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Starting Leviticus

Starting Leviticus

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I mentioned in my post about completing the study of Romans that our next book was Leviticus. This was by choice of the group, but it is surely driven somewhat by the number of references I have made to Leviticus.

While I experienced Leviticus as a child, going to a Christian school where we read—really read—the entire Bible, and memorized a great deal, it never really caught my attention.

Two factors combined to catch my attention:

  1. I changed my view of biblical inspiration
  2. I studied through Leviticus using the three volume commentary on it in the Anchor Bible series by Jacob Milgrom.

Studying with Milgrom

Here’s a key Milgrom quote, and this from a man who does not tend to speak in one-liners!

Theology is what Leviticus is all about. It pervades every chapter and almost every verse. It is not expressed in pronouncements but embedded in rituals.

Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus, Vol. 1, Anchor Bible. (New York: Doubleday, 1991), 42. (Link is to my review.)

One of the key lessons I learned in that book is that ritual matters. The way we worship both reflects and creates theology. When we go to church and listen to one person from the front do all the talking, that has an impact on how we see the Christian life, learning, discipleship.

I recall that I was once asked to speak at a church where, unknown to me, people felt they could delegate that task of prayer to the prayer warriors. The pastor who invited me knew I’d say something different.

I would like to say something similar about study to the church as a whole: You can’t leave your study to pastors or scholars. You need to get involved.

Bottom line here is that our ritual matters in many ways.

I asked a question in a previous post:

If God showed up on Sunday morning, would God enjoy what was going on?

Henry’s Threads, “A Morbid and Boring Christianity“

I think it’s a good question. In terms of Leviticus, would it be a “pleasing odor?”

What’s God Really Like?

Inspiration in the Production of Scripture

The other element is my change was my view of inspiration. There is a single element that is critical. I came to regard the process of inspiration and transmission of scripture as a critical element in our understanding. I see scripture as a compendium of the experience of people with God. It is important to recognize both the divine and human element.

Out of that divine-human story, I see God working with people through scripture. In Leviticus, we see God as educator. Yes, we see the human report of what happened. I’m not trying here to debate details on how human and how divine scripture is; in fact, I think that’s the wrong question. What we’re looking for is the process behind what we have. We want to see God in action.

Is that perhaps arrogant? I don’t believe so. I believe God has left God’s imprint all over creation, and very much in the way in which God’s chosen people were developed and prepared. Looking at this process is even more critical than connecting dots between specific scriptures.

Things I Won’t Be Doing

In focusing on the way ritual expresses theology and develops worshipers, there are two things I will not be emphasizing.

First, I will not be looking for the minor ties between specific scripture prophecies and New Testament events. While I accept predictive prophecy in principle, in practice I find that the detailed interpretation of a prediction/fulfillment is rarely necessary to learn the lessons expressed.

Second, I will not be doing a detailed symbolic connection between elements of the ritual. Those sorts of things (and the resulting debates) are available elsewhere.

I will be focusing on the expression of theology through ritual and the relationship of that ritual to forming God’s people. I hope to learn something about discipleship and instruction/nurture through this book.

(Featured image credit: Adobe Stock #158382143. Licensed, not public domain.)

Finished Romans Class

Finished Romans Class

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Earlier this evening I finished my Wednesday night class on the book of Romans. For the study of Romans 16, I used a sermon by Dr. Fred Craddock off of YouTube. Here it is:

I have never found anything that is quite like this as a presentation on Romans 16. Dr. Fred Craddock was indeed an exceptional preacher.

In an unpredictable result, the class has chosen to continue immediately and they want me to begin a study of Leviticus. With the number of references I have made to Leviticus in teaching, this is not as surprising as one might think, yet I didn’t expect it.

It will be interesting to see what I can post here regarding the class.

Read my review of Jacob Milgrom’s commentary on Leviticus, my primary study related to the book.

Evaluating Doctrines regarding the Holy Spirit (Pneumatology)

Evaluating Doctrines regarding the Holy Spirit (Pneumatology)

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I have encountered a few questions lately regarding the work of the Holy Spirit, particularly the manifestation(s) and gifts of the Holy Spirit as they may be observed in a church setting. There is always a problem with evaluating theology based on the visible actions of God, because this gets confused with identifying God’s actions. This latter is difficult to accomplish.

