God's Alien Justice (redux)

This is a redux of an earlier post. I added a lot more detail, and refined some of the arguments. So I thought I would re-post this rather than just editing the old one.

Romans 3:21-26 is a key text for proponents of penal substitution. I want to look here at a key term that Paul uses in this passage: the Greek word δικαιοσύνη (dikaiosynē) which can be translated as either "justice" or "righteousness".

Dikaiosynē is the same word the LXX (the Greek translation of the Old Testament used by the authors of the New Testament) uses to translate the Hebrew צְדָקָה (tsedaqah) in the Old Testament, which likewise can be rendered in English either as righteousness or justice. It stands to reason that Paul, being a Hebrew, has the conceptual idea of the Hebrew tsedaqah in mind when he speaks of dikaiosynē in Greek. In other words, his concept of justice/righteousness is based on a conception of justice based on the Bible rather than on a pagan Greek or Roman understanding. In Hebrew, the central word for “justice” is משׁפט (mishpat). Our term tsedaqah in contrast is almost always translated as “righteousness” in the OT. That’s because the connotation of tsedaqah is not justice in the sense of deciding, or in the sense of consequence, but in the sense of goodness. In the OT, tsedaqah justice is an idea rooted in the Character of God, like when we say that a king is “just,” and mean that he is good and fair. In the Old Testament, the concept of tsedaqah has to do with balancing things out again, making things right, in particular with caring for the poor and oppressed. Today, the word tsedaqah justice/righteousness is associated in Judaism with acts of charity, and many Jewish charities are often named “tsedaqah” (modern Hebrew would transliterate this as tzedakah, whereas I’m using the SBL standard for biblical Hebrew here for my transliterations) So tsedaqah justice means restorative justice rather than retributive justice.

This understanding of restorative social justice was key to Martin Luther's breakthrough where he rediscovered the Gospel in Romans. Like everyone else at the time, he had been reading the Bible in Latin, which for several hundred years had been the only translation available. The word for justice in Latin here is iustitia which is the word our own “justice” derives from. In Latin, because of the focus on Roman law, the word iustitia had come to refer to a quid-pro-quo payback justice. So Luther, reading his Bible in Latin had assumed that the passage in Romans 3 was about retributive justice. Today when we read the word Justice often have a similar connotation because of how our society defines justice in this same Jack Bauer payback type of way. A big thing Luther did was to emphasize the importance of reading the Bible in its original languages, an idea he called ad fontes which is Latin for back to the sources. Getting back to the orginal Greek and Hebrew allowed Luther to figure out that the righteousness that Paul was speaking of was so different from the one from his own German-Roman legal based one that he called it an “alien righteousness” (iustitia aliena). It was an idea that turned his world on his head, and led him to re-discover grace. We also need to get back to source of the original terms: the Greek dikaiosynē standing for the Hebrew idea of tsedaqah justice.

With that background in mind, let’s take a look at the passage from Romans 3, keeping in mind the meaning of dikaiosynē as restorative making-things-right justice, and of the related verb dikaios as “making right” as in the idea of righting a wrong.

"But now a loving restoration (dikaiosynē) from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify . This loving restoration (dikaiosynē) from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are set right (dikaioō) freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as the one who would turn aside his wrath, taking away sin through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his loving restoration (dikaiosynē) because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his loving restoration (dikaiosynē) at the present time, so as to be righteously loving (dikaios) and the one who lovingly sets right (dikaioō) those who have faith in Jesus (Rom 3:21-26).

Or how about this rendering:

"But now a goodness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify . This goodness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are made good freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as the one who would turn aside his wrath, taking away sin through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his goodness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his goodness at the present time, so as to be good and the one who makes good those who have faith in Jesus.

In that context, the idea of Christ here “turning away wrath” is not because he is punished, but because he makes us (dikaios) good/righteous. Because Jesus “takes away sin by faith in his blood” we are made good. We are made right again. As a result, God’s wrath is “turned away” because the cause of that wrath was sin, and since sin has been removed, so has the cause of wrath.

In contrast, if the above is read (as it had been by Anselm and so many others in the Latin church who did not have access to the original Greek) as iustitia retributive justice, that one can easily read into the above text the idea of penal substitution. Like this:

But now a righteousness (dikaiosynē) from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness (dikaiosynē) from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified (dikaioō) freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice (dikaiosynē), because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his justice (dikaiosynē) at the present time, so as to be just (dikaios) and the one who justifies (dikaioō) those who have faith in Jesus”

This is how the NIV translates the passage. Did you notice that they switch terms? Check out the highlighted words: They begin by translating dikaiosynē as “righteousness” and then switch to translating it as “justice”. Even through the Greek word group dikaiosynē, dikaioō, dikaios is the same throughout (all coming form the root word dikē ), they translate the verb dikaioō as justify, and the adjective dikaios as just. This changes how this passage sounds to us. Now it reads as if we are made righteous by God’s demonstration of (retributive) justice which turns aside his wrath. But if we are really paying attention, that is not what is being said.

Really, its not so much a problem with a translation (I usually like the NIV), but much more about ur own concept of what justice is about. In America, with our politicians and TV shows always talking about “bringing someone to justice” in the sense of hurting them, we really need to re-think the alien justice found in the New Testament.

Exegesis # 6 More Exegetical Fallacies

In my last post I mentioned several exegetical fallacies. I wanted to add another big one to the list:

Too much of a good thing

This is a fallacy that is frequently made by professionals who have expertise in a certain field. Say for example a biologist who sees e v e r y t h i n g solely in biological terms. Or the psychologist who over psychologizes everything and everyone. If you have a big fancy hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. Let me give some examples of how this applies to biblical criticism:

The search for the "historical Jesus" involves what is called "redaction criticism" meaning it tries to seperate the message a gospel writer is trying to convey, from what they imagine the original point of Jesus may have been, hidden somewhere in there between the lines. The problem is, as Albert Schweitzer famously said, historians in search of the historical Jesus have looked down that deep well and in the end only seen their own reflection staring back at them.

I ran across an example of this recently in a book by William Loader called Jesus and the Fundamentalism of his Day. I was intrigued because the book was supposed to be about how to read the Bible like Jesus did. Sounds awesome right? Except that Loader's method is redaction criticism, so he ends up taking his own perspective and finding it in the words of Jesus that he decides are historical, while declaring the parts that disagree with him to be the additions of the gospel writer which he can then ignore. That means that he practically admits that Mark and Paul give a real critique of the OT, but instead of wresting with that, because he does not like the Old Testament being criticized, he calls this a "betrayal of Scripture" and says to the Gospel of Mark (and I quote) "Shame!" (p 41). So Loader says shame on Scripture for criticizing older Scripture. Hmmm. He can critique the NT, even disregard it, but a writer of the NT cannot criticize the OT without that being a "betrayal." What's wrong with this picture?

Here's the thing: knowing about history and understanding the culture of Jesus and the NT is certainly a very valuable thing to do. I really like the work of several scholars who use the historical-critical method (some favorites are Albert Nolan and Joachim Jeremias). The problems is when you have too much of a good thing and end up chucking most of the NT (usually the parts you don't like).

Or take the example of Greek word studies. They can be really valuable and sometimes uncover things that get lost in translation. For example in Acts, Peter is on trial for healing a crippled man (Acts 4:9–12). Peter declares that the man has been healed in the name of Jesus, and then says, "there is no other name under heaven that has been given among men by which we must be saved." The translation is right, but you'll miss that in Greek the word Peter uses for "healed" is the same one he uses for "saved". The Greek word sozo (σῴζω) can mean both healed and saved. Similarly, when Jesus say "your faith has healed you" to the woman with the issue of bleeding, and "your faith has saved you" to the woman who washed his feet with her tears the Greek here is word for word the same. Neat huh? That can lead to some important insights that might otherwise get lost in the shuffle.

The problem again with word studies is when you get too much a good thing. When folks for example base an entire doctrine on just one word, phrase, or sentence. That is just plain loony, and it happens all the time. People quote a single verse to back up a whole system of thought. And this is not just your average pew-warmer. Big time theologians do this all the time. When you consider that the NT is compiled from a bunch of manuscripts that are not all the same, this seems even crazier. If we are reading the whole point of someone then the variations are trivial, but if they hang on one word, what if that word is wrong? Even if it is not, think about if someone did that with something you wrote - taking some half sentence out of context and building a whole dogma around it in your name.

