its maker, "He did not make me"; or the thing formed say of the one who formed it, "He has no understanding"?
Point of the passage:
The people have forgotten God’s power and turned to wickedness. They claim to be religious but their religion has no practical meaning. They assume God cannot see the evil they are doing. This passage says: You’ve got it wrong, do you think God is as ignorant as a human? Do you think he can’t see what you’re doing? Your view of God is too small. This shouldn’t be your view toward your maker!
Meaning of the Potter imagery:
The point of the potter imagery is to get an analogy for the maker and the made. God created humans, just like a potter creates pottery. Just as the pot shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that a) the potter didn’t make it, and b) that it is more intelligent than the potter, so similarly humans shouldn’t make these mistakes about God.
Thoughts on possible misinterpretations:
This passage doesn’t at all say or imply that we cannot question or criticize God. Rather, it’s concern is that there should be a minimum level of things we agree about God: That he is our maker, and that he isn’t stupid and ignorant.


Isaiah 45:9
8 Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness; let the earth open, that salvation may spring up, and let it cause righteousness to sprout up also; I the Lord have created it. 9 Woe to you who strive with your Maker, earthen vessels with the potter! Does the clay say to the one who fashions it, "What are you making"? or "Your work has no handles"? 10 Woe to anyone who says to a father, "What are you begetting?" or to a woman, "With what are you in labor?" 11 Thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, and its Maker: Will you question me about my children, or command me concerning the work of my hands? 12 I made the earth, and created humankind upon it; it was my hands that stretched out the heavens, and I commanded all their host.
Point of the wider passage:
A description of God’s mighty acts and his power and his purposes for Israel. God makes clear that he wants righteousness to flourish upon the earth. So when vs 9a follows straight on with “Woe to you who strive with your Maker” looks like it’s probably thinking of those who try and frustrate God’s plans for righteousness… ie the wicked. Yet 9b doesn’t seem to fit very well with this, it looks more like it’s talking about criticisms of God by the examples given, which would mean vs 9a is talking about striving with God in terms of criticizing him. It seems we can either pair up 8 & 9a, and 9b & 10 in terms of them making two separate points, or we can match 9a&9b together. Either way, we still need to answer whether 9&10 are a reference to vs 8, ie when people challenge what God is doing with Israel are they criticizing his plans to let righteousness flourish upon the earth in general, or are they challenging the particular details of what God is trying to do at the time? Furthermore, the questions in vs 10 are just plain stupid questions, in terms of the fact that the answer is obvious (a child) and that the parents don’t have much control over what kind of child they have, whereas the questions in verse 9 look more sensible, but are they meant to be parallels?
In any case, it’s fairly safe to say that the general point of the passage is that God knows what he’s about, and he’s working to make righteousness and salvation happen throughout the world.
Meaning of the Potter imagery:
In general the point seems to be that God the potter is intelligent enough to know what he’s doing, and he doesn’t need us looking over his shoulder making blatantly stupid comments as we try to point out his mistakes.
Thoughts on possible misinterpretations:
I see this passage mentioned a lot in defense of the idea that we shouldn’t criticize God (especially concerning the idea of unconditional election). The focus of the passage is really on God’s blessings of nations (ie the restoration of the nation of Israel from exile) rather than about plans for individuals, however I think using the passage in this way is probably within the bounds of reasonable interpretation for this passage.


Isaiah 64:8
Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.
Point of the wider passage:
Israel sinned and God abandoned them. Because God has left them and stopped doing mighty deeds of power, the people have forgotten God and turned from everything he taught them. Isaiah wants God to come back and do great deeds which will make people remember him again and turn back to the ways of righteousness. Isaiah tries to convince God, giving reasons why God ought to be merciful. One of those is that Israel was God’s son, God’s own work and creation (64:8).
Meaning of the Potter imagery:
That God ought to be loving and compassionate toward his creation. (See Job 10:9 for an identical statement using potter imagery)
Thoughts on possible misinterpretations:
Totally absent from this passage are any ideas of the potter’s unconditional power over the clay, or his ability to do with it as he pleases. That’s just not the point of this passage.


