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As it’s Sunday, I thought I would raise a theological question to which I have never seen a satisfactory answer, in the hope that the erudite readership of this blog may be able to supply one.*
Richard Dawkins puts one extreme of the argument:
“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”
That’s telling us, Richard! And the corollary is that the God of the New Testament is a God of love, sweetness and light.
The traditional Christian answer is ably covered in the following video by Dr D A Carson: he points out that there are many passages in the OT where God is loving, and there are many parts of the NT in which God is stern. He says that both God’s love and his judgment are ‘ratcheted up’ in the NT to meet in the cross itself. I accept and think I understand what Carson is saying.
On the other hand, we regard it as uncontroversial that Christian theology has a history – there is even an entry in Wikipedia. Since the birth of Christianity, our understanding of the Christian God has varied through the centuries, with a series of what have been called heresies and doctrinal splits within the Christian Church.
Not only that, but there are several passages in the Book of Common Prayer (1662) which sound strange to our ears, not just because of their language but because of their theology. You may like to consider the following two prayers to be used at sea. The first clearly associates the storm at sea with God’s anger at the failure of his people to obey his commandments, not a view many Church of England vicars would advance today:
O most powerful and glorious Lord God, at whose command the winds blow, and lift up the waves of the sea, and who stillest the rage thereof; we thy creatures, but miserable sinners, do in this our great distress cry unto thee for help: Save Lord, or we perish. We confess, when we have been safe, and seen all things quiet about us, we have forgot thee our God, and refused to hearken to the still voice of thy word, and to obey thy commandments.: But now we see, how terrible thou art in all thy works of wonder: the great God to be feared above all…
The second, ‘to be said before a Fight at Sea against any Enemy‘ is a clear invitation to God to join the proper side, again probably not current Church of England doctrine:
O most powerful and glorious Lord God, the Lord of hosts, that rulest and commandest all things; Thou sittest in the throne judging right, and therefore we make our address to thy Divine Majesty in this our necessity, that thou wouldest take the cause into thine own hand, and judge between us and our enemies. Stir up thy strength, O Lord, and come and help us; for thou givest not alway the battle to the strong…O let not our sins now cry against us for vengeance…Make it appear that thou art our Saviour and mighty Deliverer…
The books of the Bible were probably written between the 9th century BC and the 9th century AD. Without needing to search the text for evidence, does it seem likely that our perception of God, our theology, remained constant throughout that period? In my corner of the Church of England, we do not believe so: on the contrary, we believe that the Old Testament is a portrayal of our growing understanding of God. Pam Webster commented on the post at the Big Bible Project:
I think we always need to remember that the bible was not written out of time, but by a people in a culture, with all their cultural baggage and understanding. The inerrancy is with God, not necessarily people’s understanding and interpretation of him. I suppose a parallel would be the missionaries who took out white victorianism to Africa and God bound up in that, rather than allowing him to sit in the culture they were going to.
But then we do not believe that the Bible is inerrant.
My Question
So my question is, how does this work if biblical inerrancy is part of your faith?: do you believe that our theology did not change throughout the period that the Bible was written? (The logical problem is that if the Bible’s depiction of God is inerrant in the earliest books, it must be inerrant also in the most recent, yet if this depiction changes between the two there would seem to be a difficulty).
Christianity already requires us to believe ‘several impossible things before breakfast’: most of us manage to do so not by repeating 2+2=5 like a mantra, but through prayer and taking things on trust from a God in whom we believe. Is biblical inerrancy one of these things that just have to be accepted?
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*This post is based on a piece I wrote for the Big Bible Project as a Digidisciple on 5 August.
Note: I apologise if you find the question offensive. It is not my intention to attack anyone’s beliefs, simply to explore our different views on the Bible.
Well, you’ve given some good examples which show that taking the bible literally is a poor choice.
I think that you are right in our taking things on trust – we often do it with each other, so why not with God?
Surely theology changes, as it is interpreted and as new understandings and new writings come to like, such as the dead sea scrolls. We also adjust it as our understanding increases of how creation works, but still use the story of Genesis to illustrate God’s input in a way that helps us to understand, what is necessarily beyond our understanding.
