God at Work, and other issues

Last Friday Before Pentecost

Friday is the blog day on which I reply to blog comments during the previous week. We have several this week. 

From Glenn, "I believe there may have some changes but the term The Holy Catholic Church was for many years the Holy Christian Church in the Apostles’ creed for many Lutherans. In Luther’s Catechism the term was the Holy Christian Church. Since I have been a Methodist for many years, I do not have current information on the Lutheran Church. This does not change my thoughts of the Apostles’ creed; I still prefer it." Thanks Glenn, for correcting my error on this.

From Stuart, "Since Tuesday is books, etc. day, I will mention one that I just completed. Last Fall, at the beginning of Sunday School year, Christian told us the agenda for the coming Sunday School year. One of the items was that he would discuss one of the books he had written, "Jesus and the Pleasures". I ordered the book and read the first three chapters last Fall. I decided to wait to complete it during the time it was being discussed in Sunday School. As we all know, that time never came. A couple weeks ago, I started again at the beginning, and completed it a few days later. It certainly caused me to consider consider Jesus's life in a way that I had never thought about before. I had never considered how Jesus reacted to the pleasures of life that most all of us enjoy and take for granted. The book caused me to consider the humanity of Jesus more than I had before. Most of us, or certainly I, have considered the divinity of Jesus much more than understanding that he also was a human being. We can't change the past, but I really regret not having the opportunity of having Christian spend several sessions discussing this book with us. I recommend this book to anyone interested in a better understanding of the humanity/divinity of Jesus." Thanks, Stuart, for giving my book a great plug.

From Chris, although I commented on this one last Friday, I didn't really answer Chris's question. Here's his question, "Christian, how were you able to keep up with Greek, Hebrew, Latin and other languages practice and fluency during this busy period in your life? I presume that several were required for your degrees but also assume that continued practice was necessary. 

Also, how many languages could Skip speak?"

The true answer is I don't. Old Testament professors have to learn a lot more languages than NT profs do. An Old Testament prof at Duke named Alan Jenks once said in class that he was forgetting languages at the rate of one a year. I sympathize with the sentiment.

Here's what I do. As a part of my daily spiritual regimen, I begin by translating five verses of Hebrew Bible. I started reading Judges when I started teaching it last fall. Only now am I near finishing it. I'm on chapter 20. There are 21 chapters of it. For Greek I do more. I translate a page a day in the Greek New Testament. I go seriatim. I have read the Greek NT cover to cover six or seven times. I'm now in Luke, chapter 6. I have an interleaved Greek NT--that is, with alternating pages of text and blank pages, which allow me to take notes. I do take notes. I also read most of the variants that are in the apparatus at the bottom of the page. It shows variations in the text in different manuscripts. I also translate a page in Greek of one of the church fathers. I am currently translating Clement of Alexandria (late second century). That's how I keep up.

Here's how I don't keep up. I rarely read anything in Aramaic, Syriac, or Coptic. My faculties in these languages are really weak, almost gone. I have studied two modern languages, French and German. I can read French quite well and do. Speaking it and hearing it are much harder for me. When I'm in France I speak French to everyone (often to Marianne's embarrassment, I think), but most of the time French people answer me in English. I have never been good at German, though I read a lot of it for my dissertation and for articles I've written for scholarly journals. Skip speaks French. 

From Vicki, "Just wondering: If when "you pray for it and it happens, then God did it" does it follow that when you pray for it and it doesn't happen that God did it? Does God get the blame for unanswered prayers as well as the credit for answered prayers?"

No, I don't blame God for anything. I want to take this back to a blog I wrote a couple of months ago on the will of God. Here's the short of it: I see four wills operating in our world

1. God's will. God's will is all good. But God's will is not the only will.

2. Human will. Human will or free will can be good or can be evil or can be any one of many shades             in between. God's will is stronger than human will. God can intervene in human will at any                 time, and God often does, God can intervene with human will on the basis of human prayers.               Sometimes God does. Sometimes God doesn't.  God often lets human will go on its own free               will course. Here's a crude example. I knew a woman who prayed about everything. If she                  were making a batch of cookies, she would pray as to whether to set the oven at 350 or 375. I              doubt if God answers that prayer, although God can. More likely God wants us to be                            responsible for the cookies we make. If it turns out well, good. It's our doing. If it turns out                  badly, its our doing.But it's still okay to give thanks to God for all that turns out good that we              pray for.

3. The will of nature. The will of nature is neither good nor evil, but completely neutral. Perhaps the will of nature is better called the laws of nature. God set up the world to run on laws or nature, or I could say, scientific principles. God normally lets the laws of nature run their natural course. But God can intervene in the laws of nature at any and, at times, even on the basis of our prayers. Sometimes we call this a miracle (the crossing of the Red Sea, the resurrection). Most times God lets nature run its course. 

4. The will of evil (or will of Satan or the devil, if you prefer your evil personified). It's all evil, but God's will is stronger. It will be a subject of a later blog.

In short, I give God all the credit and none of the blame. I realize this does not follow all the principles of logic. I think there is much in life and in the universe that is beyond human reason. I also realize that I was not saying this exact same thing a few months ago. I change easily but am not easily persuaded.

From Joe: Joe's comment is quite long (and this blog is getting quite long). I'm not going to reprint it here, but you can read it in full in the blog comments section. Joe gives a link an article on the website: simplebiblestudies.com   I read the article. Joe notes that it is not from a United Methodist perspective, but he doesn't say what perspective it is from. I think the reason Joe doesn't say is because the website doesn't tell you. I always suspect that if they don't tell you, they don't want you to know. I did some detective work. You could pick it up indirectly in the title of the article, but I didn't. My detective work determined that it was a Church of Christ website. The Church of Christ is a relatively small fundamentalist denomination located primarily in Southern states, though not to any great extent in North Carolina. The most distinguishing feature of the Church of Christ is that it does not allow instrumental music in worship. All singing is a cappella. It is deeply suspicious of any Christian symbolism, including the cross, as being in violation of the second commandment (graven images). Very rarely do you find a Church of Christ church with a cross. I've never seen one, and I've been in quite a few COC churches. I was surrounded by them when I was a pastor in Tennessee. 