Sirach 33:7-15Why is one day more important than another, when all the daylight in the year is from the sun? 8 By the Lord's wisdom they were distinguished, and he appointed the different seasons and festivals. 9 Some days he exalted and hallowed, and some he made ordinary days. 10 All human beings come from the ground, and humankind was created out of the dust. 11 In the fullness of his knowledge the Lord distinguished them and appointed their different ways. 12 Some he blessed and exalted, and some he made holy and brought near to himself; but some he cursed and brought low, and turned them out of their place. 13 Like clay in the hand of the potter, to be molded as he pleases, so all are in the hand of their Maker, to be given whatever he decides. 14 Good is the opposite of evil, and life the opposite of death; so the sinner is the opposite of the godly. 15 Look at all the works of the Most High; they come in pairs, one the opposite of the other.
Point of the wider passage:
I have always found this to be quite an intriguing passage. It would appear at face value to be saying that God makes people good or evil. However, Sirach 15:11-20, a declaration of the free will of man, states flat-out, several times over, that God does not force people to do evil and that man can do good if he chooses. Let’s assume that the author was consistent, and see if we can understand this passage in light of the other. Looking closely, we see that the passage doesn’t precisely say that God forces people to do evil, what it says is that God creates people in general and that some of those people are good and others are evil. God, it says, blesses and exalts some, while cursing and bringing low others. We can therefore reasonably assume (based on the rest of the book) that the writer thinks that those God blesses, he blesses because they are good, and those God curses, he curses because they are evil.
Meaning of the Potter imagery:
God has the power to bless or curse men and he will act with knowledge and wisdom in the use of this power (thus, if the rest of the book is any indication, exercising this power based on men’s deeds).
Thoughts on possible misinterpretations:
I like this passage because it demonstrates the dangers of reading too much into the text, and assuming that the author really means what the passage seems to be implying. Clearly the mistake is to think the author is advocating predestination (when really he is dead against it) because of his description of God’s sovereign power and the use of the potter imagery.


Wisdom 12:12For who will say, "What have you done?" or will resist your judgment? Who will accuse you for the destruction of nations that you made? Or who will come before you to plead as an advocate for the unrighteous?
Point of the wider passage:
The context of this extract is that it is part of big long passage in praise of God’s mercy and love. This particular quote is used to make the point that even though there is no authority above God that makes sure God does the right thing, God acts in a merciful and loving fashion regardless.
Thoughts on possible misinterpretations:
Interestingly again, if we were to consider this text out of context we would get the wrong meaning. The meaning of the text is not at all that we ought not to question God. Rather, it’s that God is so powerful that we would be physically unable to stop him from doing whatever he wanted if ever he was to act unrighteously.


Wisdom 15:7A potter kneads the soft earth and laboriously molds each vessel for our service, fashioning out of the same clay both the vessels that serve clean uses and those for contrary uses, making all alike; but which shall be the use of each of them the worker in clay decides.
Point of the wider passage:
That men make idols. The gods that some people worship are made by potters.


2 Timothy 2:20-21
In a large house there are utensils not only of gold and silver but also of wood and clay, some for special use, some for ordinary. 21 All who cleanse themselves of the things I have mentioned will become special utensils, dedicated and useful to the owner of the house, ready for every good work.
Point of the wider passage:
We ought to turn away from wickedness and do good so that we might be useful to the Lord in his work.
Meaning of the Potter imagery:
That we can make ourselves into different types of vessels, and that we ought to make ourselves good and useful to God.

====

Having completed our survey, let us consider the results.
Romans 9:19-21
You will say to me then, "Why then does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?" 20 But who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God? Will what is molded say to the one who molds it, "Why have you made me like this?" 21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use?

Let us consider first the parallels to verses 19-20. Passages that use similar language are Wisdom 12:12, Isaiah 45:9, and Isaiah 29:16. What were the points of those passages?
Wisdom 12:12 => God acts in a merciful and loving fashion regardless of the fact that no one could stop him if he did otherwise.
Isaiah 45:9 => God is intelligent enough to know what he’s doing and doesn’t need our help when making his plans about how to act with the nations.
Isaiah 29:16 => We need to realise that God isn’t stupid.

Let us then consider the parallels to vs 21.
2 Tim 2:20-21 => That we can make ourselves into different types of vessels, and that we ought to make ourselves good and useful to God.
Sirach 33:7-15 => God has the power to bless or curse men and he will act with knowledge and wisdom in the use of this power (exercising this power based on men’s good or evil deeds).
Isaiah 64:8 => That God ought to be loving and compassionate toward his creation
Jeremiah 18:1-12 => If a nation shows doesn’t do good and stubbornly does evil instead, God will destroy that nation and turn to another nation to start building up and using in his plans.

Interestingly, we see common themes repeated several times in the parallel verses above:
God’s love, compassion and mercy.
That God is not stupid
God’s interactions with the nations.
God’s blessing of the good and cursing of the evil.
That we ought to do good.

