Reading through the Sermon on the Mount

This morning I'm reading through the Sermon on the Mount and thinking how we can miss the tremendous energy and movement of the passage. Because there is so much important wisdom there we tend to study the Sermon on the Mount in small pieces, so we can thoroughly examine each phrase. But this can lead to a slow reflective mood, which can obscure the stern and forceful impact of reading command after command. I really like the feel I get from it just reading it through.

being brought to maturity

Luke 12:25-28

And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith!

When

I got my flower arrangement a few days ago the lilies in were closed buds. But now the lilies are opening up and they are lovely. The white and pink tiger lily also smells amazingly wonderful. It feels like catching the sent of that joy that heaven can create. Its remarkable how a this flower can transform like this, going something plain to bloom into such amazing beauty. And these are cut flowers, they are already doomed, removed from their roots and plants. Today I sniped off the bottoms of the steams that were starting to she decay so that those flower could keep drawing up water and delay wilting for a little longer.

But

God still allows them to come to maternity and show the glory they have. Tonight I am doing a Bible study about how God will brings us to maturity, and that maturity means we will be perfect in Him. As I get older it is easy to think of maturity in terms of signs that my body is wearing out and will one day break down and loose functions. But God values maturity. I should be reaching forward to what is ahead and pursuing the prize He has promised. (Phil. 3:12-16) These lilies remind me of how wonderful God's vision of something brought into full bloom can be. In just a little time these flowers will wither and be grown away. How much greater than this beauty will be the eternal blooming that Christ has in store for me. Yes, I still have a lot of imperfections now but:

We know in part and we prophesy in part, but when what is perfect comes, the partial will be set aside.
           - 1 Cor. 13:9-10

Life filled with Love

Today is Valentine's Day. It is also my father's birthday.  He passed away a number of years ago, and there is the potential for pain there. I had a wonderful day, with a surprise delivery of flower from my husband.

As I staged a picture of the flowers that were delighting me, I noticed how nice they looked with a photo of my dad and me at my baptism. 

      Then tonight I was going over 1 John 3:21-23 in a Bible Study I am doing. And I was thinking about a life of pleasing God and following His commandments. About His commandment to love one another. And I was struck by what a wonderful live God is offering us here, a life filled with love. Not a life filled with a need for people to love us and a need to collect trophies of that love that compete with others. Not a life filled with collecting public virtue points to prove that we love others so that we will be worthy. But a life filled with mutual love based not in ourselves but in God. This life of love sweeps away all imperfects in our love or others or in circumstances because the wellspring of this love is from God, and it carries all before it. 

Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do the things that are pleasing in His sight.

This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us.

Orphans No More

"I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you."

                                                             - Jesus (John 14:18)

I'm in my 40s and must of the time I'm responsible for taking care of myself, and sometimes other people too. But recently I went through a surgery that left me needing care for several days. I was so grateful that my mother was able and willing to take me into her home for several days. She brought me meals, helped change my bandages, and generally rearranged her life so that I could have the time to feast and heal that I needed.

She didn't have any cognitive dissidence at the fact that I was someone in need of care and not the one being the care giver. She was taking care of me like a parent takes care of a child. There is no one else in my life who would be quite as comfortable taking that role with me.

When my pastor read John 14:18 I was reminded how glad I am for having my mom. I also thought of the fact that we call it unnatural and tragic when a child dies before a parent. But that means that what is normal and accepted is for children to outlive there parents. That is, for most people to go through the experience of being orphans at some point in there life. In the best case, it is when we are adults and we have other people around us to take care of us when we need it.

But there is still that lack. There is no other relationship where your role as the one career for, the one guided, the one looked out for is so fundamental, so natural, so unforced. We can see how sad it is when a young child doesn't get that kind of care from a parent, or when that role is reversed wild. A still living parent because of a medical condition. But even in the most "normal" pattern there it still a loss.

But here is anther way that Jesus's resurrection takes the sting out of death and reverses the victory of the grave. Not only do we have the hope of being united again with loved ones in the resurrection. We always have a Father in heaven. We always have a Shepard in Jesus. We always have an Advocate in the Holy Spirit.

Jesus will care for us better than any human parent could. He has given us better guidance then any other source of counsel. He is pursuing our best interest in a way unmatchable by any other benefactor.

Christ is risen. We have a living Lord. And we always have someone with whom we can take the role of a child, someone whose feet it is always appropriate to sit at, someone to whom the power and the wisdom to lead s is totally natural.