The BCP Prayers you refer to, seem extreme today, but that’s taking them out of the context that they were written for and used.
I know that there are more modern prayers, which are used, but they don’t attribute right to any side, just ask for protection and healing of differences before war ensues.
I still love the language and use of the BCP, but there are some liturgies in it, such as marriage and funerals which are retained as the BCP is the legal prayer book of the church, but being there, doesn’t mean that they have to be used.
There are now so many liturgical resources accompanying common worship that we are spoilt for choice. A good development, and a sign that the underlying theology is evolving in the light of our knowledge and experience all of the time. It just seems to take so long.
This is to do with being the Established church, which requires parliamentary approval for revisions. The Scottish Episcopal Church re-wrote their prayer book and produced their liturgy on line. It’s very similar to CW, but specifically in their context. They did it without government interference in accordance with their constitution. Freedom which we could do with as well. And of course, they elect their bishops.
Thank-you very much, Ernie. I think we are in agreement.
I am hoping someone will come along who *does* believe in the inerrancy of the Bible and can explain it to us.
Inerrancy is a very strange concept to our modern way of thought. We are so used to seeing things in stark terms, something is right or wrong, black and white with no shades of grey.
Certainly in my professional life (I am an engineer)that is the case – up to a point. Even the engineering “certainties” change over time. 200 years ago a large part of the respected scientific community was absolutely certain that the human body could not survive travelling at speeds of 60 mile an hour. Certainties are there to be challenged.
One of the abiding fascinations of my faith is to be able to accept the “errancies” and work with them to achieve a closer understanding of the spiritual mysteries behind my faith in God. This involves a considerable degree of taking things on trust. I doubt if my certainties will remain unchanged for the rest of my faith life. Many of them have been changed quite radically over the decades.
Trust in God? That is the one constant.
Beautifully and coherently expressed, and of course I agree.
I think the rubric of TEC applies well here: we take the Bible too seriously to take it literally.
Actually of course, noone does take it literally. What some do is take sections of it literally. So yes to stoning adulterers, no to polygamy. Yes to selling people, oh oppps.
FWIW
jimB
Thank-you, Jim. I’ve always loved that bit in ‘The West Wing’ where President Bartlett makes fun of the rules on not wearing mixed fibres, while it was perfectly OK to sell your daughters into slavery. As you say, Anglicans in particular have always known how to pick and choose…
It’s not about the inerrancy of the Bible or even of liturgies, it’s about how we think. People used the think God sent the weather or pushed up the crops. We do not think like this any more. We understand chaos and systems, the technical and autonomous. Even Common Worship represents a feudal and agricultural thoughtworld. There is a natural and casual atheism about how people think, before they address what any God might be doing or if there is transcendence.
Thank-you Adrian, it seems we are all more or less in agreement. Nevertheless I think there are people out there, aren’t there, who do believe that the Bible is inerrant (probably not Unitarians, I grant you).
I believe God sends the weather and pushes up the crops.
I agree with your line – though I am not sure that the Bible was completed between ‘ the ninth century BC and rhe ninth century AD.’. The latest text of the NT is probably no later than 120 or so – and the Canon was finalised by the early 4thC. Not sure which books you think might have been written after the fall of the Roman Empire!!