Now we need to ask: Do these themes fit with the context of Romans 9:19-21. Are these ideas actually relevant? The answer is that four and a half of the themes are present in the context:
God’s love, compassion and mercy (“Mercy” turns up in Romans 9:15,16,18,23)
That God is not stupid (Paul concludes this section of Romans with “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!” Rom 11:33)
God’s interactions with the nations. (God’s dealings with Israel, and the Gentiles are what this section is all about.)
God’s blessing of the good and cursing of the evil. (This is the half a one. There are several passages which could be interpreted this way, but they are disputable, and I don’t want to assume any conclusions here)
That we ought to do good (Rom 12:1-2, and possibly 9:30-10:4 depending on your interpretation)

Looking at which themes most closely fit Rom 9:19-21, we see that God’s mercy and God’s interactions with the nations are complete matches, with the other themes being less clear in varying degrees. Picking out the parallels that had those themes, we get:
Wisdom 12:12 => God acts in a merciful and loving fashion regardless of the fact that no one could stop him if he did otherwise.
Isaiah 45:9 => God is intelligent enough to know what he’s doing and doesn’t need our help when making his plans about how to act with the nations.
Isaiah 64:8 => That God ought to be loving and compassionate toward his creation
Jeremiah 18:1-12 => If a nation shows doesn’t do good and stubbornly does evil instead, God will destroy that nation and turn to another nation to start building up and using in his plans.

Substituting the meanings of these passages into Romans 9:19-21, we get a conclusion regarding a likely interpretation of Romans 9:19-21:
Romans 9:19-21
You will say to me then, "Why then does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?" 20 But who indeed are you, a human being, to argue with God? Will what is molded say to the one who molds it, "Why have you made me like this?" 21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one object for special use and another for ordinary use?

Interpretation:
God acts in a merciful and loving fashion regardless of the fact that no one could stop him if he did otherwise. God is intelligent enough to know what he’s doing and doesn’t need our help when making his plans about how to act with the nations. If a nation shows doesn’t do good and stubbornly does evil instead, God will destroy that nation and turn to another nation to start building up and using in his plans.


In order to draw any further conclusions, or refine the meaning of this passage we would need to perform a similar analysis of ever other piece of Romans 9, in order to compare and contrast the conclusions, fit the pieces together, and fine-tune the conclusions based on Paul’s precise wording and flow of argument. Given that I am not going to make any assumptions here about the meaning of the rest of Romans 9, I cannot place this verse in context and complete the rest of the interpretation of it.

Suffice to say, points to take away from this:
1. Romans 9 is a fantastically difficult and painfully slow passage to interpret due to the high number of quotations.
2. Once you do start paying attention of the scriptural quotations made and look carefully at what they are actually meaning, this alters the interpretation of the passage very significantly. This has been seen here, as the averagely ignorant reader skimming through Romans 9 would probably read this passage as meaning “How dare you question God? He can do what he likes.” But our more careful analysis has revealed that if Paul is actually thinking about what the scriptures he is alluding to actually mean in their context (and it would be a brave exegete indeed who wished to simply assume that Paul didn’t know what the scriptures he was using actually meant) then his meaning could well be significantly different to what it looks like at face value.

Tuesday, July 05, 2005

Jesus’ Betrayal of John

I’ve been thinking over the last couple of days about the interactions between Jesus and John the Baptist.

John was a political revolutionary. His was the most prominent of several movements around that time that desired to restore Jewish national sovereignty and rebel against the Romans in order to establish “God’s kingdom”, a theocratic nation of Israel. Teaching that “the kingdom of God” was coming (ie that political revolution would lead to a restored Israel) he lived in the desert like the Israelites did at the time of the Exodus. He then began baptising people in the Jordan, which was the last river the Israelites crossed in the exodus before they invaded the promised land (Josh 1:11). Those who came out to him and accepted his baptism were effectively joining with him in his crossing of the Jordan and pledging their military allegiance to the cause of the taking of the promised land. “Prepare a way for the Lord to travel”, declared John… ie get ready to be lead by the Lord into the promised land. This quote comes from Isaiah 40:3 which is a long passage about how God has decreed an end to the foreign political control of Israel and is ready to act to help them. This is the “good news” (Isa 40:9) that “the Lord God comes with might” (Isa 40:10). Later John gets thrown in jail for his revolutionary activities.

Into all of this walks Jesus, who is totally against the notion of political revolution. He gets baptised by John, and lets John declare him to be the promised Messiah who will lead Israel to victory against the pagan nations. Jesus then sets out to preach against revolution. He adopts “the kingdom of God” and “good news” language in order to channel the momentum that is behind those causes, but starts trying to steer it in a radically different direction, 180 degrees away from revolution. In short, he does his absolute best to undermine John’s movement from the inside, and prevent a national revolution.