To Gnon or not to Gnon

                Gnon is an NRx reference (obscure because that’s how NRx rolls) to “Nature or Nature’s God.” Specifically this is used in relation to the facts that harshly constrain us from eating our cake and having it too, no matter how much of a temper tantrum we throw. That saying “can’t we all just get along” doesn’t mean our needs will be compatible with the needs of other individuals or other states or even that they will want to get along in the first place. That just because it would make things more “fair”, we still can’t re-write human nature.

                Gnon is a personification of the power of the universe. The idea of thinking this way is coming from atheists and agnostic, so there isn’t much input from special revelation at work in this concept. This is just based on empirical experience of life as a sceptic. Gnon isn’t assumed to be good, or interested in humans, or even to align particularly well with human ideas of a coherent personality. Having no prima facie requirement of being nice, he is often conceptualized as being sort of mean from the human perspective.

Gnon: I like arms races, and rain my blessings upon them. Pretty much the only reason I’ve put up with the monkeys as long as I have is to use them to play arms races. It’s the only interesting stuff they’ve ever done.
                                                                                                -Nick Land

 

                I find there is something about the presentation of Gnon that resonates with me. There’s some insight here that is worthy of being affirmed. But from a Christian perspective there are certain issues. It has been pointed out that Satan has been given certain power in this world, and that those who projecting from their experiences indiscriminately may be confounding their idea of the Almighty with elements of Satan’s handiwork. However I don’t want to be so quick to dismiss this basic intuition of God’s existence.

Gnon fishin

This is the God of common revelation. This is what can be known of the Almighty without the prophets and apostles bringing special revelation of His grace and redemption. This is the face God turns towards cut off from Him by our own wickedness and corruption. I don’t think God finds our struggles and failures without him exactly funny, as Gnon is sometimes protruded as doing. But His judgment is that it is fitting and proper that, if we reject Him, our end is ruin and destruction. God wants suffering and sorrow done away with if and only if sin is done away with too, not lessened, not put in a corner and ignored, but utterly done away with.

It’s important to acknowledge that those without a relationship with God can have some perception of Him, if a dimmer one than revelation provides. But it is also a different view than those of us enfolded be the cleansing gift of His redeeming love experience in our everyday lives. There are several important thinks to be gained from engaging with and even embracing God-as-seen from an outsider’s perspective.

First is understanding why we do evangelism. I was talking with a liberal Christian about the possibility that, since the patriarchs were saved without knowing the name or story of Jesus Christ, those in remote areas unreached by missionaries might be saved by believe in God and trusting him based on the limited revelation they do have. I was arguing that just because they could didn’t mean they would and so we still needed to send missionaries to invite them to be saved. I realized later that what I was missing was an appreciation that the un-evangelized would be experiencing Gnon., awesome, but also terrifying. When you realize how immiscible God is with un-redeemed humans, you realize how unlikely it is that someone would make a leap of faith to trust God with your life unless someone brings the good news of redemption and forgiveness to them. A few might do it, but not nearly as may as would trust Jesus once they understand the gospel.

It is also helpful, when communicating with unbelievers in our own culture, to understand that unless there has been a special intervention of the Holy Spirit, the only personal experience non-believers will have had of God will look like Gnon to them. For those like me who grow up as believers from a young age, our lived experience having God respond to us with concern and gentleness is so normal and expected that it takes a deliberate effort to imagine what it is like to experience God as His enemy.

                Being aware of Gnon can also help our own spiritual growth. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. You can’t develop towards a full understanding of God without an appreciation of how unbending He is towards sin and evil. An awareness of Gnon as how God can look to those not reconciled by the blood of the lamb can guard us against ignoring an important part of God’s character. Satan is the father of lies and he can use anything that is not true as an opening wedge. One lie he will use is that this world is already adequately reconciled to Him and that we can becomfortable and accepting of everything about it. Instead we need to remember that the kingdoms and powers of this world are under his wrath, that our current bodies are still those we inherited as part of a condemned world and still carry that taint until they are changed in the twinkling of an eye.
                One way this can be seen is in understanding the continuity between the old and new testaments. I’ve heard from a number of sources the impression that the God of the Old Testament is wrathful and the God of the New Testament is loving. I confess that my first reaction to this is to think “You didn’t actually really the book did you? Because that sounds like the result of just reading the cliff notes.” But more charitably I must confess that the Bible is complex and subtle saga and it can be hard to hold the whole thing in your head for some people. And if whole sections down to one simple take away it can look like there are contrasting themes.  Bringing an awareness of Gnon affects in the world today can help bridge that gap and make it easier to understand the coherence of God’s justices and His mercy.