Want an example? Karl Barth goes on and on (as only Barth can) in his Church Dogmatics about the difference between agape and phileo love. Phileo love he says is bad because it expects something in return and is based on liking someone. Agape is totally unselfish. The thing is, in Greek there really is no clear distinction like that. Agape and phileo can be used as synonyms, and often are. John tells us that God phileos the Son. So either there is not that sharp of a distinction, or God likes Jesus (I sure like Jesus, so I can see why God would). Barth's argument is over the top and many have criticized it on those grounds, saying that it is healthy to like people and not to be only unselfish. Joy is a good thing, and heck even eros is a good thing. I don't just agape my wife, I eros her too, and one hopes Barth felt the same about his wife. It's an argument that makes no sense really and only stands because it claims to be based on a Scriptural word - a word that Barth in all likelihood understood incorrectly anyway. The thing is, you don't need to know Greek to recognize when someone is making a ridiculous argument, you just need to think a little. Knowing Greek is not a substitute for using your noggin.

Exegesis # 5 - Fallacies

I'm reading through two books right now, Carson's Exegetical Fallacies, and Silva's Biblical Words and their Meaning. I'm not a big fan of Carson, but I have to say the list of fallacies he has mentioned so far is pretty good. I thought I'd share some of them here:

Etymology
This is where one assumes that etymological root of a word determines its meaning. It can sometimes, but it also can be irrelevant. For example the word breakfast clearly comes from breaking a fast, but no one really thinks about that when they think of breakfast. So there could be a connotation with a word based on its literal meaning... or not at all.

This is a really big point actually, because the way to determine the meaning of a word is not to look at its original meaning, but to look at how it is used. That's how dictionaries are written today, and that is how one determines what a biblical word means - by looking at how it was used at the time. In cases where there is not a lot of stuff to compare it to (the Old Testament for example) one does have to use etymology, but this is always just a hypothesis.

Language Limits Thought
An example of this is the book Hebrew thought Compared with Greek. The idea here is that a language shapes how people think. I suppose it does somewhat, just as it does to be a certain race, or sex, or economic status. But people have an amazing ability to go beyond these limits, and the idea that one's thoughts would be so limited by their language is highly doubtful. Take for example Biblical Hebrew which has no future tense. Does that mean they had no concept of the future? Tell that to the prophets.

Terminus Technicus
This is where one assumes that a word used by Paul is used the same way by John, like a technical term. Another term for this fallacy might be "concordancing" where we look up all occurrences of a word and try to come up with what "the Bible says" that word means. People use words in different ways. Context, context, context.

Word Study Obsession
This is one cited by James Barr, and has to do with the penchant of scholars and pastors to go on and on with a word study, drawing out all the nuances of a word and all its implications for 20 pages. When Paul wrote those letters from prison, do you think he thought that much about every little word? Does anyone? What matters is the big picture of what their point is, the letter as a whole, the paragraph, the thought, and not spiraling off on the choice of one word.

As much as I think it is important to know Greek, it is way way more important to read the text as a whole in a readable translation in order to get inside the head of an author. The more I read in the original Greek, the more I find that my NIV is just fine. I know this is a point that ticks a lot of folks off, maybe because Greek is so hard to learn that it is upsetting to find out that it doesn't matter that much, but it just doesn't. Not compared to getting the larger thought of an author.

Don't get me wrong here. I'm all for Greek word studies. Sometimes they can turn up really important finds. But 9 times out of 10 they don't. It's all a matter of priorities, and a focus on words is not as important as a focus on thoughts.

Exegesis # 4 - Critiquing Biblical Criticism

You've no doubt heard the stories of how people lose their faith in seminary. I'm pretty sure I know why people make this complaint. Biblical scholarship is often times not only detached from faith, it is hostile to it. Let me begin with a personal story to illustrate:

The class was Intro to the Old Testament. One of the first things our professor told us was that the historical accounts of the OT - the story of the exodus, the promised land, the whole meta-narrative of the people of Israel which is the foundation of the Jewish self-understanding in the OT was a big lie. None of it happened, he said. Archeology has proven it. He didn't go into any details about how exactly archeology had done this, nor did he give us any other perspectives of scholars who might disagree with this assertion.

You'd think that since this a seminary training future pastors that at some point he would come back to this and tell us how we should approach the Bible in light of that. Why it was still meaningful. Nope. That was it. The OT is a big lie, so let's study it. At this point I asked if we were going to be looking at these stories from a theological point of view then, trying to understand their meaning? Nope. We would only be approaching them from the point of view of the neutral historian. In other words, the plan was to read a book from an exclusively historical perspective, that did not happen historically.

I dropped the class.

This is sadly not at all uncommon in biblical scholarship. The common stance is that one needs to remove themselves from a faith perspective in order to do biblical scholarship. As Michael V. Fox writes in an article on the Society for Biblical Literature, "faith-based study has no place in academic scholarship... Scholarship rests on evidence. Faith, by definition, is belief when evidence is absent. " The idea here is that faith would make one dogmatically biased, and thus the only right way to read the Bible is a-theistically, by detaching oneself from faith. Faith gets in the way of truth, so the argument goes.

Now of course Fox has completely misunderstood what faith is about, making it the enemy of reason, which would be forgivable for a secular scientist. But these secular scientists who think faith=stupid are the teachers teaching the church's teachers. The result is that a great deal of people who practice and teach the study of the Bible either have no faith at all, or are hostile to faith seeing it as a hindrance to their profession. Again, what is disturbing about this is these are the people training the world's future pastors.

What happens is that seminarians are given all sorts of sophisticated tools for determining things that no one really cares about (like whether Matthew was based on a hypothetical work called Q), but are not given any tools for interpreting the Bible's normative significance - what it means, why it matters, how we should respond. Any normative implications are avoided as unscientific. So when it comes to interpreting Scripture as a pastor in a faith community, the seminarian with this kind of training is given zero tools to do this. They are not being educated. As Joel Green writes, in the introduction to Eisenbraun's recently launched Journal for Theological Interpretation,

"Biblical scholarship in the modern period has not oriented itself toward approaches or development of means that would enable us to tune our ears to the voice of God. How do we read these texts as Christian Scripture so as to hear God’s address? The methods of choice have generally focused elsewhere: the voice of the reconstructed historical Jesus, the voice of the redactor of the Gospels, or the voice of the “community” behind the text, for example. Maybe, then, it is not surprising that Wesley Kort can offer this commentary, 'At one time people knew what it meant to read a text as scripture, but we no longer do, because this way of reading has, since the late medieval and reformation periods, been dislocated and obscured.' "

Okay, ready for some good news? There is a growing movement to read Scripture as Scripture. This may seem like a no-brainer, but actually the majority of exegetical methods do not take this approach. Narrative criticism reads the Bible like literary fiction. The historical-critical method reads it as a historical artifact. Reader-response reads it from our own individual subjective perspective. So the idea of reading the Bible theologically - asking what it means, what God may be saying to us is within biblical scholarship a crazy idea, and all I can say is "thank God!"


Some proponents of theological interpretation are Brevard Childs, R.W.L. Moberly, Christopher Seitz, Francis Watson, Luke Timothy Johnson, Ellen Davis, Douglas Harink, Karl Donfried, Markus Bockmuehl, Stephen Fowl, Kevin VanHoozer, and NT Wright. Some journals include the Journal of Theological Interpretation, Pro Ecclesia, Ex Auditu, and Horizons in Biblical Theology. All of these folks are big time scholars from places like Yale, Duke, Princeton, and Durham.

So what does this approach look like? Theological interpretation is reading Scripture as Scripture, and asking what God is wanting to say to us through it. As R. Moberly writes, interpreting the Bible as Scripture indicates "a frame of reference for biblical interpretation that, while not taking the Bible as less than a historical artifact, clearly takes it as more than a historical artifact; and that more is in some way given content by the notion of the self-communication of the living God - a notion to whose breathtaking implications we are too easily dulled." (JTI 3.2 (2009), p. 162. Emphasis in the original).