Nor do I believe several impossible things! Either faith is rational and a logical response to the world and our experience or it is nothing. Dawkins and his friends wish to portray us as believers in irrational nonsense. We must be clear that our faith is at least as rational and philosophically literate and their disbelief. We simply hold to a different interpretation and find God and transcendence in the experience of life
Andrew
Dear Father Andrew, oh dear, I thought I might get into trouble over the dates. What I was trying clumsily to express is that the various books of the Bible were I believe drafted and re-drafted, first in Aramaic, then in Greek, and then the Aramaic bits were translated into Greek. And then there was Hebrew, and possibly Syriac? My understanding is (possibly wrongly) that this period of translation and re-drafting ended in about 9th c AD, after which presumably the Christian version of the bible which has come down to us was translated into Latin? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_translations
I am more interested in your second paragraph and wonder whether the problem here is one of vocabulary. My faith in God (admittedly probably less evolved than yours) is, I would say, neither rational nor irrational but perhaps a-rational. I didn’t arrive at faith by sitting down and working out the rational arguments for belief in a deity. I arrived at it by a mixture of long exposure to Anglican services, prayer, experience of life, and, if it doesn’t sound too presumptuous, the grace of God. I was baptised at the age of 4 months, which explains my path. But for those who have a Saul-on-the-road-to-Tarsus moment, I wonder whether they would describe it as being suddenly overwhelmed by the rational arguments for the existence of the Almighty.
I do see the Incarnation, Resurrection and Ascension as ‘impossible’ in the sense that they are beyond our normal methods of learning about the world. I believe in them because I believe in a Christian God and take these events on trust.
Am I really doing it wrong? 🙂
C.S.Lewis claimed that he was dragged kicking and screaming into the kingdom by reason alone (from atheism).
Excellent 🙂
Thank-you Mr Catolick, your comment is much appreciated.
(reposted and added to from Facebook)…
I am always a little dubious about this person called “The Old Testament God” and this other person called “the New Testament God”. The Old Testament (or the Hebrew Bible) was Jesus’ only bible – there was none other, and therefore only one God throughout. Therein lies the mystery perhaps.
As regards whether the bible is inerrant, there are indeed large bodies of people who believe that. Much as I dislike labels, they do appear to be Evangelical, whether Anglican or nonconformist. My difficulty is with a kind of shifting sand. While the infinite and unconditional love of God through Jesus Christ transcends the law, I am always troubled at what seems to be cherry-picking of the things that are ‘inerrant’ and ‘immutable’ (“because it is true therefore it is true”?) and the things that were of their time (“because things were different then and society has moved on”?). Thus whole elements of Judaic law, which was the law by which Jesus lived, are conveniently ignored, while others are clung to with a fervor that smacks of obsession. I don’t think I need to give examples of either. The New Testament addresses some aspects of Torah very clearly, but by no means all. And since Jesus did not speak on many of the issues, we have to rely on later codifications. Very very tricky.
Sorry, Laura… I have perhaps simply added to the puzzle!
Thank-you Matthew. I was hoping someone would come along to explain the cherry-picking, but no luck yet. Sometimes I think Jesus did not speak out on some issues because he knew they were going to turn into a minefield and preferred to remain above the fray. Wittgenstein had the general idea: ‘whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent’!
Belief in inerrancy and sufficiency does not mean we have to take every word in scripture literally,especially when reading in translation.Where it says,for instance,’The windows of Heaven were opened’we know that it rained heavily and not that somebody up there opened physical windows and started pouring water out of them.The earliest readers wouldn’t have known what opening or closing windows involved anyway,so that must have been an interpretation by a relatively recent translator. Figurative language and allegory still carry truth which the faithful accept. We are not dismissing what scripture says just because a passage doesn’t make sense literally and we have to think about what it means.
Scholars know that some pieces of the OT are much older than others,that some are inserted later,that there’s poetry,narrative,comment,myth, hygiene rules for a time and place,Laws for everyone for all time,commandments,observations,parables,writing-up of oral tradition, different kinds of prophecy and so on.
Jesus’ audiences were taught from the cradle about all this and understood the references and the metaphors probably better than most of us do.There are passages in the NT that explain some of it for non-Jewish new believers,but perhaps we need more.Learning about what was behind what (inspired)human beings wrote and edited,and the differences between the styles of writing,is not cherry-picking.To discriminate is not to discard or disbelieve.
Thank-you for commenting, Joyce. Unfortunately my understanding of exactly what ‘inerrancy’ means to Evangelicals is insufficient to offer an intelligent reply to you. Let us see what Peter Ould has to say in response to my further questions.
I’m afraid I didn’t know it meant different things to different people, let alone to Evangelicals as opposed to whoever the others are, so I can’t help either.