My aim in this post is to point to the way in which I look at any Christian doctrine, using as examples the manifestation (note singular) and gifts of the Holy Spirit. By my use of those expressions I point you to 1 Corinthians 12-14, where those are used in verses 4 & 7 of chapter 12.

(I have a prior series on 1 Corinthians 12-14, which includes 1 Corinthians 12-14, 1 Corinthians 12-14 Greek Terms, 1 Corinthians 12, 1 Corinthians 13, and 1 Corinthians 14.)

What I frequently hear done is that one identifies what the gifts of the Spirit are by looking at the list in 1 Corinthians 12, sometimes combining this with lists in Romans 12 and Ephesians 4, and thus identifying whether a gift is “of God,” that is, has its source in God’s action, by whether it occurs in the list. Should one use a gift that is not in the list, that gift is seen as suspect.

I find that process suspect, because I do not believe that Paul is attempting to teach the Corinthians about the gifts of the Spirit here. Rather, Paul is teaching them about true spirituality, and is using the gifts as an illustration. I imagine that the Corinthians would have agreed with the list of spiritual gifts he gives, and thus he can use it to illustrate the real way to test.

He gives that real way in 12:3, which can be boiled down to the assertion that Jesus is Lord. That is the key assertion. How that works is detailed in verses 4-11, with 11 being the wrap-up. It is one Spirit, that acts in the church under the church’s one Lord.

We depart from this test at our peril in the church, and it is the test that Paul puts up front. He doesn’t say, “Check out whether the person is speaking in tongues,” or “Check out whether they can prophesy,” or even “Look at whether they have some gifts of administration.” Rather, he emphasizes that all of those come from one Lord.

I am not a theologian by profession, though many will point out that a Christian is always a theologian in a certain sense. Having the opportunity of reading and studying under some quite gifted theologians, however, I don’t want anyone to think I’m claiming to be one them.

I found this view repeatedly stated by one of the authors I publish, Edward W. H. Vick. To summarize his various statements, just one of which I will quote below, the way you determine if a doctrine is Christian is by asking whether it is centered in Jesus Christ. He makes this note in his book Eschatology: A Participatory Study Guide, in From Inspiration to Understanding: Reading the Bible Seriously and Faithfully, and Creation: The Christian Doctrine.

I quote the latter here:

The essential Christian conviction is that God moved toward man and made his decisive revelation in Jesus Christ, that what is known of God is known in Jesus Christ, that in Jesus Christ we have the clue to the meaning of reality, not this or that part of reality only (although this as well), but to reality as such. This means that the Christian must attempt to see every aspect of reality in the light of God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. We emphasize: the starting‑point, the sine qua non of Christian theology is belief in Jesus Christ. Belief in Jesus Christ is evoked by God’s revelation in Jesus Christ. That is given. Once present it is never questioned. The faith in Jesus Christ that is a result of God’s revealing activity in Him provides the theologian with the starting point. All Christian doctrine, works from this starting-point, A Christian doctrine of creation must start here. No scientific research or discovery can touch this basic religious conviction or its theological expression. It is a method of interpreting the world and an explanation of the very existence of the world. It is an explanation of the world that says basically that the world is dependent on a reality that may not be known by an examination of the world alone.

Edward W. H. Vick, Creation: The Christian Doctrine, (Gonzalez, FL: Energion Publications, 2013), 104-105.

You can have numbers everywhere and plenty of scriptures and calculations to back them up, but if the center of your eschatology is not Jesus, the Christ, it is not Christian. It may be partially, even mostly, based on scripture, but it will remain outside Christian doctrine. Similarly, you can know ever so much about creation, whatever your view on the details is, but if you do not find Christ in creation, your doctrine of creation is not a Christian doctrine.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you can know ever so much about scripture, but if Christ is not at the center of your interpretation, it is not Christian. Note here that I do not mean that non-Christians cannot interpret scripture, nor that Christians should not do historical interpretation using sound, scientific methodologies. I’m speaking of the scriptural interpretation that nurtures and builds (edifies, to use the term from 1 Corinthians 14) our faith and our community.