In other words, they don't ignore insights from history, literary analysis, or ideological critiques. But they recognize that the Bible is a book where somehow God is wanting to speak to us through it, and try to listen to what God is saying as well. They approach the text not just with their minds open, but with their hearts open too.

Hebrew is weird

I was looking at Proverbs 3:8 in the original Hebrew and I thought it was hilarious. The NIV translation here says that the fear of the Lord will bring "health to your body". But the literal Hebrew here is "healing of your bellybutton".

Yes, that's right, your bellybutton (שֹׁר)

I bet you didn't even realize that your bellybutton needed to be morally healed, did you? It goes on to say that a further benefit is "a drink for your bones" which sounds pretty silly too, but it's pretty hard to top bellybuttons for silliness!

Exegesis #3 Reading the Old Testament through the New

One thing I observe stretching from the OT to the NT is a progressive and developing understanding of God. In early Jewish writings, God is framed as one tribal God among many, by the time we get to the NT there is only one God, and false idols and demons.

In the old way of thinking something was either your fault ("Why do you harden your hearts as the Egyptians and Pharaoh did?" 1 Sam 6:6) or God's curse ("I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and though I multiply my miraculous signs and wonders in Egypt" Exodus 7:3). So we have Isaiah telling the Israelites that their suffering - being pillaged, raped, taken as slaves - was basically because of something you did.

In the NT we have a more complex understanding which involves the demonic. In other words, with this perspective we now have three players: God, humanity, and evil. We are dealing not only with fallen people, but a fallen system where people can suffer, not because God willed it, and not because they deserved it, but because of evil itself. This adds the idea that something can be broken in the very system of the world that is (1) not God's will, and (2) not your fault. Along with it we also have the idea of sin, not just as transgression, but as bondage. An addict can't "just stop," as if it were simply a rational choice. They need help to break free. This is what we see Jesus helping people to do all through the Gospels - to break out of demonic bondage, to break out of cultural and religious exclusion, to break out of hurtful identities., to break out of the trap of sin. The idea of the demonic in the NT thus gives a way more complex understanding of how evil, hurt, and injustice function in our world.

I think that when Jesus read his Bible, he read it like that. He took the understanding he had - the understanding that had grown and developed into a more sophisticated picture of who God is, and read with that in mind as he read those OT stories that do not yet have these insights. The problem with our reading it strait as the story has it, while this may be "correct academic exegesis" is that if we believe that we are reading God's word (and I certainly do), this can lead folks to think that God is evil and unjust because we are seeing God through the dim vision of a primitive person. It really comes down to this: if we read the OT flat out, we will either la) lose our faith, (b) try to love a monster, or (c) decide that the Bible is not God's word UNLESS we can learn to read with the benefit of the progressive revelation of God which culminates in the person of Jesus (God's living perfect self-revelation), unless we learn to read the Bible like Jesus did.

So I really want to seriously question the whole concept of "correct exegesis" here, and suggest that we need to read the OT like Jesus (and the other Jews of his time) would have. Not only that, we need to read it with our own conscience intact, our own sense of what is right, which we have from God's Spirit in us. In fact, that's what Jesus says to do in Luke 12:57.

Exegesis #2 - ethics guides exegesis

There are many disturbing things in the Bible. One that shakes me the most are the accounts of genocide in the Old Testament. Just as suffering, tragedy, and injustice in our lives can cause us to doubt God's goodness, so can such passages. One of the best pieces of advice I have heard for dealing with questions of theodicy like these is the idea of suspending judgment, as Doug Easterday puts it "everything I understand about God is loving and good, and the things I don't understand... I just don't understand yet." This approach allows one to admit pain, ask questions, but to still hold on. It is about living in the tension, about trusting in God's character, rather than in our limited understanding.

There is however a danger in this. That danger is to accept evil, to stop seeking, to stop crying out. Here we say, "Well, I don't understand what is going on, but if God did it, it must be good. " The difference here is quite subtle on the surface, but the consequences are severe because it basically means we shut down our conscience and call evil good.

Take for instance the aforementioned example of the genocide accounts in the Old Testament: If you heard about this happening anywhere in the world today - in Germany, in Afghanistan, or Darfur you would clearly see it as an atrocity, as horrific, as profoundly evil. If anyone claimed that God told them to do it, we would without exception declare them to be mad. And yet it is common for us Christians to find passages like this in the Bible, and to make arguments as to why this was justified and God's will. This is not just true of average joe Christians - you will find this same type of cognitive dissonance arguments in Bible commentaries, and made by major theologians too.

What's going on here? Isn't it a no-brainer that mass killing babies is bad? So why do Christians (Christians who are appalled at abortion I might add) argue that this would be fine to violently slaughter babies? What would make smart people say such absurd things? What would make loving people justify such horrific practices? I believe it's in part because we somehow think that it is our job to defend God's actions and the Bible. So no matter what it says, we feel compelled to rationalize why God was right to do this. Whatever it says, we reason, must be good, no matter how ghastly. But does God really needs us to defend him? More likely, the real reason behind this is that we feel that if we allow for any critique of the Bible, that the whole thing may collapse under our feet, leaving us nothing to stand on.

So we turn off our moral conscience as we read the Bible, calling evil good, and darkness light Some theologians even go so far as to teach that we should not trust our "worldly" understandings of right and wrong (apparently being opposed to mass slaughter of infants is worldly) and instead let the Bible define for us what is right (meaning that if the Bible tells us to kill babies we should accept this as good). I would like to assert that such an approach is profoundly damaging and irresponsible. God gave us a conscience, and to go against it is one of the most damaging things a person can do to their soul. It is flat out abusive - and I do not use this word lightly. In fact, this is precisely what abuse is about: a person is made to do something that they feel is wrong, and is told that their perceptions are in fact wrong. What is happening to them is not bad, they are bad. This can have devastating results on how a person perceives themselves, their world, and on their relationships - including their relationship with God. No matter what the authority is - your pastor, a parent, a theologian, or a holy book - you should never ever do something, or believe something, that goes against your conscience.

Biblically, the result of this kind of blind adherence to the Bible, regardless of how hurtful it is, is exemplified by the Pharisees (who are not exactly put forward as a model of correct exegesis!). In fact, the #1 rule of theology is that if our understanding of God makes him appear to be evil or unjust, then our theology is wrong somewhere down the line. If we understand something to imply that God is a monster then the answer is not to declare that "monsters are good", but to say "I just don't understand," and live in that tension and weakness until we do understand what is going on.

Going a step further, our understanding of Scripture must always, always, always be done through the eyes of Jesus, and with the heart of Jesus. We need to make sure that our interpretation of the Bible is in line with what we know firsthand from God in a living relationship to be good, loving, and just. Simply put: ethics must guide exegesis. These ethics are not formed from our flawed interpretation of rules in a book, but learned through our firsthand experience of knowing what love is in a personal transforming relationship with Jesus Christ. Then our conscience will "not be conformed to the world, but transformed by the renewing of my mind" so that we will "know the good and perfect will of God". When we then approach the Bible with the mind and heart of Jesus, we will be able, like him, to question false interpretations, having his heart move our own, learning through the Spirit to see people as he does, learning to think as he does.

If we take Jesus as our model for how to properly interpret Scripture, we see that he constantly challenges interpretations of Scripture that block people from grace. His direct knowledge of his father's will and character was his guide for interpreting, redefining, and critiquing, how the Bible was understood. He let his ethics guide his exegesis - his understanding of what love was and who God was was his guide to how he read and understood the Bible. Ethics proceeds exegesis. Or to put it differently: relationship with God is the lens through which we need to interpret Scripture. We love the Bible because in it we find Jesus, but we do not have a relationship with a book, but with the living Word, Jesus Christ. Scripture is not an end in itself, but points us to that relationship, and in turn, that living relationship helps us to understand and interpret Scripture.

This does not mean that our interpretation is infallible just because we know God's heart through relationship. We need to always be aware of our limited perceptions and blinders, and to approach the Bible (and life and faith too) with humility. But one thing we must never do is close our hearts and turn off our conscience when we read.

Exegesis #1 Why you can't take Jesus literally

I thought I'd do a series on biblical exegesis. It's something I've been thinking about a lot lately. For the first installment we begin with the rather provocative statement: you can't take Jesus literally. To do so leads to horrific interpretations! In fact, if you take a look at anti-Christian propaganda like the Skeptics Annotated Bible, 9 times out of 10 this is exactly the mistake they make, and the results are some of the most horrible interpretations of Scripture you can imagine. So this is a really important exegetical principle, that is not often communicated.