Are you actually going to find someone who believes in inerrancy, because if you do, they might be certifiable 🙂
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_inerrancy tries hard to be balanced but to my mind gets caught up in the difference between inerrancy and infallibility.
The Pope claims infallibility in his pronouncements on matters of faith, but not in all. He has recently relented on the long standing use of contraceptives in certain circumstances. But, I for one can’t believe that a single man, no matter how learned or holy he is can be infallible in all circumstances. That is only within the province of God.
Matthew 16:18 spells out that Peter was the rock that the Church would be built on. I can’t see anywhere that it says that Peter was to be infallible in matters of faith, and his humanity and weaknesses were only to obvious during Jesus’ ministry. However, once he received the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, he became the leader he was appointed to be.
I still think that many of the OT stories in particular are historic or allegorical – they were gathered and recorded to preserve the story of God’s appointed people, the Jewish Race and to demonstrate his actions with them and through the Prophets. It’s sure that it’s the word of God, through the writers, but coloured by the culture, times and context in which they were written.
If we read something like ‘Treasure Island’ we take on the adventure aspects of it, and the behaviour of the main characters effects how we perceive the story line and the ending. If we were to write a similar story today, it would be different in terms of the language used, the scenario’s and people involved and the context of their actions. So, we need to view the bible in that light, not purely in the context of the times that it was written in.
What cherry picking?
Seriously, I have never found Evangelical theology to be anything *but* consistent in its treatment of the Old Testament and the New. The whole “But you wear mixed fibre clothes and eat prawns” critique displays an appalling naivety in Biblical theology, almost a personal demonstration that the accuser has actually not really read the New Testament at all.
Your comment thread is full of common assumptions that twist the Biblical text to fit a pre-conceived theology. For example, Matthew wrote,
While the infinite and unconditional love of God through Jesus Christ transcends the law..
It does? Really? Jesus’ own words say not that he has come to “transcend” the law but to fulfil it. What does that mean? How does Jesus fulfil the law? It strikes me that Evangelical theology attempts to answer such serious questions but other theologies tend to avoid them, giving us a “Well Jesus was all about love” response which is rather too simplistic when we deal with a Jesus in Scripture who says “If you love me you will obey my commands”.
So to return to your original question, innerancy tends to lead to a theology that takes the Bible rather more seriously than non-innerant theologies do. It assumes that the Scriptures are coherent and therefore it cannot ignore those elements of it which are uncomfortable. Far from the “picking and choosing” being performed by innerantists, in my experience it is those who accuse us of such a practice who themselves display the greater evidence of such practice, and not just inter-testamentally but intra-testamentally.
Peter, thank-you very much (for responding to my twitter plea?) We are honoured to have you here.
At this point I must admit a degree of ignorance, perhaps even ‘an appalling naivety’ in Biblical theology. I have read the New Testament, which is blessedly short in comparison, but freely admit to not having read the OT from cover to cover. I think you must temper your exegetic wind to the shorn lambs that gambol in our lay meadows – having such a place for those whose faith is sincere but who are not theologians is why this website was set up.
I do know my Latin, though. The word ‘inerrant’, which I have never seen used in any other context, comes obviously from errare, to err, defined as
(v. i.) To miss intellectual truth; to fall into error; to mistake in judgment or opinion; to be mistaken.
(v. i.) To offend, as by erring.
(v. i.) To deviate from the true course; to miss the thing aimed at.
(v. i.) To wander; to roam; to stray.
(v. i.) To deviate morally from the right way; to go astray, in a figurative sense; to do wrong; to sin
I suspect many of us might agree that the Bible is inerrant in this general sense, i.e. it does not fall into error. This is rather different, however, from saying that every single word in the Bible is the word of God and hence cannot be gainsayed. The mixed fibres is from Leviticus 19.19, as well as a rather prescient attack on the allotment movement. I quote from the RSV:
My question boils down to this: do Evangelicals regard these statutes, given to Moses by God, as still binding on Christians in the 21st century?