I use this principle in two ways. First, as you have seen, I define (having learned from Dr. Vick), a doctrine as Christian based on whether it is centered in Jesus Christ. Multiple tie-downs to various scriptures, appeals to experience, or a variety of other options do not make a Christian doctrine.

Second, however, I use this to help me define the essentials. When looking at doctrinal disagreements, I ask how those disagreements impact the view that Jesus has come in the flesh (1 John 4:2-3) and that Jesus is Lord. This is not a clean checklist, because not everything has an equal impact. I’m usually willing to trust the expressed intent of the person who holds the doctrine.

I believe it is important to know the difference between essentials and non-essentials in order to prevent ourselves from becoming narrow and judgmental. Romans 12-14 covers much of this ground, and it is often quoted out of context on both sides of the divide: the importance of right doctrine, and the importance of some flexibility and of letting the Lord lead.

This leads me to the way in which I evaluate either gifts attributed to the Spirit or manifestations attributed to the Spirit.

First, the manifestation of the Spirit comes in many ways, one of which is the availability of the gifts of the spirit. The spirit is also made manifest through the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-24). Most importantly, the gifts are made manifest directly in calling forth the confession that Jesus is Lord (1 Corinthians 12:3).

Second, does the expression of any doctrine of the Spirit center on Jesus Christ, in other words, is the doctrine itself a specific expression of the broader statement that Jesus is Lord?

Third, as Paul expresses himself in the rest of 12 and then reinforces and expands in chapters 13 and 14, is the expression of the doctrine or the manifestation of the Spirit something that builds the body of Christ? (The term we’re used to in chapter 14 is “edify,” which is fine, provided you really hear it!)

The love chapter, 13, is often treated separately from 12 & 14, but Paul is here giving us a key to the way in which we identify gifts. For example, are people claiming superiority over others because of the gifts of the Spirit? That is not manifesting the love of Christ, nor is it building the body of Christ. It is therefore hardly an expression of the statement that Jesus is Lord.

Tomorrow (hopefully I will make time!), I will discuss the idea of manifestations a bit more, but this is going to be the foundation of everything. I think one of our human problems is equating “things that make us comfortable” with “things that build the body.” Those may not be the same thing.

So we’ll discuss!

Of Isaiah 40 and Grasshoppers

Of Isaiah 40 and Grasshoppers

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Last night in our Tuesday night group we discussed this rather interesting chapter, one that I believe expresses the basics of the gospel message well.

Now I don’t mean by this that it mentions the name of Jesus or even directly predicts anything about his ministry. There is some material here that is used of John the Baptist and Jesus, but that is another subject. What I mean is the basic principles. I will express these as: We can’t, God can, God does.

There are those who find the whole depravity thing in Christian theology somewhat morbid. But there’s a really simple point, and one I think is obvious once you see it. We really can’t!

Once we accept the fundamental idea of God as creator at all, we accept total dependence and our inherent smallness. As Isaiah calls us, grasshoppers. God looks down from the circle of the earth and the inhabitants (that’s us) are as grasshoppers.

If we think about it for a moment, not only can we not do good without God, we can’t do anything at all. We can’t exist. We are, before our creator, nothing at all.

And yet!

And yet, God is coming to God’s people. God cares, in great detail.

Here is the Lord GOD; he is coming in might,
coming to rule with powerful arm.
His reward is with him,
his recompense before him.
Like a shepherd he will tend his flock
and with his arm keep them together;
he will carry the lambs in his bosom
and lead the ewes to water.

(Isaish 40:10-11, REB)

God’s greatness is not something that should make us miserable. Face it, we have looked at the universe and it is incomprehensibly large. We are small. Yet we are significant. If God is the creator, as we believe, then God is incomprehensibly large, and we don’t really have anything to offer.

And yet!