Now let me say strait away that I do not mean we should not take Jesus seriously. But I am saying it is almost always wrong to interpret him literally. Let me begin with a rather obvious example: In Mt 5:30 Jesus says "If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off" I think we would all agree that Jesus did not mean for us to take that literally. Anyone who disagrees please raise your hand... oh that's right, you can't! Jesus is not advocating amputation as a method of character development, he is using hyperbole, exaggeration, to make a statement that says "hey, wake up man! Listen!"

Jesus does that all the time, over and over. I'm sure you can think of a lot of examples. For instance, how about Lk 14:26

"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple."

Does Jesus really want us to hate our parents or our own children as a part of loving him? Does following Jesus mean self-hatred, and being a bad parent? If this is taken literally, the results would be horrible advice.

Whether we have really thought about it or not, I'd say that most- if not all of us -do not take Jesus literally in any of these above examples. So what I would like to propose, here is that once you are aware that this is a major way that Jesus communicates - through dramatic over-exaggeration intended to jar you into seeing things from a different perspective - that suddenly you can see Jesus doing this all over the place. Think of the way Jesus talks: He uses hyperbole as we have discussed above, he also uses paradoxes like "the greatest are the least" and "lose your life to find it," which at face value sound crazy. He uses symbolism like "you must be born again," to which Nicodemus himself is confused when he tries to think about how one could literally re-enter their mother's womb,

Nicodemus asked. "Surely he cannot enter a second time into his mother's womb to be born!" (Jn 3:4)

Here's some news for you Nick: it's not literal, it's symbolic. Or how about taking the eucaristic symolism literally when Jesus says "drink my blood, and eat my flesh"? Is Jesus wanting us to be vampires or cannibals? Nope, it's symbolism. He's taking a spiritual reality and making it visceral, putting "flesh on it" so to speak.

Think too about how Jesus teaches in parables. These are stories that all have a twist at the end. They are not intended to be taken as verbatim accounts. If you do, the whole point is lost. Take for example the story of the landowner (Mt 21:33-45) who sends his servant to collect his money from the tenants. The tenants kill his servant, so he sends another. Same thing happens. Finally he sends his son whom they also kill. Now the point of this is that it is supposed to illustrate the injustice of how the prophets have been treated, how people miss God when he comes to them. But if we were to take this literally we would have to think that this landowner must be pretty irresponsible and foolish to send his son after he saw what happened to the servants. Taken in a literalistic way this becomes the parable of the stupid father who is more concerned about getting paid then he is about his child. Horrible lesson. And you can misread all of the parables like that, taking them in a wooden literalistic way and completely missing the real point.

So based on this, here's where our application comes in: Now that we know to look for this, suddenly we have a clue as to how to interpret difficult passages from Jesus. Take for example his statement in Mark 3:28-29

"I tell you the truth, all the sins and blasphemies of men will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; he is guilty of an eternal sin."

This passage has haunted lots of believers, myself included. Have I accidentally done this? The autobiography of John Bunyan accounts how he is tormented by this fear over and over. And it seems to go contrary to everything we know about grace. 'Mess up once, and it's all over' it seems to say. But what if this is hyperbole? What if Jesus is emphatically saying that the worst thing you can do is miss out on recognizing God's work in people's lives, that this is the thing that is really really bad. Then it's not about a legalistic statement of 'one strike and you're out,' but about the opposite. He's saying: Be open to the moving of the Spirit! Don't miss it! Don't be so religious that you miss what God is doing, because that's the worst sin you could possibly commit!

Or to take another rather subtle example, think about what Jesus says in the next chapter of Mark. After telling the parable of the sower to the crowd he says in private to his disciples,

"The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, " 'they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!'" (Mk 4:11-12)

Now if we take this literally, it sounds like the Gospel is meant for elite insiders, and hidden from outsiders, whom Jesus apparently does not want to repent. That can't be right! Now, what if Jesus is being provocative and sarcastic here? What if we read this with a New York Jewish accent like it's being said by Woody Allen: "Well it sure is a good thing no one is getting this, because otherwise they might repent and be healed! Now we sure wouldn't want that , would we?!" What if Jesus said that with a wry smile, and not in the somber stately tones actors always give him in those Jesus movies. What if Jesus was shocking, provocative...and funny?

Now let me stress that Jesus, even when he's funny, is still as serious as a heart attack. We shouldn't think that Jesus is "just kidding" when he says we must be born again, or that we should love our enemies. It is not meant to be ignored as "exaggerated hyperbole" as if Jesus is just ranting. But at the same time if we do want to take what he says seriously, and put his words into practice then we need to also not interpret him like we would the directions for a cookie recipe (take a cup of forgiveness, and 2 teaspoons prayer, mix vigorously until it forms fluffy peaks, and bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes). We need to get that most of the time Jesus is saying things in a non step-by-step instruction book way. He's being dramatic, colorful, provocative, and creative in order to help is read between the lines of life, and see God's way that is so easy to miss if we just look at things in a flat, wooden, recipe-following kind of way.

PR: wait... I: wait... L: wait... LD: wait... I: wait... wait... Rank: wait... Traffic: wait... Price: wait... C: wait...

Is Obama the Anti-Christ?

There is a video making the rounds on Youtube that claims to present biblical evidence that Barack Obama was declared the anti-Christ by none other than Jesus himself. Dan Wallace in a blog post at Reclaiming the Mind Ministries reports that the video is wildly popular and that many Christians find its arguments compelling. (I should mention that Dan thinks it's completely ridiculous, and that I really like Reclaiming the Mind Ministries which has no affiliation with the loony in the Youtube video).

The basic argument in the video goes like this :


Jesus says in Luke 10:18 "I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven". The New Testament written in Greek, but many scholars believe that Jesus likely spoke Aramaic. The word for "lightning" in Hebrew is בָּרָקwhich is pronounced "bā∙rāk" (the Q at the end is pronounced like a K). Sounds like Barack right? (Hebrew and Aramaic are pretty close, so we'll just pretend they are identical here). Now as Aramaic scholar Steve Caruso points out, the Swahili word "Barack" does have a Hebrew etymology, but comes from the word בָּרַךְ or barak meaning "blessed", not בָּרָק or baraq meaning "lightning". The two words barak and baraq are pronounced similarly, but have no etymological connection. Just as the English words "write" and "right" sound the same but are unrelated.




Next the narrator decides that instead of looking at the word in Hebrew for "heaven" which is שָׁמַיִם pronounced sha∙may∙im, he would rather translate the word for "heights". Now the two most common words for "heights" in Hebrew are מָרֹום pronounced mar∙um and קֹומָה pronounced qu∙mah. That won't do of course so he takes the word בָּמָה which really means something more like an elevated hill, often referring to an alter or place of worship. Why does he pick this word? I bet you can guess what's coming can't you? Because it is pronounced ba∙mah. Now nevermind that this translation would mean that Jesus said "I saw Satan fall off a hill like lighting" which would be a really weird thing to say, and instead imagine him saying

"I saw Satan fall like Barack from Bama"

So we're almost there, now all we need to do is stick an "O" in front of "bamah". The Hebrew for "from" here would be מִן but that would give us Barack Min-bama, so he makes it an "O" instead which would mean "and". Giving us

"I saw Satan fall like Barack Obama"

Or as his disciples would have understood him

"I saw Satan fall like lighting and a hill" (huh?)

Or the equally strange

"I saw Satan fall like lighting and a height" (again, huh?)

Of course since Jesus said "heavens" and not "height" it would have sounded like

"I saw Satan fall like Barack Min Shamayim" or if we go with "heights" it would be
"I saw Satan fall like Barack Min Bamate" since "heights" is plural.

Unfortunately, I don't know anyone with either of those names...

So, now that you have suffered through all of that, let me present you with my own theory based on the same type of argument.