The short answer is, Evangelicals consider all the Mosaic statutes that the New Testament says are binding as binding! They represent deeper moral law that has been bound within the Mosaic Law.
Help! Can you give me chapter and verse – or just tell us, does the NT say all Mosaic statutes are binding (I am not quite clear whether only some are from what you say)
No. It doesn’t. See for example Jesus declaring foods clean, Peter’s vision, Council of Jerusalem etc.
So this statute in particular, about mixing seed, breeding cattle of different types and wearing different fabrics – I don’t remember Jesus saying anything about it, so do we take it that these statutes are still in force, representing – as you say – a deeper moral commandment?
I think there ARE problems with the notion of inerrancy, and that there IS a certain element of picking and choosing that goes on within evangelical circles.
Firstly, the Bible itself does not claim inerrancy. Indeed, how could it, since it consists of 66 separate writings (more if you count the deauterocanonical books) written at different times in different places by different authors. Sure some parts say “the word of the Lord came to…”, and Jesus teaches with authority. St. Paul talks about all scripture being inspired/God-breathed, but what exactly does this mean when at that point there was no agreed canon of “scripture?” And what does it mean that something is inspired or breathed by God? Does this necessarily mean that it is “inerrant”?
Then within the NT itself we have processes whereby the understanding of scripture moves on considerably. The Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) effectively abolishes the need for Gentiles to comply with Torah except in a very few instances. Hence the reason why we don’t bother ourselves too much about mixed fibre clothing, mixing seeds, eating shellfish etc. But of the nstructions that do remain, the one about refraining from blood is regularly ignored by Christians who have no qualms about eating black pudding for example. The church has traditionally regarded the Ten Commandments as binding – partly because Jesus explicitly endorses them – yet has changed more recently on other issues of slavery and lending at interest.
In short, it seems to me that even in evangelical circles it is by no means clear exactly where inerrancy begins and ends.
I am about 15% through Dawkins’ ‘God Delusion’ (or so my Kindle tells me). I don’t know that I can finish it, because it really shows a lack of understanding of religion.
Maybe he’s right when he says that just because religion offers comfort to people, it doesn’t mean it’s true. What he ignores is that people need, and will seek, comfort. He says that the kind of consciousness people attribute to God was only possible fairly far along in the process of human evolution, so it could not be God that created the universe. And he seems hung up on the idea that most religious people (and he lumps all religions into one, which is not only bad religion, but bad science!) see God primarily as creator and lawgiver.
But surely, there are things that have no explanation in the visible, or the biologically expedient? And surely, one important thing that separates humans from animals is our quest to try to make sense of that? ‘God’ and ‘religion’ are some of the ways humans have historically sought to do that.
Thank-you for this, Wendy. My personal response to Richard Dawkins is that he insists on having the debate on the briar patch, where – as Br’er Rabbit – he can outshine us all (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Br%27er_Rabbit for the unitiated). How would you prove the existence of love to someone who did not believe in it? We have the same difficulty in trying to prove the existence of God to Richard Dawkins. Neither God nor love fit in a test tube and are not susceptible to the scientific method.
I don’t know that Dawkins *does* outshine anyone, Laura. He’s insistent on continuing debate over theological concepts that have long been discredited and abandoned. In his last few books, he’s stepped so far beyond what he really knows well and does best that it’s hard to credit him.
That said, his earlier books on evolutionary biology were brilliant–they made ideas accessible to people who were non-experts. Responsible popularizing of complex ideas has its place, and Dr. Dawkins was a master of that. Simply ridiculing that which is outside your purview is intellectually out of bounds.
I finally had to set the ‘God Delusion’ aside. And my answer to the question posed by the title of this blog entry? “I certainly hope our perception of God has changed!”
No thoughtful Christian I know takes the Bible as a substitute for science. It raises more questions than it answers. For example:
Why do we care what future generations think about us?
Why is respect for elders–including non-reproductive elders such as myself–important?
Why do we care about the opinions of people far away from us who we will never meet?