Later we see messengers from John sent to Jesus to say “What on earth are you up to? Are you really the Messiah?” John had spotted the fact that Jesus didn’t seem to be leading any armies in revolution, quite the opposite: Jesus was instead turning John’s Kingdom movement into a movement of socio-economic and moralistic reform that was internal to Israel and attempting to douse the flames of political revolution. I have to say that if I were John, I’d have felt quite gutted, many years and preaching, living in the desert, rousing the masses to my cause… and what do I have to show for it? I’m in jail, and the man I proclaimed as the leader of my revolution has betrayed my cause and stolen my followers. Hmm… it’s probably just as well for Jesus that John was never released from prison!

Of course, looking back on it we would say that Jesus knew what he was about better than John, and that if John had fully understood what God was up to in his times he would have been happy about it and desirous of doing God’s will. I’m not sure if there’s a moral to this story, perhaps it’s just something to think about next time God steals your followers and subverts your message?

Monday, July 04, 2005

Grace: Can we make God love us more?

Two apparently independent (though both Baptist) speakers I heard this weekend emphasised the fact that we cannot earn God’s grace, that we cannot make God love us more. I was intrigued by the vehemence with which this point was emphasised, and because I think that this point makes a serious theological mistake.


Can we make God love us more? I wish to make clear for a start that I am quite happy to agree that the answer to that question is “no”. We are told God loves everyone (Mat 5:43-48), that God is love (1 John 4:7-8), that God loves the world (John 3:16) so much that he died for sinners (Rom 5:7-8). God loves us, yes. And it is true that many Christians do need pastors to bring that to their attention, and who do need to learn and accept that God loves them.

However there is another similar point, which is all too often wrongly confused with the idea that God loves us. The question of whether God is pleased with our lives, whether God is pleased with us, whether God is pleased with how we are living. God isn’t pleased with us when we sin, God is pleased with us when we do good. So the second question is: Can we make God more pleased with us? The answer is yes. What we do matters to God, we can please him (1 King 14:3, Gal 1:10, Col 1:10, 1 Tim 5:4, Heb 13:16) or we can disappoint him or make him angry (Mat 25:24-30, Eph 4:30). We can make him think “well done, good and faithful servant” (Mat 25:21,23) or we can make him think “I wish I’d never made man in the first place” (Gen 6:6) .

The two points are not difficult to reconcile: It is like a parent and a child. The child always has the unconditional love of the parent. The parent loves the child, and that’s not dependent upon anything the child does. However, the parent can be pleased, disappointed, angry, made sad, made happy or proud of the child, and that will be based entirely on what the child does. We see this in everyday life, that’s just the way it is. So too, in the Bible we see the same ideas being said of God: His unconditional love, and his conditional approval. Confusing the two is just a short-cut to total silliness.

Sadly that is exactly what I often see happening in churches. The confusion goes by the name “grace”. It is God’s grace, we are told, that makes him love us even though we are sinners, God’s grace that means that we don’t need to do any works to earn God’s approval, God’s grace that makes our works and sins meaningless in light of the boundless love and approval that God has for Jesus that gets transferred to us through him. Heresy! That’s just a blatant and fundamental confusion between God’s love and God’s approval. It is this deep-rooted confusion of the two fundamentally and importantly different ideas which I think is one of the most serious theological errors ever in terms of theological consequences.

The vehicle of the error is God’s “grace”. This word seems to be used as justification for conflating God’s love and God’s approval and the idea that the whole thing cannot be earned by anything we do. Grace, we are told, means “unmerited favour”. In fact, checking a few Greek dictionaries and examining a few occurrences of the word shows us that this is wrong.

Charis
“Charis” (the greek word that is translated “grace”) originally meant “something that is pleasing”. It could refer to both aesthetic beauty (eg something charming, graceful, beautiful etc) or things causing general happiness (gifts, the favour of fortune, kindnesses). The central theme was that it denoted a gladdening effect. Important is the fact that it equally refers to the giver and receiver of any gift or favour or blessing. The giver gives a “favour” (Charis) and the receiver has “thanks” (Charis). This can be confusing and lead to ambiguity as we will see later. Looking at the meaning of the word by New Testament times, we see that the ideal translation of Charis is “favour” and that it means almost exactly what the English word favour means. There is an important distinction to be made between having someone’s favour and doing someone a favour. Having someone’s favour is an earned thing: you do something that pleases them, and you are then said to have their favour. There is no difference between the Greek and English here: Making someone pleased with you/gaining their favour (Charis) virtually always happens for a good reason and is not “unmerited”. However, “doing someone a favour”, is by definition unmerited in the sense that it just wouldn’t be a favour if it was earned. But important to note is that the Greeks had, like in English, the idea that a favour done merited the return of a favour - the whole “now you owe me one” idea. It should also be clear that if someone is pleased with you they are more likely to grant you favours! ie If you have earned their favour, they will grant you favours: Merited favour naturally leads to unmerited favours - Greek’s exactly the same as English in this regard.