Jesus says in Jn 14:6 "I am the way and the truth and the life." The Hebrew word for "the way" is דֶּרֶךְ which is pronounced "Derek". My name is Derek. Therefore Jesus said

"I am Derek, the truth and the life. "

So there you have it. If Barack Obama is the anti-Christ, then by that same logic I am the second coming of Jesus (hint: I'm not). The real exegetical problem here is that just because a word in one language sounds like another word in a different language does not mean there is any relation to them. The word for "drive" is German is fahrt which sounds like "fart" in English. The above exegesis is like that. It sounds like fart, so it must be a secret message about farts.

If we want to just take the word "lightning" in the NT and switch it out with the Hebrew for lightning pronounced "Barack" I could also then cite the passage in Mt 28:2-3 which describes the angel at the tomb , was that angel really our President?

"An angel of the Lord came down from heaven and, going to the tomb, rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like Barack, and his clothes were white as snow."

And while I'm at it, the word in Hebrew for "shame" בֹּושׁ is pronounced "Bush" and the שׁ looks like a W. So "Bush" according to my Dictionary of Biblical Languages With Semantic Domains means:

"To have a painful feeling and emotional distress (sometimes to the point of despair), by having done something wrong, with an associative meaning of having the disapproval of those around them (Jdg 3:25; Jer 14:4), note: this wrong can refer to a social mistake, or a serious sin. Bring shame, cause disgrace, with an associative meaning of causing frustration, and loss of hope to the object one is shaming (2Sa 19:6)"

I report. You decide.

Reading the Old Testament Through the Eyes of Jesus

I don't like the Old Testament. Most of all I am disturbed by its endorsements of mass violence in the name of God. I've blogged about this earlier but I've found myself increasingly troubled by these accounts of God supposedly ordering the mass slaughter of men, women, and even infants. Remember that story of Joshua and the battle of Jericho and the cute song for kids that goes "Joshua fought the battle of Jericho, and the walls came tumbling down"? Well that's a song about genocide folks. Its a song about murdering babies.

"When the trumpets sounded, the people shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the people gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so every man charged straight in, and they took the city. They devoted the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it—men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys." (Joshua 6:20-21)

I find that profoundly disturbing. And even more disturbing is how so many of my fellow Christians can calmly justify that kind of holocaust. For example the Interpreter's Bible section on Joshua attempts to justify this genocide (known as the "herem") by saying that it shows how seriously God takes sin. Clark Pinnock - a theologian who I have deep respect for -in his book "The Scripture Principle" makes virtually the same argument. Reading this made my stomach turn. I couldn't help but think of the terrified mother screaming helplessly as she sees the Israelite soldiers dashing her 6-month-old baby's head against a rock, or the little boy who stares as he sees his mother and father beheaded before his eyes. How can anyone possibly justify that? By what sort of sick motivation would one even want to?

Let's face it, it's a no-brainer that killing a babies is evil. In fact the only people who would even question it are us Christians. Why? Because its in the Bible. What that means is that the Bible has the potential of making people's morality profoundly evil. That is something I find deeply troubling. The logic goes like this: if I am against killing babies it is because I have a "worldly" morality, and it is only through God's Word that we can know what it truly moral. Nevermind that I've been a Christian for quite some time now and hopefully have the mind of Christ. Nevermind that Jesus says that "if anyone harms one of these little ones it would be better for him to have a millstone tied around his neck and be cast into the sea" (Mk 9:42).

What we have are people who want to justify the Bible more than they care about the least. And I can tell you flat out that this is not what God's heart cares about. God when he was here on earth was not concerned about upholding his reputation, his concerns was in caring for the condemned, the rejected, the unclean. When we toss the most basic morality out the door and justify atrocities we are not being faithful to God. We are sinning, because we are becoming advocates of death.

Frankly, there is a lot in the OT that advocates this type of us-versus-them, 'hate your enemies and destroy them utterly for the Lord' mentality. This is likely what Jesus was confronting when he said "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I tell you: Love your enemies" (Mt 5:43-44). He is here directly contradicting the message of hate which runs though the minor prophets (Samuel, Joshua, etc) and the early history of the Hebrew people. Yet in that same sermon he says "Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them" (Mt 5:17). This brings us into a dilemma: on the one hand Jesus here and elsewhere directly contradicts the Old Testament and proposes a way that is it polar opposite. Yet he at the same time says that in doing this he is fulfilling the law, and that the God he sees in the OT is his loving Father!

In a way we could say that the way Jesus reads the Old Testament is like how we can look at the world: we can look at our world, seeing all sorts of pain and injustice in it, and we could conclude that there is no God. Or we could look at that same messed up hurting world and see that there is nothing more vital and needed than love, nothing we need more deeply than for that God of love to be real ,and for that love to somehow be stronger than all the hate around us. Jesus looks at the messed up Old Testament, a book that shows a very unvarnished picture of sinful humanity, including how horrific violence is often justified in the name of God, and nevertheless sees the God of love in there whom we so desperately need to find too.

What I also see in Jesus is a way for us to read the Bible. Jesus did not simply take everything his Bible said at face value. The Bible Jesus read said to not touch the unclean, but Jesus did. It said to kill and adulteress, but he forgave her. It said not to associate with sinners, but he welcomed them. It taught hatred of enemies, but he loved his. What if we could get a hold of how Jesus is reading his Bible, and read it like that too? What are the principles that Jesus is applying to his own exegesis here, and how can we apply them? How can we learn to read the Bible like Jesus and not like the Pharisees? Because if we read like the Pharisees did then the Bible will lead us into a depraved morality devoid of compassion that justifies genocide, and cause to not see Jesus when he is right there in front of us. One rule that Jesus teaches here is this: "by their fruits you shall know them" (Mt 7:16). In other words, we can know whether our interpretation of Scripture is right by looking at the fruits it bears. Does it lead us to being more loving, more compassionate, more like Jesus? Or does it lead us to justifying a horrific morality? Too often biblical exegesis does not ask this question, and it must.

This is the exact point renowned Old Testament scholar James Barr makes in his book "Biblical Faith and natural Theology" which you can check out for free on Google Books. In particular see pages 201-220 where Barr discusses the biblical herem (genocide). Barr concludes that biblical studies need to be coupled with ethics (what he calls natural theology). Another good read here is an essay by Chris Marshall entiled "The Violence of God and the Hermeneutics of Paul" in the book The Work of Jesus Christ in Anabaptist Perspective. (Sorry that one's not on Google). In it Marshall outlines a way to read the diffucult passages in the OT by adopting Paul's critical aproach to the law as being at the same time 'holy and good' and yet still leading to 'death'. It's a similar approach to what I have breifly hinted at above about reading the Bible with the same hermautic (interpretive lens) as Jesus, only Marhsall does this with Paul. It's a great read.

The Talmud on Substitutionary Atonement

A reference in the TDNT lead me to a great book called Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch which translated means "Commentary to the New Testament from the Talmud and Midrash" (Hermann Strack & Paul Billerbeck, Munich: C.H. Beck, 1926). The Talmud is a massive multi volume work that catalogs the "oral law" (Mishnah) which Jews believed God gave to Moses along with the written law. The oral law was used to interpret the written law (similar to how we use a Bible commentary), but seen as equally authoritative to Scripture. As the title indicates, the book uses the Talmud to gain an accurate idea of Jewish thought as it applies to New Testament themes.

For example I was researching Paul's statement in Gal 3:13 that Christ had "become a curse for us". According to the Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch (from now on KNTTM) the the idea that a person could become an atonement for another by bearing their suffering was a common one in the ancient Jewish Synagogue (KNTTM vol 3, p 261). Paul himself in Ro 9:3 wishes that he could become a curse for the sake of his people the Jews. The KNTTM says that "I will be an atonement for so and so" was a common expression in ancient Judaism. For example the Babylonian Talmud says that when the high priest was mourning his wife the people would say "we are your atonement!" (Sanhedrin 2:1). Rabbi Ishmael (135AD) says "I will be an atonement for the children of Israel" (Talmud Nega'im 2:1). The KNTTM gives numerous other examples of this type.

In 1st Kings a prophesy is given over King Ahab "This is what the LORD says: 'You have set free a man I had determined should die. Therefore it is your life for his life, your people for his people." (1 Ki 20:42). Ahab dies in battle (ch 22) but the Israelites don't. Commenting on this in the Jerusalem Talmud R. Jochanan (279) says in the name of R. Shimeon (150) that “That single drop of blood that flowed from that righteous man atoned for all of Israel” (Talmud Yerushalmi: Sanhedrin 11, 7, 30c). Commentators disagree as to whether he is referring to the future king Josaphat who was also wounded or the prophet who was socked in the law in chapter 20. What is important here is the idea of a righteous one through suffering atoning for the sins of the people.