When I consider your heavens
the work of your fingers
the moon and the stars
which you have put in place,

What is a human being
that you take notice?
A mortal that you seek him out?

Yet you have made him a little lower than God,
with glory and honor you have crowned him.
You have made him rule over what your hands have made.
You have put everything under his authority.

Psalm 8:4-7 (my translation)

Isaiah 40 tells us that while we can’t, God can, and God will.

Snakes in the wilderness; crosses on my wall.
Symbols, Actions, and Idolatry

Symbols, Actions, and Idolatry

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I encountered a question recently that I’d like to explore a bit. The question comes in three parts, or perhaps with three perspectives.

  • When God commanded the Israelites to look to the bronze serpent to be healed, was God commanding idolatry?
  • Why would God give this command?
  • Was this a good command?

It’s easy to dismiss the question by simply saying that it is God’s command, therefore good, and further cannot be a command to sin. But if we consider that, as Paul says, “these things are examples for us” (1 Corinthians 10:6), perhaps we might want to explore just why God would command such a thing.

Idolatry

Let me first note that idolatry is rather easy to fall into. We are very much idol-making people. I often use Paul Tillich’s vocabulary in this, that idolatry is making something that is not ultimate your ultimate concern. We can take a book, such as the Bible, from which we get God’s Word, and make the book, the thing, into the object of worship.

An example of this would be using the Bible as a sort of magical talisman. I have seen people who expect the possession and use of the physical book to accomplish miracles. Not so! The power of scripture is in revealing God who is the one who takes action. It is not minimizing or dismissing the book to realize that it is what conveys to us God’s will rather than being magical or an object of worship.

An unopened Bible sitting on the shelf in your home in a prominent place might well become your idol. You believe you are closer to God because of the object. A picture of Jesus might function in a similar way. It displays to others your faith. The question is, are you in Christ and Christ in you? That same picture on the wall might either be a reminder or it might be an idol.

I have three crosses over the door to my office. If I treat them as an object of worship, and forget what they symbolize, they could easily become an idol.

Some Objects and Commands

The ark of the covenant became a problem in this very way in scripture. It was commanded by God and built according to God’s instructions. It was supposed to be there in the temple. There was some critical symbolism involved in that under those cherubim, where there would have been an image of a god in a temple of another religion, there was empty space. Empty, at least, to human sight.

This was part of the ritual of Israel’s worship. It played a key role. But when the sons of Eli decided to take it from the tabernacle and to war, something else happened. Idolatry broke out! In 1 Samuel 4 we have the story, as Israel gives this triumphant shout, the Philistines hear it and decide that the gods have come into the camp of Israel.

Israel’s actions were idolatrous. They thought that God was confined to the thing. Now the thing was good. It was commanded by God, but it was being used in a way that was inappropriate. Idolatry is dangerous, because it disconnects us from God and connects us to, and limits us by, our own power.

As a public event, this idolatry also provided a false witness to the Philistines, who believed that God was again limited to the object.

So the question becomes, why did God want the ark built if it could be so misused?

In this case, we have considerable evidence to suggest why this should be. The ark provided an important symbol in Israel’s worship, and even an antidote to idolatry in what it symbolized.

At the same time we see one of the key sources of idolatry: We really like to have something to take hold of, something we can see, and a course of action that will let us take control. When Eli’s sons took the ark, they were trying to force God’s hand. If God wouldn’t save them from a distance, they’d bring God to where God could do what they wanted done.

We combine that with liking to repeat the action. If it works once, let’s do it again.

The Command to Worship

We have many rituals commanded in the Hebrew scriptures, yet the prophets tend to downplay these to some extent. I think a good place to look at this is Psalm 51. Here we have a prayer of repentance, which says that God doesn’t want sacrifice (v. 16), but then says that burnt offerings will be acceptable (v. 19). What’s the difference? Repentance!

The point of the sacrifice is a ritual that works with, reminds us of, and reinforces the actions that we need to take. It is a good ritual in that sense. But if we replace repentance with a ritual of repentance, the action itself becomes idolatry. It suggests that some action I take can box God in. “Oh well,” it says to God, “I may have sinned, but I offered a sacrifice so now you’re stuck with forgiving me.”