Why do we accumulate beyond what is necessary for our survival and that of our immediate offspring?
Why do we both (a) fear death, and (b) contemplate what lies beyond death?
The mere act of writing a book such as Dawkins has written indicates that these are questions that he, too, engages to one or other degree–as do most other humans, religious or not. They are not questions for which evolutionary biology, or physics, or chemistry, or geology, have satisfactory answers.
That some people have conjectured that there might be a driving cosmic force behind the questions–and our engagements in the activities that raise them–and that the word ‘God’ might be some kind of convenient shorthand for that force, is not to be taken lightly.
Thank-you, Wendy, for this thoughtful comment. I have nothing to add to the philosophical argument, but I have one story which illustrates one of your points, which amuses me. My great-grandmother was a devout Christian, who used to teach Sunday School and taught me many hymns (she did not die until I was 6). My grandmother reacted against all this, and declared herself to be an atheist. As her likely death approached (she was 98), she looked at me with some suspicion, fearing that I planned to say a prayer over her body. ‘Promise me one thing’, she said, some months before her death, ‘you won’t give me a religious funeral. I have put it in my will, but I don’t trust you to obey it. I want you to know that I shall be looking down from Heaven and will know if you disobey me’ (and will haunt you forever, by implication). I thought it would be unkind to point out the logical anomaly behind her thinking and when she died, on the advice of a priest who was a friend, we despatched the body – always a grim moment- before having prayers for the rest of us. I read Psalm 139, the one that includes: ‘Whither shall I go then from thy Spirit; or whither shall I go then from thy presence? If I climb up into heaven, thou art there: if I go down to hell, thou art there also. If I take the wings of the morning: and remain in the uttermost parts of the sea: Even there shall thy hand lead me: and thy right hand shall hold me”.
I was not struck by lightning, and I like to think that all parties were satisfied with my liturgy, specially devised for the occasion.
Sorry, I am powerless – because I simply don’t have the in depth knowledge and scholarship – to get into the ring with Peter for five rounds, two falls or a submission, yet the ordinary person in the pew IS somehow expected to build a life of faith around seeing “through a glass darkly”.
But how about a few ‘thinkabouts’?
Background: I am Jewish by birth (and remain Jewish therefore) and became a Christian in my late teens. Therefore I have none of the baggage of being a ‘cradle’ anything. Not sure if that’s good or bad.
I posted recently on Facebook a challenge that was largely ignored, but I suspect because it made people uncomfortable…
Take the incident of the woman taken in adultery and substitute someone caught in any other transgression of The Law…. My belief is that He would equally and in every case say ‘neither do I condemn you’, but a fundamental question in each case is whether He would also say ‘go and sin no more’. We can only speculate, because he didn’t expound on all sort of areas, and we are reliant on the prism of Paul’s inspiration – a bit like the Talmud for The Law I suppose – to try to fill some of the gaps. But suppose the person brought to Jesus in such an incident was caught in an act of gay behaviour, then how does it work here? It’s one thing to proclaim Jesus’ love, compassion etc for everyone, which I believe in, but that does not mean that in the eyes of the Law He would ever call ‘right’ what the law says is ‘wrong’. So presumably here too, he would indeed say ‘go and sin no more’, whether we like it or not.
And further…. the much quoted verse from Leviticus is sandwiched between verses forbidding child sacrifice and bestiality. Can it be argued (Peter? Please help me here) that in the same way that it would not have occurred to Jesus to preach about them, neither would He have preached about homosexuality…. NOT because he accepted it but because, in Law, it was anathema and everyone knew it to be so. This would now be seen as completely counter-intuitive by some in the debates we have now, and I realise that by even suggesting this, I am calling down the heavy brigade!
As for cherry-picking….. putting so much focus on that one verse from Leviticus, and ignoring injunctions, say, on sex during a woman’s ‘monthly time of uncleanliness’. This is not a comment on the inerrancy of the bible but on the curious selectivity and filtering by people who are, I suspect, less well read than Peter and have not therefore thought through the implications of what they say and write, but nevertheless speak didactically as if they DID have authority.