Particularly interesting is this passage from 4th Maccabees which refers to the martyrdom of Eleazer and the Maccabeean youths, "The tyrant was punished, and the homeland purified -- they having become, as it were, a ransom for the sin of our nation. And through the blood of those devout ones and their death as an atonement, divine Providence preserved Israel that previously had been afflicted." (4 Macc 17:20-22) Along these lines Martyrdom is especially regarded in the Talmud as atoning for the people (KNTTM vol 2, p. 275)

The point here is not that these passages are authoritative in any way, but simply that they reveal how the the idea of one bearing the sins of many was prevalent in the Jewish imagination at the time of Christ. It's challenging to work through all these quotes, but what seems to emerge is not so much a legal formula so much as a sentiment similar to when people say things today like "take me, but let them go!"

What's interesting is that with such a prevalent notion of vicarious suffering as a means of atonement, you would think that the Jews at the time of Jesus would have expected a suffering messiah, but they did not. Jews at the time of Jesus believed that the Messiah (who they expected to be a human king) would come in glory and usher in God's kingdom. He would be untouchable. This is pretty much a parallel to how most Christians envision the 2nd coming. After the time of Jesus, as the idea of the eternal soul became widespread, some rabbis conceived of a suffering Messiah who is ever present with suffering people here. One Midrash tells how God hid the light of the world under his throne after he used it to create the world. When Satan asked him who the light was for, God answered "For those who are ashamed and hide their faces". Satan then asks to see the Light who is the pre-existent Messiah, and when he sees him Satan falls on his face shaken with fear saying "Truly this is the Messiah who will hurl be into Gehenna, destroy death forever, and wipe the tears from each face." echoing the words of Jer 31:9 (Midrash Pesikta Rabbati 36 -161a).

Note that while the Messiah is seen here as the comforter, and elsewhere as co-suffering with Israel, this is not viewed as atoning. The Targum Jonathan was an Aramaic translation of the Hebrew Bible which predates Christ. In its very free-form translation we can see that Isaiah 53 is clearly seen as messianic,

"Behold, my servant the Messiah shall prosper, He shall be exalted and extolled, and He shall be very strong. " (Isa 52:13 Targum Jonathan)

but all reference to the messiah suffering have also been changed, so that the suffering and shame are applied the people not the servant,

"Therefore He shall pray for our sins, and our iniquities for His sake shall be forgiven us; for we are considered crushed, smitten of the Lord, and afflicted." (Isa 53:5 Targum Jonathan)

So we can see that the idea of redemptive suffering was a deep part o Jewish thought leading up to the time of Jesus, but at the same time oddly disassociated with the messiah. Mosses, David, and the Prophets are all seen as bearing the sins of the people. So why the disconnect with the Messiah? The only answer I can find is that it has to do with what they expected the time of Messiah would bring which was a time were there was no suffering at all. I'd like to see that happen too, but in the meantime I'm glad that God suffers with us and comes among us in our need.

Greekle - the Greek search engine

There are a lot of great resources on the web for Biblical Greek. I decided to put several of them together into one place and affectionately christened it Greekle - multi-site Biblical Greek search engine parser. Greekle parses several Greek search engines (Unbound Bible, Blue Letter Bible, Biblios, and the Resurgence Greek Project) putting Greek dictionaries (Thayer & Strongs), a lexical parser, an interlinear Greek-English Bible (NRSV & na26), and a Greek concordance all in the same place.

Other than corralling all these resources together, another neat thing Greekle does that you wont find anywhere else is the ability to search the Biblios Greek concordance for words by Strongs number. I had originally made it to look for Greek words alphabetically, but found it gave more accurate results (including all forms of the root word or 'lemma') if it looked for Strong's numbers instead. For some reason Biblos while it has multiple search capabilities does not have any search engine for their Greek concordance. Well, now they do.

As far as a tutorial, one way I like to use Greekle is to first parse a Greek word in order to get the lexical dictionary form and Strong's number (a transliteration guide is provided at the top of the page). If your don't know the whole Greek word (or are just lazy) you can use the % sign as a wild card. For example if burrito was a Greek word I could type "bur% "and it would find burito (and any other Greek words that begin with "bur" - burgundy, burp, burger, burka, etc. Once you get the lexica form from the parser and its Strong's number you can then use Greekle to look up the word by Strong's number in the concordance and get every form of the word, as well as every occurance in the Bible. So it's a gret way to do quick exegesis and Greek word studies.

Another neato thing about Greekle is the interlinear Greek-English Bible (NASV and the Nestle Aland which is the text used to translate all modern Bibles - NIV, RSV, etc). This is possible to do directly on Resurgence Greek Project, but it takes several mouse clicks to set up.

So I hope people enjoy using Greekle to study God's Word. I've found it to be quite useful in my own studies, and had fun writing it, mixing my Greek with my geek. Just click the link below to try it out:

Biblical Literalism & Conservative Values

It's common for people to link authoritarian conservative values with biblical literalism. I'd say however that the opposite is the case: strict biblical literalism leads away from authoritarian conservative values and towards compassionate redemptive values because (hold onto your hat) authoritarian conservative values are anti-Gospel.

Before I explain what I mean, let me first define biblical literalism. Of course it does not mean taking every part of the Bible literally. It does not mean "in accordance with... the primary or strict meaning of the word or words; not figurative or metaphorical". No one thinks for instance that when the Bible describes God as "a rock" that God is literally an inanimate stone composed of minerals. We all get that this is a metaphor. So what does it mean? A literal interpretation of the Bible is "adhering to the primary meanings of a term or expression," the "plain" or "unadorned" meaning. The confusion with the term "literal" is that the meaning of the word has changed over time. It used to mean "plain meaning" and now it means "non-metaphorical"

All biblical literalists interpret the Bible by looking for the plain meaning and intent of the author. So while all get that when David says "My heart has turned to wax; it has melted away within me" that he is being melodramatic not literal, a literal interpretation would claim that Jesus really did raise from the dead because all indications say that the authors did not intend for this to be taken as a metaphor, but as historical fact. A literal interpretation is all about the intent of the author. When Jesus says to a young man "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor" a literal interpretation would think that he really meant that.

The funny thing is that the verses quoted to back up an authoritarian conservative view of morality - strict adherence to the law, severe punishment as a consequence of transgression, no mercy without payment, a low view of humans as evil, etc - invariably come from the Old Testament. If you read the New Testament literally the clear picture you get is of grace. Its a picture of God loving his enemies, of God coming among us in Christ "not to condemn sinners but to save them." It is a picture of God valuing redemption over retribution, and taking any blame, condemnation, humiliation, and damnation upon himself at Calvary. It is a clear message to us that grace should likewise be our ethic, that love trumps everything, that we should always seek redemption, and rather be wronged than seek an eye for an eye. This is absolutely everywhere throughout the New Testament. The picture is not of a strict Father God who demands unquestioned obedience or responds with corporal punishment, it is the picture of God the Father in the story of the Prodigal son who is so loving that it is humiliating to the older son and to the values people held at the time focused on upholding honor. It was a scandal, and still is, but that amazing shocking counter-intuitive picture of grace is the Gospel, it is the image of God incarnate. Read the New Testament literally, and you get a morality based on grace that is in stark opposition to an authoritarian conservative morality. That morality is described as the sinful flesh, as the way of the world.

Now this does not mean we can simply toss out the Old Testament, but you will not find a conservative theologian who would not agree that the New Testament contains a superior and fuller revelation of God's heart than the Old. All would agree that we read the Old Testament in the light of the New, as seen through the eyes of Jesus. Yes, the OT lays out the basis upon which the fuller revelation of the NT is laid, but that does not means that when Jesus says "you have heard it said... but I say to you" that we can ignore his words. We are followers of Jesus the Christ, not followers of Mosaic law. Grace trumps law.