We have an idolatry of action, by placing the action in place of God. Only God forgives. Leviticus and Numbers are worded carefully to not suggest that forgiveness is accomplished by the sacrifice. Rather, forgiveness comes from God. The sacrifice is God’s command, and becomes a means of bringing us to repentance and keeping us there.

So here’s another command of God that can be abused, and in much the same way as the ark of the covenant was abused by Eli’s sons.

A Means of Healing

When Naaman comes to Elisha for healing he’s told to dip himself in the Jordan river seven times (2 Kings 5). Is there something particularly efficacious about the water of the Jordan river? Not at all! This is something God is commanding Naaman to do. The action doesn’t heal. God heals. God asks for that act of obedience before God heals.

Now we could make a cult out of Jordan river water, saying that it has special healing powers. Come to think of it, we do make quite a thing out of Jordan river water, being baptized in it, bringing back bottles of it from trips to Israel.

Now don’t get me wrong. Enjoying an experience isn’t idolatry. But if you for one moment think that being baptized in the Jordan river is better than being baptized elsewhere, that the water of that particular river has more power to cleanse from sin, you have fallen into idolatry.

The Idolatry of Places

When Jesus is transfigured, Peter wants to set up camp. It’s a sacred place. It’s a natural response (Matthew 17, see especially verse 4 for Peter’s response).

That response was also natural in both Jews and Samaritans. It’s better to worship on Mt. Gerizim. It’s better to worship in Jerusalem. All of which depends on what God has commanded. It is not the place that does it, though a place can help us. I like to pray in the church sanctuary. Is this idolatry? Only if I believe that it’s the only place God can reach me.

Jesus said that those who worship God will worship in spirit and truth, and not based on place (John 4:23).

Again, it’s easy to see how the command works. Gathering in a place is part of the human process of building community, so God commands a place. Making the place more sacred than God is our desire to bring things under our own control. A good command becomes an idolatry of the particular place.

About that Snake!

In the case of the snake on a pole (Numbers 21:4-9). Here we have a simple command of God that the Israelites are to look to the serpent and they will be healed.

Before I go to our three related questions, let’s look at two other scriptural points of reference. The first is 2 Kings 18:4. Hezekiah is reforming the land and destroying idols. He destroys the very serpent referenced in Numbers 21:4-9 at the time. Why? Because people were burning incense to the serpent and had even named it. This is idolatry. What God had once commanded and used for God has been turned to another purpose.

This is one of the best illustrations of the process of idolatry. We find something good, something that God commands or approves, and there are good results. Instead of realizing that it is God’s power in action, we make that set of actions, circumstances, things, or the very location the means of our receiving good. We are then worshiping the creature, rather than the creator (Romans 1:25).

In this case we have another scriptural reference point:

Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him can have eternal life.

John 3:14-15 (my translation)

Here we have a symbol by analogy, so again the serpent, destroyed by Hezekiah, serves God’s purpose. Never underestimate God’s power to redeem, whether that redemption is of a symbol or of a person!

A key here, as back in Numbers, is that the person looks up to the serpent but is healed by God, and there’s a fulfillment in a person looking up to Jesus and seeing God. The lesser symbol points to the greater/greatest.

The Questions

Is God commanding idolatry? No. God’s command is to look at, not to worship the snake. The healing comes from God. Idolatry would be to assume that the snake healed. But the text doesn’t say that.

Why does God command people to look at the snake? This one is harder. I don’t really know. By analogy, I assume it has something to do with teaching them other lessons. I can also look forward to the lifting up of Jesus. But how this act connected for the people I don’t know. I understand, however, that making a place of worship, providing an ark, and providing sacrifices each had an impact on the people, and I assume this did as well.

Was it a good command? God’s word doesn’t return empty. Just because I don’t know the reasoning, which is lost in history, doesn’t mean that God doesn’t know. My guess is that Moses and the people understood this in a way I can’t, that it made sense in the situation. I have heard numerous explanations, and I can’t claim any one as definite. The fact that someone turned it into idolatry down the road doesn’t indicate that the command itself was bad. We are idol making machines. We make idols.