                So I would argue that Christians in the Reactosphere need to embrace Gnon. Not accepting uncritically every characteristic or action attributed to him as reflecting God, but seeing in Gnon accurate insights into the God we worship. We should be willing to use Gnon as a common ground for discussions that increase the understanding of other and of ourselves.

Full Armor of God

I remember studying this verse when I was younger and not seeing anything beyond a vague idea that armor was good to have in battle and these things were good to have in the Christian life. But studying this passage recently I felt I really got it this time and that makes me so excited.

By Sheldon Martin
[CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

Ephesians 6:10-18 (NASB)
10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. 11 Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. 14 Stand firm therefore, having girded your loins with truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, 15 and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; 16 in addition to all, taking up the shield of faith with which you will be able to extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. 18 With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit, and with this in view, be on the alert with all perseverance and petition for all the saints

Girdle of Truth: This is your strong core, the keeps you steady in intention among the tug and shove, it holds your position together and maintains your integrity, have a good word to world fit. think of it as a weight lifting belt. It’s easy to think that a little lie will make the conversation more pleasant or help everyone to get along or let you win an argument. But always sticking to the truth is what gives you integrity It’s what holds your witness and your life together.

Breastplate of Righteousness: You have done wrong in the past but once these things are repented and confessed, they no longer affect your moral standing, or your standing with God, AT ALL. even with the things you still struggle with, the check to clear them is already in your hand. With this standing the damages and hooks of evel can’t penetrate to your heart or your guts. Repent and confess where needed but then don’t be ashamed of anything because you are relying not on your own righteousness but on Christ’s.

Feet Shod with the Preparation of the Gospel of Peace: Gospel literally means good news but in the greek world of the New Testament it also had an additional meaning of a royal announcement, especially the proclamation of a new King or a new Emperor. Jesus is the true king and God has ordained the temporary power, the decisions of the temporary power can be important but they aren’t ultimate, we can afford to be calm because what we’re really concerned with is already decided, at the same time we can step into any area because Jesus is Lord of all. We should be continually prepared to take our standing from that truth and no other.

Shield of Faith: It can seem like the enemy is about to burn up all your accomplishment, but it’s your sins that will be burned up on judgment day, what you do for God is seen and remembered, and when, by faith, you see that you can put out the threat. You won’t be overcome with worry or anxiety if you can interpose Faith. You won’t be overwhelmed by defeats in worldly matters because you know your have treasures in heaven. And you won’t be dismayed by obstacles or seeming setbacks to kingdom work because you know Jesus will triumph in the end.

Helmet of salvation: God has saved you once for all, by His strength, not yours, nor by what a good before and after story you can tell, don’t let the enemy get into your head with doubts. Evil wants us turned around and confused, worrying about ourselves and always looking inward rather than outward. Having made a decision for salvation let it wrap around your thoughts and hold your inquiries and your reasoning in stability.

Sword of the spirit: God has communicated His character to us in the Bible, the commands Jesus have given should be on our lips, and the Holy Spirit should be controlling and energizing our application of God’s guidance. Scripture allows us to slice through spiritual confusions and disguises. It allows us to laid powers and principles bear and drive back that which is evil.

    We are going to be dealing with the corruption of sin and the destruction it scatters all around this world. We can’t just close our eyes and turn our backs, that will only leave us vulnerable. We need to take the protection god has given us and defend ourselves.  And how do we get this armor and make sure it is in good repair? With prayer and more prayer.

A Matter of Faith, Part 1

    I imagine the scene: All I have to do is sign on the line and pay my $100 co-pay and they will drug me, deliberately give me hypothermia, crack open my skull, stop my heart, drain a bunch of blood from my body and stick a knife in my brain. I’d have to be crazy to decide to have that done to me right? But I can see making that decision under certain circumstances. I can see making it on behalf of a loved one or a child. Because, I just have that much faith in science.  

In case you didn’t catch the word ‘co-pay’ this describes a medical procedure. For certain rare cerebral aneurysms doctors know that letting them go untreated they will kill the person who has it sooner or later. But if doctors try to operate on it with the heart pulsing blood through the area it will kill immediately. So to operate they have to stop the blood flow, and they have found that hypothermia will allow someone to survive a short period of having their blood flow stopped. It’s been demonstrated that patients can live through this type of operation.