So if that's the case, why is it that so many evangelicals quote almost exclusively from the Old Testament? It's almost as if they have never even read the New Testament(!). My theory is that this is because most sermons focus on Old Testament narratives. If you go to a conservative church like I do, then I'm sure you've noticed this. Most sermons do not preach out of the New Testament, they preach out of the Old. The reason is that pastors are taught in seminary that narratives preach better, and the Old Testament has lots of narratives. So they tell a story from the Old Testament and connect it with a moral. But half the time these are sub-Christian morals. Why they do not preach a narrative from the Gospels is frankly beyond me... maybe they want to save them for Christmas and Easter. But my prescription is going to sound very traditional: we need better biblical preaching, and we need to read our Bibles, we need to let the way and heart of Jesus sink into our bones, we need to have his eyes to see, have his heart, have his values. And those values, taken literally and strictly, and doing the same with the teachings of the Apostles will not lead to authoritarian conservative values, they will lead to grace. Go literalism!

God's justice

Last blog I talked about Romans 3 and the pivotal verse of Romans 3:25. This time I want to look at a key term that Paul uses in this passage: the Greek word δικαιοσύνη (dikaiosunē) which is translated as either "justice" or "righteousness".

Dikaiosunē is the same word the LXX uses to translate the Hebrew צדקה(t'sedeka) in the Old Testament which likewise can be translated either as righteousness or justice. Because the LXX was the official translation the New Testament authors used to quote from the Old Testament, it follows that Paul was thinking of t'sedeka justice in Romans when he used the word dikaiosunē . There are many words for justice in Hebrew, and among them t'sedeka justice refers specifically to setting things right. T'sedeka justice/righteousness is associated with acts of charity, and today Jewish charities are often named t'sedeka which has become synonemous with charity.

This understanding of restorative social justice was key to Martin Luther's breakthrough where he rediscovered the Gospel in Romans. Like everyone else he had been reading the Bible in Latin which for several hundred years had been the only translation available. The word for justice in Latin here is iustitio which is the word our own “justice” derives from. In Latin iustitio refers to a quid-pro-quo payback justice, so Luther (as many people today) had assumed that the passage in Romans 3 was about retributive justice. But in the original Greek, and especially considering Paul's own Jewish roots, this was not at all the sense of t'sedeka/dikaiosunē justice. Take a look at the passage, keeping in mind the meaning of dikaiosunē as restorative making-things-right justice.

"But now a dikaiosunē (loving restoration) from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify . This dikaiosunē (loving restoration) from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are dikaioō (set right) freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as the one who would turn aside his wrath, taking away sin through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his dikaiosunē (loving restoration), because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his dikaiosunē (loving restoration) at the present time, so as to be dikaios(righteously loving) and the one who dikaioō (lovingly sets right) those who have faith in Jesus.

We can see that if the above is read (as it had been by Anselm and Aquinas and so many others in the latin church who did not have access to the original Greek) as iustitio retributive justice, that one can easily read into the above text the idea of penal substitution. Which is why Luther's discovery was so earth shaking. It completely revolutionized his understanding of what grace was about: t'sedeka/dikaiosunē justice.

Romans 3:25

One of the pivotal verses for penal substitution is Romans 3:25 "Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood" (Ro 3:25a KJV). Proponents of penal substitution take this to mean that God's wrath is turned aside because Jesus is punished in our place. I've posted earlier on the word translated here as propitiation in the King James. In this post we'll take a look at the passage in the context of Paul's line of argument in Romans, drawing a good deal on Martin Luther's thoughts as well. Let's back up to verse 21 (I'll switch over here to NIV just because it is more readable, feel free to follow along in any version you like):

“But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.” (Ro 3:21 NIV)

As I outlined in a previous blog on Luther's Theology of the Cross, Alister McGrath talks about Luther's "turmerlebnis" where he rediscovered the Gospel of grace in Paul. Luther's discovery revolved around a revelation about the meaning of the term "righteousness of God" here. Luther had been taught to understand the righteousness of God in the punitive sense of a quid pro quo retributive justice which pays us what we deserve. This is the same assumption of penal substitution. Luther's breakthrough was when he discovered that the righteousness of God Paul speaks of here is not about retributive justice that metes out what we deserve judicially, but on that is “apart from law” where God justifies sinners. In other words, it is not a matter of God meting out punishment or reward, but God “making right”.

Let's return to our key verse Romans 3:25. The Greek word hilasterion here can be translated as either “expiate” (which implies cleansing sin) or “propitiate” (which implies appeasing wrath). C.H. Dodd famously argued that in pagan Greek literature the word hilasterion referred to placating an offended person, but that in the LXX (the Greek translation of the Old Testament that the writers of the New Testament used) hilasterion was used in the sense of purifying, canceling, cleansing, and forgiving sin. In other words, the focus was not on the sacrifice changing God's attitude through mollification, but on changing us by removing or cleansing our sin. As a result of Dodd's research, the Revised Standard Version translates Romans 3:25 as "whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood".

Leon Morris challenged Dodd's linguistic argument saying that the main thrust of Paul's argument up to that point in Romans had been focused on the problem of wrath, and so the solution outlined in Romans 3:25 had to present a solution to the problem of wrath. Morris is right of course that this is the thrust of Paul's argument, but this does not undo Dodd's observations about the meaning of the Hebrew sacrifices. So how can we put this all together? Let's read on in Romans 3:25, the verse continues,

“...He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished — he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.” (Ro 3:25b-26 NIV)

God had held back punishing of sin in order to demonstrate his justice. Throughout the Psalms and Prophets we hear people crying out to God things like “how long will you look upon evil? Help us in our oppression and save!”. God punishing evildoers was in that context seen as a good thing because it meant God defending you and punishing them. But Paul argues in Romans that this way of thinking is a death trap because we "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Ro 3:23), meaning here that sin is not a matter of us and them, we good people and those sinners over there, but that we all have been a part of the hurt. God held back that judgment we had cried out for because he wanted to reveal instead a righteousness that was apart from the law of reaping and sewing. Instead he wanted to break us out of the whole cycle of an eye for an eye. But how?

Following both Morris and Dodd's insights we can say that Paul is arguing that we all have played a part in hurt and injustice. But God held back the world of hurt that we had coming to us, and instead offered himself in Christ as a sacrifice that would cleanse us of the cancer of sin in us (Dodd's expiation). With the problem of sin removed from us through Christ, the just reason for wrath is also removed. God is not appeased in the sense of someone covering his eye's or gratifying his anger (as if God's anger was a fleshly rage), rather by solving the problem of sin in us, God has removed the cause of wrath and brought us into right relationship with him, as Paul says, "so that God is just and the one who justifies sinners" (sets them aright).



The NIV has the most accurate reading putting together first of all the sense of hilasterion being the translation of the Hebrew "kipper" referring to the mercy seat of the Arc, so that verse 25 reads "God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement", but in a footnote the NIV combines both the idea of expiation and propitiation together, blending both Morris and Dodd's insights into the idea of the Temple sacrifice, "as the one who would turn aside his wrath, taking away sin". With that in mind let's look at the whole passage. I'll use the NIV and substitute in the alternative reading in the footnote above. My comments are in parenthesis:

"But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify (a way to set us right different from the way of payback). This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (sin is not just in "them over there" but in all of us) , and are justified (set right) freely by his grace through the redemption (liberation out of slavery) that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as the one who would turn aside his wrath, taking away sin (note the pattern of removal of sin leading to wrath being turned) through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. (In this we get the justice and help we have cried out for, not in a violent wrath on our enemies, but in all of us near and far being set right through God's sacrifice in Christ).

We can see this sense expressed very clearly in The Message. The above passage there reads:

"What Moses and the prophets witnessed to all those years has happened. The God-setting-things-right that we read about has become Jesus-setting-things-right for us. And not only for us, but for everyone who believes in him. For there is no difference between us and them in this. Since we've compiled this long and sorry record as sinners (both us and them) and proved that we are utterly incapable of living the glorious lives God wills for us, God did it for us. Out of sheer generosity he put us in right standing with himself. A pure gift. He got us out of the mess we're in and restored us to where he always wanted us to be. And he did it by means of Jesus Christ. God sacrificed Jesus on the altar of the world to clear that world of sin. Having faith in him sets us in the clear. God decided on this course of action in full view of the public—to set the world in the clear with himself through the sacrifice of Jesus, finally taking care of the sins he had so patiently endured. This is not only clear, but it's now—this is current history! God sets things right. He also makes it possible for us to live in his rightness."