I'm sensing a little irony in that Joe speaks a lot about the music of J.S. Bach in his blog comment. You would never hear Bach, or anything else, played in a Church of Christ church. I agree with Joe about Bach. While the Lutheran pastors in the BBC interview called Bach the fifth evangelist, I once called him "the greatest Christian since St. Paul." A few parishioners expressed surprise at that.

All Protestant suspicion of Christian symbolism stems from the Radical Reformation, though the denominations holding these views are not necessarily direct descendants of the Radical Reformation. By Radical Reformation, I mean those reformers who in the 1520's and 1530's vehemently rejected both Luther and Calvin. These included Thomas Munzer, Ulrich Zwingli, and the Anabaptists. Modern day descendants of the Anabaptists include the Amish and the Mennonites, but not modern Baptists. Followers of Munzer and particularly of Zwingli. Where they controlled territory, the destroyed Catholic churches. If they couldn't destroy an entire church they would at least destroy all the art, all statues, icons, painting, any representation of Christ or the Virgin Mary. They raided churches with mobs carrying sledge hammers which they wielded with passion agains anything or anyone that might possibly be Catholic. Zwingli also detested music. Anything they gave people so much pleasure must be of the devil. So Zwingli had pipe organs dismantled and destroyed. Zwinglian churches allowed only the spoken word. 

For many Protestant denominations which arose after the Reformation the suspicion of the visual was maintained. Baptists would chief among these. Protestants have always had a preference for the aural over the visual, but that is much more the case among some Protestant denominations than others. Here's a list denominations from most visual to least visual:

Eastern Orthodox

Roman Catholic

Anglican (Episcopal in America)

Lutheran

Methodist

Presbyterian

Congregational (United Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ)

Baptist

Pentecostal

As usual, Methodists are in the middle. As usual, I am pushing us as a denomination to move up the scale. Next Wednesday I will talk about Christian symbolism and the relationship between the symbol and the thing symbolized.

Finally, another comment from Chris: "Christian, I have occasionally heard or read discussions about "truncations" of scripture intentionally utilized to push differences in perspectives, for example, "prosperity gospels". 

In your blog you mention “a classification of scripture scholars call wisdom literature.” I am interested in any comments you might have about the extent of disagreements between “scripture scholars” about different meanings of wisdom literature passages and how these disagreements might have changed over recent decades and over longer time periods, especially as they pertain to any rises in “religious fundamentalism”. It appears to me that these disagreements have added greatly to community-scale anger.

First, Chris, I think my bad writing may have led to misunderstanding of one phrase. I should have written something like, "a classification of scripture called by scholars wisdom literature." 

Second, your question is book-length complicated. Third, I'm not sure whether my response is really going to get at what your asking. But here goes.

Biblical scholars are an odd breed. They tend to feel disrespected within their universities. They sometimes feel that academics in other disciplines see them as teaching Sunday School in college. Anyone who has ever taken a course in a college Religious Studies department knows this is not the case. 

In terms of academic research, the work of Biblical scholars seldom intersects with the church. Biblical scholars see theirs as a secular discipline within the division of Humanities in their universities. They are in Religious Studies departments, which are in the same division as English, Foreign Languages, History, Philosophy, etc. Even in universities with denominational affiliations or historical denominational ties, there are no connections between Religious Studies Departments and the Church. Divinity Schools are separate things from Departments of Religious Studies. Divinity Schools are graduate professional schools, like Law Schools, Med Schools, Business Schools, etc.

Divinity Schools do work with the church. I realize, Chris, that being an academic, you know all this, but non-academic readers of this log may not. 

I want to put this point very strongly. Biblical scholars (outside Divinity Schools and Seminaries) are strongly secular. If you go to a Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting, you will not find religious services, prayer groups, or anything churchy. Papers, seminars, and meetings are held on Sunday mornings just like any other time. 

Biblical scholarship rarely intersects with modern day concerns. Biblical scholars are studying an ancient literature, history, and civilization. Fundamentalists and Biblical scholars don't want to have anything to do with one another. Many Biblical scholars are atheists (e.g. Bart Ehrman at UNC). 

Within the community of Biblical scholars, they call themselves "the guild," there is frequent call for them to be more relevant to what is going on in the world today. I've heard this for decades, but it never seems to happen. 

Most people don't even know that Biblical scholarship exists, or if they do know it exists, they know next to nothing about it. Fewer and fewer students takes Biblical Studies courses in college. 

As I reread the question now, I feel like I'm not answering it, like I'm missing something here. You may have specific things in mind that I'm not aware of or not grasping. So here's one last effort for me to get at what your after. The overwhelming majority of fundamentalists have no idea that Biblical scholars even exists, much less having any idea what Biblical scholars do. Disagreements among Biblical scholars can strong, at times even nasty. Richard Hays of Duke and Dale Martin of Yale really don't like each other and have said so in print. I have been accused of trashing the late J.B. Lightfoot and not being very kind to the living Adela Yarbro Collins (both of whom are great scholars I am not). Biblical scholars have their disagreements, and we all dislike fundamentalism, but since we are virtually unknown outside our academic world, it's hard to see how we or our disagreements "have added greatly to community scale anger." Or am I missing your point entirely?

Whew! You guys worked me hard today. Keep the comments coming. I'll make more time for the blog on Fridays than on other days.

Faithfully,

Christian