Really, though, I don’t trust science all that much. I know that science has come to a lot of faulty conclusions that it has had to revise over the years. A when you are talking about dealing with situations where there are uncontrollable variables, like medicine is, science can’t confidently predict the outcome of a specific case. In fact before I consented to the above surgery I would probably have to sign a paper saying I understood there was some risk of death from that surgery.



photo by Sibeaster, via Wikimedia Commons

I have much greater faith in God than in science. But in the post I would fail Abraham's test Rachel Held Evans scolds me for being ready to put as much faith in God as I would put in science. When Abraham heard heaven in Genesis 22, it didn’t just "sound like" God’s voice. Abraham had heard God before and knew from experience this was His voice. God had proven Himself faithful over the years. And in particular, God had worked miracles before in protection of the promise of His blessing to the bloodline of Abraham and Sarah. When God says “Take now your son, your only son,” I don’t think He is forgetting Ismael, I think He is alluding to the fact that Isaac is the only son of promise, the promise that God has proven Himself faithful to.

I don’t think Abraham was being any more immoral in trusting that God had a plan to preserve the promise of Isaac and make things right than we are if we trust our children's lives to a medical doctor, or an airplane pilot. Our minds have to stretch further to trust that which is beyond human comprehension, and our hearts much expand to encompass that fullness, and yet will still overflow, but there is no moral difference. I believe and hope that I would pass Abraham’s test.

The Burden of the Law

I was reading the blog post Unburdened about how hard it can feel to keep god’s commands. And I was struck by this statement: “the commandments are indeed burdensome, that burden has been laid on the shoulders of [Jesus]. … That same weight that threatens to break our backs actually did crush our savior.” not because I agree with it but because I think it indicates a fundamental mis-understand of the law and our relation to it.

By Pavel Ryčl (http://www.ehm.cz/,
 via Wikimedia Commons

          I don’t think Jesus felt the law as a crushing burden during His ministry here on earth. I think he felt more the challenge of a supreme athlete performing at the height of His powers. Perhaps like a gymnast performing a world class routine that was supremely choreographed to perfectly fit his talents and style. It was a task that demanded strength, balance, focus and effort. But it was also a task that created joy and exhilaration not heaviness and distaste.

         I remember when I was 20, slim and health. Lost in my own imagination, thoughts of exciting adventure would spur me to run, and I would feel the joy of exertion and skillful balance and the a speed that could make still air a breeze. Now that I’m forty and fat, running doesn’t feel the same at all. It’s something I do out of duty rather than desire. It’s something that feels awkward and unnatural, something that quickly becomes tiring and painful, something that can remind me how un-fun a bit of asthma is. The requirements of running haven't changed, my body has. It’s no longer fit for running. But I’d like to keep running to get at least a little of that fitness back. If I’m dedicated I might be able to lose some of the weight. But I’ll never have body I had at 20 again. No amount of exercise will actually reverse the wear and tear of time.

          Without salvation our efforts to follow the law are like me trying to make myself 20 again by discipline and effort. I might get back to that weight, I might put on more mussel than I had then, I might develop more skill in some athletic discipline. But I’ll need actually roll back the years by working out harder. In the same way following the law in our own strength without the redeeming work of the cross is futile. We might manage to look better to other humans, we might manage conform better to certain outward forms, but we would never get back to that pristine innocence

          And this is what Jesus meant by his burden being light. Choosing to follow Him doesn’t change God’s commandments or the requirements of holiness. It changes how we relate to it and where we will end up in relation to it. Redemption changes our struggle with sin from one that is like growing older where we inevitably lose ground feats athleticism sooner or later, to one that is like growing up, where we naturally gain strength and coordination over time and where the destined result is a coordinated and stable adult body.

        The promise of the Father, the life of the Son, and the seal of the Holy Spirit are out guaranty that no matter what awkward and gangly stages we go through here in this life, in the world to come Jesus will bring his work to completion and we will display full maturity there. Jesus assumes the consequences of all the bumps and scrapes, all the wear and tear, all the mistakes, so that even if we spend our time here in the moral equivalent of curling out on the couch and eating ice-cream, never learning how to throw a ball or ride a bike, He will still present us fit for his Father’s presence.