Peter: waiting with baited breath
Laura: heavy brigade enough?
Claire: isn’t that one of the glories of Cuddesdon? No set churchmanship but everybody really challenged to face up to their own assumptions. I think it’s great!
Hi Matthew – let me try and respond to the different issues you raise.
The position you present that Jesus didn’t comment on these things because they were clear assumptions in C1 Judaic society is one shared by many (including myself). The idea that since Jesus didn’t mention something (eg homosexuality) he automatically condones it is a nonsense. Jesus never mentions bestiality, incest etc but that doesn’t mean we can assume from this he supports such practices.
So we move on from that to how we deal with the other prohibitions in the Law that are less unambiguous. You raise the issue of menstruation and this is a great example of trying to pick out of the Law what the different laws are intending to indicate. Yes, we have basic moral laws which are picked up time and time again in Scripture (sexual immorality, violence etc) so we are clear that they are absolute prohibitions. But then we have stuff that is very clearly in the Law to act as an indicator to the Hebrews that they need to separate themselves (hygiene laws, food etc) which Jesus and the Apostles deal with summarily at times (so Jesus declares all food clean and God gives Peter a vision just to rub the point in). But the key passage I think is Acts 15 and the Council of Jerusalem. The Apostles tell the Gentiles that they are not bound by any aspects of the Mosaic Law *apart from* sexual morality and idolatry (the specific case of food offered to idols) and “blood”.
Now, the interesting question to ask at this point is *why* these two/three things? Any ideas (he asked having a good idea himself but wanting to see if anybody else wants a stab first)?
Matthew: love the idea of waiting with “baited” breath 😀
Very helpful: many thanks, Peter. And I enjoyed the style of your reply and your challenge: thanks again!
Ref your first para, we “agree violently”, as they say: it does surprise me that when I raise this point of view people tend to look at me as if I am slightly demented…. perhaps I mix with the wrong people!
My first attempt at responding to your challenge goes something like this. Yes, the Gospel was for all nations, but at its core were still the Jewish people. While issues of cleanliness and separation had indeed been addressed, there was still a desire, if not an imperative, to maintain the integrity of the Jewish people, and to avoid chipping away at the edges through the (mal)practices of other peoples and their faiths. Thus those injunctions that remained had to stay in place if only to underpin that integrity. Any good?!
And by the way, you talk about the gentiles, but it is interesting for me to speculate whether I as a Jew by descent remain under Torah to a greater extent or in a different way when compared with gentiles. I imagine this has been addressed somewhere – Bible even?
Traditionally there have been two groups of Jewish believers in Christ (though these labels are not absolute). “Messianic Jews” are Jewish people who have come to faith in Jesus and see themselves as free of the Mosaic Law. They may still keep the festivals (and keep Kosher during those festivals) but outside of that they often live very much as Gentiles. “Hebrew Christians” are Jewish people who believe in Jesus, more often coming from families where this has been the norm for generations. They will typically keep Torah and see it as an essential part of their particular Jewish identity that glorifies God by maintaining the Law (and thereby celebrating God’s work through the Hebrew people).
There are sometimes Gentile Christians who think it would be really cool to keep Torah. These are generally freaks who have not understood the New Testament… 🙂
Perhaps that’s why I am also suspicious of labels – I don’t think I fit either description, but that was a helpful explanation. Thank you.
Peter, I hink you have got those labels the wrong way round, at least fom my experience. Most “Messianic Jews” of my acquaintance place high value on their Jewish identity, retaining their observance of Torah from whichever stream of Judaism they originally came from and seeing discipleship of Yeshua as the fulfilment of this. “Hebrew Christians” may or may not keep aspects of Torah but tend to see Christian discipleship as being more of a break with their Jewish background.
I do agree that Gentile Christians keeping Torah shows a lack of understanding of the NT, though I also think that our Gentile-oriented Christianity lacks an appreciation of our roots in Judaism in ways that obscure the meaning of some (much?) of the NT. It has also led to some very dark and nasty legacy in our history with the Jewish people which we really do need to address at a deep level.