The Roman social system was actually heavily structured around the idea of favours. In what gets called a client-patron system, the average joes (“clients”) would find a rich and powerful person they liked the look of (a “patron”) and pledge their loyalty (ie “faith”) to that person, thus gaining the favour of that person who would then provide blessings and assistance (ie favours - charis) if ever it was needed and the client would be thankful (charis) and respond with greater loyalty (faith). It is this system that is in Paul’s mind as he writes to his Gentile converts: God our patron responds with to our loyalty with his favour, and out of his favour he grants us favours.


What then can we say about “grace”? Firstly that it’s a really bad word to use, and that we should be using “favour”. Secondly, that it in no way gives us justification for confusing the love vs pleased-with distinction that was outlined earlier. Thirdly that there are two types of favour – the state of having someone’s favour which is merited, and the individual favours they do you which are unmerited.

Having got the Biblical meaning of “grace” clear, let us turn to a bit of highly-complicated exegesis of one of the most interesting passages in the bible on charis, in which Paul gets himself into a complicated knot of confusion due to the ambiguity in the word (because it applies to both the giver and the receiver): Ephesians 2. I get sick of seeing Eph 2:8-9 quoted in support of a theology it simply doesn’t support, so I’ll attempt to explain what it does say here.

Eph 2:4-10. The NRSV renders it:
“God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us 5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ —by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— 9 not the result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”

I don’t much like their translation here, it’s okay up to near the end of verse 5…

Vs 5b. “By grace you have been saved”. I doubt this is the correct rendering of that phrase. It ought to agree with the translation of the same words in vs 8 which as we shall see should be read as “into (a state of) favour you have been saved”.
Vs 7. “the immeasurable riches of his grace”. Grace, charis, should really be translated “favour” of course.
Vs 8a. “For by grace you have been saved through faith”. Here it is “by grace” that is ambiguous – the Greek dative can have various different meanings. The question that needs to be dealt with here is whether it’s the state-of-favour or the one-off-favours that are being referred to. There are two reasons to prefer the former, contrary to the NRSV’s rendering: 1. the “you have been saved” is in the perfect tense which is a state based tense, literally meaning “you are in the state that was reached by a past occurrence of salvation”. Thus “favour” becomes the description given of this state. 2. The double causality of “by grace… through faith” is bordering on incoherent: Are we saved by grace or by faith? Much better would be “into grace… by means of faith”. Hence I think it ought to be read “Into (a state of) favour you have been saved by means of faithfulness”.
Vs 8b. “and this is not your own doing”. Here the punctuation the translators have added is causing problems. The “this” here is in the neuter (Greek words have genders which need to agree), and nothing in verse 8a is in the neuter. It’s actually a reference back to the word “riches” in verse 7 which is in the neuter. We see that 8a should be understood to be in parentheses like the end of verse 5 - both times the “by grace you have been saved” phrases are parenthetical in the middle of a sentence. So the sentence in vs 7 continues in 8b: “the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus… and this is not your own doing”. So what is the “this is not your own doing” meaning? It’s the ambiguity of the charis (favour) – charis (thanks) come back to bite Paul. What he’s just said could be read two ways: either God is doing the favours (charis) and we are thankful (charis), or we are doing the favour (charis) and God is thankful (charis). Verses 8b and 9 are a clarification of this ambiguity. Verse 8b says “and this (the blessings of the favour) is not your own doing (ie it’s not us giving the blessings); it is the gift of God (God’s the one giving the blessings)”
Vs 9. “not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” This is just a repetition of the point made in 8b – we should not imagine that we are doing God a favour by doing good deeds and boast that we are doing God favours.
Vs 10. “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works,” Rather, good deeds are simply what God created us to do (so we ought to do them).

To summarise, how I might translate Eph 2:4-10
“God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us 5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (you were saved and now have God’s favour) 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his favour in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus 8 (for by means of your faithfulness you were saved and now have God’s favour) and this is not your gift to God, but his to you, 9 not the result of you doing God a favour, or else you could boast. 10 For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”