And that was what was as a crushing burden, bearing all our sins on the cross. This was an unimaginable weight, which was born only through God’s infinite strength. Jesus took all our awful decisions, our rebellious stunts, our misunderstandings and ingrained bad habits to the cross. He felt the impact of all those deforming shapers of character and still He submitted his spirit into the hands of a Father who He could no longer feel. He was buried under the consequences of all our unholiness and rejection of God’s law.

So we don’t have our bad choices deforming our character anymore. While we are still in this world we still feel their ghost in the scares and dents they have left on or bodies and brains. We are still sense the reverberations from the God dishonoring actions of other humans. We don’t have the spiritual body that can perform the perfect and glorious dance of praise to our King that is obedience. But we can practice the steps in the sure knowledge that one day we will be conformed you our resent Lord and therefore be able to join in that performance of perfect beauty and grace.

The Good Book

I have a tendency to leave books scattered around the house wherever I happen to be reading them. A couple of days ago I had left one of my bibles on the couch, and my husband took a couple of cute pictures of our dog Geisha leaning against it. And he found part of the cuteness in the fact that it was the “good book” rather than some random book that I had left there, as if Geisha had some idea what book she was leaning against.But of course a dog cannot understand what a bible really is, beyond a particular copy having a nice feeling cover. 

 

          We can know what an incredible gift the bible is. This treasure of God revealing himself to man. This chance we have to read about His deeds and to see parts of His character. But I think sometimes we focus so much on the presence of the divine manifest in this knowledge that we forget this is also a book. I've been thinking this week about being interested in the people and times that God was interested in. Noting the human element that God was engaging with and that he chose to convey his word through, reminds me to come to the Bible with all of my mind, ready for God to engage my humanness.

φίλος

Part of why I’ve been away from blogging for awhile is that I just started a Bible study at my church using Living beyond Yourself: Exploring the fruit of the Spirit by Beth Moore. There can be as much as 8 hours of homework a week. But, not only do I enjoy fellowshipping with the other women at my church doing this study, I am also being stretched and seeing some surprising insights. A couple weeks ago we were covering love and looked at ἔρως (eros, romantic love), φίλος (philos, love in friendship) and ἀγάπη (agape, divine love.)

    In eclectic readings that included lots of authors influenced by classical ideas I’d encountered these different greek concepts of love before. Φίλος has alway been especially compelling to me. I’d read descriptions shared interests that created bonds between people. Friends that kept in touch with each other over decades, always invested in each other's challenges and concerns. Freinds that naturally maintained contact through marriages, moves and career changes.
    And these descriptions were compelling because I didn’t have that. Oh there were girls and later women whom I liked and admired who seemed friendly and welcoming towards me. We would meet through mutual involvement in various activities. I could get to hang out with them and discuss the topic that we shared. As I grew more skilled with social interaction we could have wide ranging general interest conversations and exchanges of personal hurts and triumphs. We would do favors for each others and be ready to do more. But though I would have liked a long term bond I never knew quite how to secure it. As soon as the mutual activity would end I would feel the relationship slipping away without that structure to keep us in contact. I wanted to remain friends but had a terrible time with the logistics of staying in touch. I would make intellectual models based on the relationships around me. But they felt so artificial and unnatural to me that I would end up executing them clumsily if at all.
    This has been a hurt in my heart. I could see this wonderful human experience being offered to me but I could never reach out and grab it. Αγάπη I could have as a free gift that I didn’t have to work for, that God offers to all. But my own ineptitude kept at least the highest versions of φίλος beyond my reach and that made it very desirable to me.

    In addtion to covering positive examples of φίλος “Living Beyond Yourself” used Luke 23:12 as an example of φίλος. Pilate and Herod bond over their mutual frustration and disdain for the whole Jesus situation. This, and a couple of other examples give of how φίλος can be used in a negitive light, helped me to see that I had been exalting freindship in a way that overvalued it. That I’d been idealizing it in a way that made it a rival to divine love in my mind. This bible study has made me more content with being who I am and allowed me to focus more great gifts God has given me.

David’s Now and Not Yet Kingdom

"He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David; and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end."