Pentecost

Today is Pentecost and I thought I'd share a bit about its significance in the Jewish calendar. Pentecost was a high holy day in Judaism known as the "Shavuot". We read in Acts 2 that a great many people had journeyed to Jerusalem to celebrate Pentecost which commemorated the giving of the law on Mt Sinai. Pentecost gets its name which means "50th day" because after passover, one would count 7 weeks (49 days) and then Pentecost week would begin. In Hebrew it has a number of names including Hag ha-Shavuot which means the "feast of weeks", and Yom ha-Bikkurim which means "day of first fruits".

We Christians celebrate Pentecost on the 7th Sunday after Easter, but of course it was first a Jewish holiday and understanding it in that context gives a lot of insight into how the Apostles interpreted its meaning. Pentecost was directly connected to passover which commemorated how the Israelites marked their doors with blood indicating that they belonged to the Lord. Passover has to do of course with the exodus out of Egyptian bondage, and to when Israel became a nation. Jesus when he had the last supper was celebrating passover with his disciples and gave this celebration a new meaning saying as he lifted the cup of redemption in the meal and declared "This is the cup of the new covenant in my blood".

Notice that he is speaking of a "new covenant". There are references in Scripture that connote Christ's death with the temple sacrifice, but here Jesus is giving us a different picture related to passover. Through his blood we are liberated out of the bondage to sin and death by a new covenant that God would make with humanity. The old covenant was established at Sinai where God gave the Torah, and just as God instituted a new exodus out of the slavery of sin, death, and the devil in Christ's cross, so to there was a new Pentecost where God poured out his "word" into our hearts. In this new covenant, God says "I will put my laws in their minds and write them on their hearts" (Heb 8:10). God has not written this new covenant in paper, but inscribed his word on human hearts. A new covenant founded on inner relationship not external law. Paul when he says that the Spirit at work and alive in us is the "first fruits" of salvation, is likely drawing a reference to Pentecost being the festival of first fruits.

Its unfortunate that we are not more aware of Pentecost in the Evangelical church since it could be argued that the vital personal relationship with God in Christ that was inaugurated at Pentecost is the very heart of Evangelical faith. So happy Pentecost!

Violence in the Old Testament

There are a lot of really disturbing things in the Old Testament. Genocide, infanticide, slavery, polygamy, objectification of women... all not only occurred but often appear to be sanctioned by God, even commanded. Consider this example:

This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys. (1st Sam 15:2-3)

Most likely you have heard sermons where the pastor would attempt to explain why God would command the slaughter of every "man and women, child and infant". One explanation often given is that God is holy and so could tolerate no "tainting" of Israel. But this begs the question: how is that any different from what the Nazi's said? The website rational Christianity says that the demonstrations of God's faithfulness and justice to Israel "gave them reason to trust God even when he commanded them to do something they might otherwise refuse to do". Again, this statement strikes me as extremely dangerous. Does that mean that when I sense that something goes against my conscience that I should do it anyway of I feel God telling me to? The potential for abuse here is staggering. But on the other hand, if we simply deny this part of the Bible are we not either saying that either God is unjust or that the Bible is unreliable?

In the historical novel "Silence", Shusaku Endo tells the story of a Jesuit missionary in seventeenth-century Japan who is faced with the dilemma of being forced between watching as his peasant flock was tortured and killed before his eyes, or to trample upon an image of Christ placed at his feet as a sign that he had denied Christ. The priest is torn in two between the love for his flock, and faithfulness to his Lord. His foot aches, when he hears Jesus speak to him,

"Trample, trample! It is to be trampled on by you that I am here."

When we are confronted with difficult passages in the Bible like to one above we are placed in a similar situation. On the one hand we are compelled to condemn the horrific idea of genocide. On the other we want to defend God's justice as well as the infallibility of the Bible. If we do not defend God here, are we not admitting that our God is unjust? We need to remember here the scandalous message of the cross: God came into the world and was falsely declared guilty and condemned on a cross for the sake of the ungodly. He did not seek to defend himself, but was condemned for the sake of the unrighteous. Jesus gave his life for his enemies, God died for the Amalekites just as much as he did for sinners like you and me. Would not that same God call us to care not for his reputation but for the lives of those (not innocent but beloved) lives? When we seek to protect an image (as the priest did) or a book, but in the process need to condone the slaughter of human life we forget that Christ is not found in a book or an icon, but in the least. When we defend the foreigner, the poor, the outcast, the enemy we are defending God, as Jesus says "as you have done it unto these...you have done it unto me".

It is a good thing for us to seek to understand the difficult parts of Scripture and to struggle with them. But when we find ourselves justifying atrocities in our attempt to defend God, then something has gone terribly wrong. God does not need us to defend his honor and reputation, he calls us to follow Jesus in his way of loving so radically that he was accused of blasphemy and unjustly condemned. God came into the world not to defend his honor, but to be trampled for the sake of the lost and sinners. If we wish to follow him up to Golgotha, we must trample. So I will say, with my foot trembling over the image of Christ, that these accounts of genocide, of the slaughter of "children and infants", were not commanded by God and that this account in the Bible when it claims it is wrong. God have mercy, here I stand, trampling.

Luther's theology of the Cross - pt 1 Justification

Luther's Stein asks...

"So Shark, How do you understand Justification and the legal motifs apart from a penal-substitution model?"

I was planning on going into this with Luther, so I thought I would answer this comment in a post. I've been reading Alister McGrath's "Luther's Theology of the Cross" which I highly recommend. In it he talks about Luther's struggle with the law. Penal Substitution has its foundation in a judicial understanding of justice based on a punishment and reward system. As Luther says

"I had hated that phrase 'the righteousness of God' which according to the use and custom of the doctors I had been taught to understand philosophically... by which God is righteous and punished unrighteous sinners" (Luthers Werke Wiemar Ed. 54.185.12)

Luther goes on to say that

"I did not love, and in fact I hated that righteous God who punished sinners...I was angry with God...I drove myself mad with a desperate disturbed conscience". (Ibid)

Because his understanding of justice, which he had inherited from the 500 years since Anselm was one based on a criminal law understanding of justice. Luther describes this kind of justice as a "tyrant". In his commentary on Galatians Luther writes

"Did the Law ever love me? Did the Law ever sacrifice itself for me? Did the Law ever die for me? On the contrary, it accuses me, it frightens me, it drives me crazy”

Luther's breakthrough of finding grace was in discovering that the justice that Paul speaks of was not in the legal sense of punishement but in the Hebrew sense of "making things right". Hence Paul speaks of "justification" which means "setting something right". A justice based on our own performance (works) is a death trap. But a justice that originates from God's goodness through faith means that God sets things right in our lives when we open our lives to him. The first is legal and in conflict with mercy. It sees justice as punishing (active) and mercy as leniency (inaction). That later biblical justice is in contrast about "making things right" and comes through acts of mercy as seen in the ministry of Jesus who came to establish justice in us though acts of healing and restoration. In this there is no conflict between justice and mercy becasue restorative justice comes through acts of mercy. Luther again:

"I began to understand that 'righteousness of God' ...to refer to a passive righteousness by which the merciful God justifies us by faith...this immediately made me feel feel as if I was born again, a though I had entered through open gates into paradise itself. From that moment the whole face of Scripture appeared to me in a different light...and now where I had once hated that phrase the phrase 'the righteousness of God' so much I began to love and extol it as the sweetest of words" (Luthers Werke, Op Sit)

So rather than reading the idea of justice in the legal sense of punishing, we need to read with Luther the idea of justification and justice in relational terms as God setting things right, as him through mercy breaking us out of the shackles of performance and law. God did not do this by "satisfying the demands of law" as Penal Substitution would say, but by "nailing the law to the cross" (Col 2:14) by overcoming it along with sin, condemnation, wrath, and the devil and putting all of these tyrants under Christ so that they would no longer oppress us and keep us from life, but serve us and point to the God of grace. In a nutshell we could say that biblical justice is about restorative justice not punitive justice. Punitive justice is the consequence of sin, but God's righteousness and justice is revealed in mercy which sets us right God breaks us out of that death trap putting it to death.