Re. Cuddesdon: I like that it was mixed (well, the OMC is, as you know!) but having said that, there’s no such thing as value free theological education.
Re. the Council of Jerusalem: I find it frustrating that at the point in Scripture when you think you’re going to get a definitive answer about non negotiables, the apostles cite food laws along with abstinence from sexual immorality; the latter I get, the former I don’t. It leads me to reflect that Christians ever since have been tempted to say their interpretation was primary, when other groups realise it isn’t. In some USA Seminaries it became primary to be a fully paid up ‘inerrantist’ or you couldn’t even get an administrative job there. That I find myopic.
Thank-you very much for joining us here, Claire. Again, I find myself out of my depth in offering you a useful reply – let’s hope someone who can comes along!
Oddly enough I think the explanation of the greater question is in a way encapsulated in the side issue of Cuddesdon….
There are three theological colleges in Oxford, one to which ‘high church’ people often gravitate, one to which Evangelicals often gravitate, and Cuddesdon. I have no personal evidence except hearsay, but I do have a suspicion that if you go to a theological college corresponding to your own churchmanship, none of your preconceptions may ever be challenged and there is a serious risk that the result for SOME people may simply be the consolidation of received wisdom that has never really been tested personally. And this leads people, in Claire’s words, to be “tempted to say their interpretation was primary”… and guess what… unless they are under the influence of an especially enlightened Bishop, they are then liable to embark on a life of ministry in a series of equally ‘safe’ environments, with no challenges but, more dangerously, congregations hanging on their every word for the truth expressed through a particular filter.
Of course, that suggests a challenge to the integrity of clergy, and that is not my intention. I exaggerate for effect, and in the same way suggest that opinions can become polarised and behaviours expressed such a way as to be seen to tow the party line, creating groups of almost tribal card-carrying this’s and that’s, whether ordained or not.
Not sure if that helped or not, or indeed simply caused offence to any ordained readers, to whom I apologize in anticipation.
I can’t speak for Oxford, but Cambridge has two Anglican colleges, one broadly evangelical, the other braodly catholic, but existing within a wider theological federation that includes Methodists, URC, RC and Orthodox (plus a Centre for relations between Christians, Jews and Muslims). With such a wide mix it is impossible not to be exposed to differing views and opinions, expressed in their own terms rather than filtered through someone else’s understanding. How one engages is of course up to the individual. I really valued my time there and took every opportunity to explore some of the difficult and controversial issues. It is risky, though. One might end up finding value in other people’s arguments and opinions!
Can theology dance?
Yes, Chris, yours does.
Can theology dance? It’s called doing the perichoresis 🙂
… and all of theology is a dance as we attempt to match our clumsy steps with the divine. We stumble, sometimes we fall, sometimes we think we’re drowning, but the Lord of the Dance hauls us back to our feet to join him dancing in the wind and on the waves of life’s storms…
As for me, I was brought up in the Brethren; inerrancy was infallibly spelt out: God’s Holy Word was not to be challenged but submitted to.
Thankfully, I escaped. It was a little traumatic, suicide was on the agenda for a while, but I eventually learned to think for myself whilst retaining the ability to think like a fundamentalist, which has led to some entertaining conversations down the years.
The way most inerrantists get around the problems they inevitably encounter is by a form of mental gymnastics: it’s the Bible “as originally given” that’s inerrant, not the Bible we have. The question of divine competence – in providing an inerrant/infallible original but allowing it to become corrupted – is conveniently swept under the carpet with pious claptrap along the lines of, “We live in a fallen world”. The whole business is, of course, pure folly: the reality is that we’re dealing with an ongoing revelation and a constantly evolving understanding of God: we see “through a glass, darkly” as we wrestle with our concepts of God; and like Jacob after his infamous wrestling match, we walk away limping but blessed in the encounter…
… and return, if we dare, to the dance 🙂
Well put, Phil.
PS: for those to whom perichoresis is a new word, lovely little article here: The Dance Of God, The Dance Of Life