            -Luke 1:32-33 (NASB)

in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

            -Hebrews 1:2-3 (NASB)

When I first encountered the already-but-not-yet establishment of Jesus’s kingdom on earth I had a little trouble getting a sense of what that could mean. Then one day I was thinking about the story of King David. Who better to look at as a type of Christ as King then King David. And David had a period of already but not yet kingship. In 1 Samuel 16:12-13 God has Samuel anoint David as king of Israel. But it is not until many stages of life and many years later that David is actually acknowledged King by all Israel in 2 Samuel 5:3-4

        I’m definitely not saying the Jesus’s actives are in any way constrained or foretold by David’s story, but I do think it’s useful to look at this period of David’s life to help my ability to picture possibilities for how this period of Christ’s ministry might look. In fact there are lots of different possibilities that David models as he goes through different stages: total unknown to society, rising star at court, target for royal paranoia, hunted fugitive, leader of a mercenary band, and king of half a kingdom.

David and Saul

    When David was first anointed king he didn’t announce the fact, he didn’t try to start building a power base. In fact he did his current job, and he took opportunities to make the job of the existing power structure easier, soothing King Saul and driving his evil spirit away. (1 Sam 16:21-23) David volunteers to face the problem that no one else is willing to face, but when he goes out to fight Goliath he takes his own weapons and not Saul’s but sticks to the pattern of showing respect for the existing government as legitimate.
    People begin to praise David as one would a conquering King, (see 1 Sam. 18:17 and the comment on it in 1 Sam. 21:11) and Saul becomes jealous. In impulse and trough plots Saul starts trying to Murder David. David escapes again and again (1Sam 18:11, 1 Sam 18:25, 1 Sam 19:1, 1 Sam 19:10, 1 Sam 19:11,15, and 1 Sam 19:20-21) and keeps returning to Saul as a loyal servant. By my count it is only after the seventh time (1 Sam 19:22-23) that David because reluctant to present himself again. After Sauls show himself ready to make an eighth attempt (1 Sam 20:31-33) David flees Saul’s authority. As long as he could David tried to help Saul’s efforts to protect and govern Israel and when that was no longer possible David chose flight over confrontation.
    Even as Saul hunts David in the wilderness and David does nothing more then cut off a corner of his robe When he has Saul in his power. (1 Sam 24:4) David continues to plead humbly with Saul. (1 Sam 24:8-15) David considers that it would be immoral for him or his followers to kill Saul (1 Sam 26:9-11) Even when Saul is eventually killed in battle David mourns for him and executes his killer. (2 Sam 1:11, 16)
    During this whole time God has removed His blessing from Saul and chosen David to be Israel's king. But David does not try to enforce God’s decision in his own strength. Neither does God seem to be in a hurry to dispose of Saul and bring all Israel under His chosen ruler. This helps me to be comfortable with the fact that though the kingdom of God has been initiated, Jesus is waiting to enforce his rule with power.

A Psalm of David.

The Lord said to my Lord,
“Sit at My right hand,
Till I make Your enemies Your footstool.”

-Psalm 110:1 (NKJV)

Triumph of David, Nicolas Poussin

Do we rule out a Hebrew version of the Gospel of Matthew?

So I’m reading some material about the synoptic problem. One thing I’ve run across is the fragments of patristic commentary on the order and circumstances of the gospels’ composition. particularly I’m thinking about the seeming mention of Mathew being first composed in Hebrew. This seems to be dismissed as obviously wrong in the scholarship I have seen. No one seems to be arguing for it being in Hebrew so the arguments it are not given in detail. The one time it seemed to be address definatly the argument was just that surely if there had been a hebrew Matthew some of it would have survived.

Apostle Matthew

But as far as I know NO Hebrew copy of an Old Testament book has come down to us through christian hands. That is, if it weren’t for jewish copies we would only have today the old testament in Greek, Latin and other gential langueges. You can see in Justin Martyr that the fact that Christians are using a translation is an issue and difference are being debated but Justin defends the translation as legitimate and having the same sort of inspiration and therefore the same authority as the original scriptures.  When Jerome is doing a new Latin translation the question of differences between the greek and hebrew text comes up again. It is debated within the Church and Jerome recommends that concerned Christian leads check with their local Jewish communities to confirm his translations from the Hebrew. I don’t remember him referring to any authority or community within the Church that has a hebrew manuscript or can check Jerome’s translation. Moreover it the story sounds like not only did Jerome have to go to Jews for Hebrew lessons but also for a manuscript to translate from. If already, still within the Roman period, Christians had lost all or most Hebrew copies of the old testament books, whose translation into greek was a live issue , still being debated, that not copies of a single book would have comes down to us?