Was This a Good Question?

Perhaps I could word that differently. Should we ask this kind of question of God’s actions? Should we not just assume that God’s command is good?

I would suggest that this is an excellent question. If you don’t ask this kind of question of a story in scripture, you can’t really learn from it. Simply appending a moral that says, “God said it, so it’s good,” doesn’t involve much learning.

There are commands in scripture that are much more troubling, I think, and we need to be prepared to examine and see what we can learn.

Freedom and Responsibility

Freedom and Responsibility

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I posted an extract from Dave Black’s blog on The Jesus Paradigm today. (I do this because you can’t link to a specific post on Dave’s blog, and I have his permission.) Dave is talking about Galatians 5:13-15, and what freedom means.

Rather than commenting on this passage myself, I want to put a quote from one of my other authors alongside Dave’s. I like to do this both in terms of seeing where we disagree, but also to note where we might come from different denominations and/or tradition streams, and nonetheless agree.

This is from Galatians: A Participatory Study Guide by Bruce Epperly:

We are called to freedom, Paul proclaims. Many people believe that freedom means doing exactly what they want without regard to its impact on others. In individualistic North America, we hear the following cries of freedom: “It’s my money and I can do whatever I want with it,” “It’s a woman’s choice,” “It’s my property and I will use it as I please,” “Don’t infringe on my right to gun ownership,” “It’s not hurting anyone, I can do what I want in my private life.” Paul sees Christian freedom from a very different perspective.

Freedom finds its fullest expression in loving relationships that take into consideration the needs of others. Christian freedom is not coercive, it is invitational, and it invites us to let go of our individualistic possessiveness and live in light of God’s grace and generosity, manifest in our willingness to sacrifice some aspects of our freedom for the well-being of others and the communities of which we are a part.

“Do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another” (5:13). Freedom involves responsibilities as well as rights. In fact, in Christian community, Paul asserts that freedom involves sacrifice for the greater good of those around me. Paul’s understanding of freedom within the Christian community is captured in his Letter to the Romans: “I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is unclean in itself; but it is unclean for anyone who thinks it unclean. If your brother or sister is being injured by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love. Do not let what you eat cause the ruin of one for whom Christ died” (Romans 14:14-15). True freedom goes beyond self-interest to embrace the best interests of those with whom we interact.

Epperly, Galatians, 57-58

I find that a critical element of my Bible study is to consult a variety of sources, not just different theological positions, but also different approaches. In my current study of Romans, for example, I follow a theological commentary, an exegetical commentary (from a different perspective), and a linguistic/technical commentary.

Link: Linguistics and Gospel Origins

Link: Linguistics and Gospel Origins

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Dave Black had some interesting notes on this subject today, which I posted to The Jesus Paradigm. There is a constant debate on what is “correct” usage. We have this with regard to modern usage. I’ll have authors cite some manual against their editor, usually on optional items.

So why do we expect all usage to be equal in Koine Greek?

Here’s Dave’s money quote, I think:

Lately it’s become clear to me that the question concerning correctness and incorrectness in language is not so much a linguistic one but a sociolinguistic one. In other words, it is people who determine what is correct and incorrect in language, not textbooks. In a sense, then, if everybody says “It’s me,” then this construction is correct. 

A Moment with Brevard Childs on Exodus

A Moment with Brevard Childs on Exodus

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I’ve appreciated the work of Brevard Childs since I first encountered him via his Isaiah volume in the Old Testament Library series.I just finished with the first section in his Exodus volume (see below), and I have to say that I find it even better. Childs takes note of source and redactional issues, but subordinates them to hearing the text as a part of the canon.

Sections view the text in its Old Testament/Hebrew Bible context, its New Testament use, history of exegesis and finally theological reflections.

Admittedly, many pastors would find it difficult to follow all the material, but the time taken to think both broadly and deeply about a passage will produce a reward in understanding and the ability to share one’s reflections with others.

I may review this book when I have read it through, but the start was so rewarding that I wanted to comment immediately.