If Matthew was translated into Greek during the apostolic age, then the translation itself would bear the same authority as the other books being composed originally in Greek during that same time. With no controversy over the translation there would be no motive for non-Hebrew speaking congregations to hold on to a manuscript they couldn’t read. And though we know second hand of Hebrew congregation surviving into the second or third century I’m not aware of us having any documents from them. We know there are a number of significant early Christian documents that have been lost except for quoted fragments or that survive only in translations in other languages than their original composition. Lossing a version in a language that few Christians or no Christin read and for which there was an elegant and complete translation in wide circulation doesn’t seem a stretch to me.

There are other things that might be motives, if not reasons, for dismissing the claim that Matthew was first composed in Hebrew. First of course is that a Hebrew gospel is more likely if it’s fairly early, when the Jesus movement was still centered around Jewish communities. People who would like devalue or discredit its witness would like it to be late and therefore would like it to be originally Greek. Defenders of Christianity would also like it to be Greek because today we are not as comfortable as Christians of the first couple of centuries with the idea that certain translations can be divinely inspired, just as originals were; and if Matthew was originally in Hebrew then we definitely don’t have the original wording. There is also the desire to see the earliest church as primitive. Those who want to snobbishly look down on the disciples or nostalgically romanticize them can want to portray them all as illiterate peasants. The assumption seems to be that classes stick together so that illiteracy is seen as a group phenomenon; also that you can’t really be a peasant without being illiterate. But the Jewish religious tradition valued the reading of the scriptures and reading and studying were already part of the way non priests would participate in religious ritual. After pentecost there would have been hundreds of Jews involved in this new religious movement among whom might have been one who who could compose and write down an account of Jesus’s life.  There is also the modern tendency to assume anything earlier must always be more primitive then something latter and especially that the very beginning of a new thing should be poor quality and unsophisticated. In literature latter writers can build on earlier writers but it isn’t a universal rule. And the early Christians weren’t starting from scratch. there was a rich and varied tradition in the Old Testament to give them inspiration.

There may be arguments against a Hebrew gospel of Matthew that I just haven’t heard. But I’m not convinced that the possibility has really been explored adequately. I’ll be keeping an open mind on this for now.

Defining characteristics of God

In response some posts I’ve read lately I’ve been thinking about the definition of God. Not necessarily the personally identity of my God, but what do we mean when we say “The Father is God,” or “Jesus is God,” What are we debating when we ask  “Does God exist?”

One possibility is to include Gods like we see in Greek and Roman Myth. These were beings that were orders of magnitude more powerful than any human of the time. They also seemed mostly unkillable but other than that they were similar in type to humans. But humans today are much more powerful, in certain ways, than the humans of that time. Science fiction has given us the phrase “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” There is science fiction speculation, and even occasional scientific speculation, about how we could acquire some of the powers those Gods had. I don’t think the proof of an alien being with powers that were simply greater than we could figure out would convince an atheist to change positions and it is not what the Abrahamic faiths mean by God.

But power is at the heart of the definition of God: not a large but limited amount of power but all-powerful. A lot of implications go with the idea of an all-powerful being. All-knowing seems to go with it pretty naturally. It’s easy to see how an all-powerful being could use that power to obtain any information desired so most people automatically add all-knowing to all-powerful. An implication that has been historically important to the way monotheism developed is that there can only be one all-powerful being. An all-powerful being must have power greater than all other forces in the universe put together. which makes all other being automatically all powerful.

There is another implication that is often skipped as being irrelevant to a specific argument but that I think is vital in making the intuitive jump to conceptualizing what is being discussed when people argue about God. An All-powerful, all-knowing being can’t experience time as we do, in an inexorably moving present always poised between a past that is knowable but unchangeable and a future that in changeable but never truly knowable. God must be able to change and to know everything and therefore must be unconstrained by time as we experience it.

Salvador Dali's Profile of Time photographed by Julo

We usually don’t think time’s workings when we try to reason something out. It is one of those basic thing that you always presuppose out of reflex. But if you try to visualize the working of an all-powerful being on the presupposition of linear time, you are going to find logical contradictions. our only mode of being is as part of time but God’s fundamental mode of being is eternity. It’s hard to wrap your thoughts around the possibility of not being bound by time. So we downplay or leave out this aspect when trying to convey God or argue about God. But God’s eternal nature is actually vital to grasping who God is. It’s important to remind ourselves and others that the certainties that time imposes on us melt away before God’s power.