I Am That I Blog: bible

Showing posts with label bible. Show all posts

Monday, October 14, 2019

Literalism and Exclusionary Theology

Beyond Authority: Scripture in Our Churches (edited down)

In A New Teaching of Authority: a Re-evaluation of the Authority of the Bible, Mary Ann Tolbert aptly discusses the ways in which ecclesiastical institutions use a “special hermeneutic” in studying the Bible that allows for selective, biased, and harmful uses of scripture. She discusses how prevailing lenses of the academy are decidedly different in their approach to biblical study; how prevailing uses of scripture as authoritative have damaging consequences and involve removing scriptural passages from their textual, historical, and cultural contexts; and how church hierarchies are reinforced and laity stagnated by defining how scripture is to be interpreted by adherents. She argues that the authoritative use of scripture is damaging in ways that are seemingly at odds with the “spirit” of the text.

Scholarship within the field of religion has set aside the “specialness” of the Bible in order to give it the fair treatment applied to other historical and ancient texts. Different fields’ expertise offer a multiplicity of ways to view scripture, including through the lenses of history, archaeology, sociology, psychology, and linguistics, which allow academics different ways to view biblical material and study it in ways that allow for multivalence. The academy treats the Bible as no different than scripture from other faith traditions or other great works of antiquity. Such lenses have not only allowed for a more generous interpretation of the biblical texts, but also have brought us closer to what the lives and communities of our spiritual ancestors may have been like and what their intentions and viewpoints may have been. It is through the contributions of scholarship that we can see how scripture has been used to “exclude certain groups or people… and to justify morally or historically debatable positions” (Tolbert, 171). Churches, in selective uses of scripture that are promoted by those with authority, have promoted uses of the Bible that allow for morally repugnant practices and worldviews to be spread and justified. History shows us that scripture has been used to promote slavery, the Holocaust, suppression of women and minorities, and homophobia by elevating “tenuous and marginal” passages which are in contrast to the spirit of the Bible and have debatable meanings in their original languages and contexts (Tolbert, 171).

Tolbert further explicates her position by discussing how the “special hermeneutics” found often within religious bodies are “radically ahistorical” (Tolbert, 176). In treating the Bible as transcendent in its capacity to be applied to the specific lives and needs of all individuals and communities, it must necessarily be removed from the lenses and biases of the biblical authors and their contexts (Tolbert, 176). Such a perspective consequently leads one to disregard the worldviews of antiquity that are undoubtedly pervasive in the texts and apply them to the modern world, centuries removed from the Bible’s authorship, in ways that the authors could not have foreseen and make little sense given the scientific, technological, and societal advancements that have been made (Tolbert, 177). Furthermore, such application of the texts often requires picking very small passages from a large collection of books in order to meet specific needs of today. Such passages must be removed from their contextual reading in order to be applied to a very different modern world (Tolbert, 178). Finally, Tolbert shows us that “multiple meanings” are ruled out in favor of a “single meaning” which is decided by those in institutional power (Tolbert, 180). Such treatment of clergy as authoritative “advances the pervasive and demoralizing attitude of regarding laity as passive, perpetual children” and disallows clergy from being honest with themselves or their congregants (Tolbert, 173). While such treatments of the text are well-intentioned and are undoubtedly indicative of efforts to faithfully apply the Bible to our own contexts, Tolbert reminds us that “there are no neutral interpretations” and that any treatment of the Bible’s text must be influenced by our own paradigms (Tolbert, 182). Taking these arguments into consideration, it seems obvious to me that the “special hermeneutic” is applied inconsistently and in ways that reinforce extant paradigms within a given church body, inevitably leading to damaging uses that fortify the positions of those in power, often while encouraging for oppression and discrimination.

Mary Ann Tolbert expresses well how biblical authority and the “special hermeneutic” applied to the text by many churches is not only misguided but has been historically damaging. The academy’s lenses are decidedly different and more balanced in their approach to the Bible and more honest with the reality that “Jesus of the canonical gospels expends much of his ministry on breaking down… boundaries which permitted some to claim power and superiority” (Tolbert, 177). Prevailing uses of scripture as authoritative involve selective treatment of tenuous portions of the Bible that serve to reinforce community prejudices and preserve power structures. Removing such passages from their textual, historical, and cultural contexts allows for uses which no biblical authors could have foreseen or understood and which have detrimental effects on society. Tolbert shows us how authoritative use of scripture is often at odds with overall biblical themes. The lessons of Tolbert’s perspective could be applied in ways that bridge the gap between academic and community treatment of the Bible which could augment our own experience of the text as well as create a “defense” against dangerous usage of our scripture.

Works Cited

Tolbert, Mary. “A New Teaching with Authority: A Re-evaluation of the Authority of the Bible.” In Teaching the Bible: The Discourses and Politics of Biblical Pedagogy, edited by Fernando F. Segoviov and Mary Ann Tolbert, 168 - 189. New York: Orbis Books, 1998.

Saturday, October 12, 2019

The Author of Ecclesiastes Started Off Like

intreauxspection:

(via seekinguncertainty)

Friday, October 4, 2019

How do we read the Bible?

I think the three tools I bring to Scripture most prominently are life stories, current events, and questioning/criticism.

I bring my life stories and my world to meet the text in what is most often a search for comfort. I ask how the dominant stories in my life and formation play with (by parallel or contrast) the text. This can be transformative when the comfort I find resists ways that we are taught to resist love in our lives. When I consider current events, I look for both comfort and discomfort/challenge. I try to ask how the "now" meets the stories in the text and how the text might have something to say about our now.

The third piece is informed by much of my academic career and is the piece that is transformative for me, probably because, as Rowan Williams suggests, transformation happens when our interpretations are least palatable. I try to bring historical criticism to the text and also ask how what we can glean about a historical context might mean about the ways that our characters or stories were subversive and counter-cultural in their time and how those lessons might be extrapolated. I try to ask the ways that God might be speaking to or through the characters. I also try to look for the dangerous places in the text-- the meanings I want to resist and be clear I resist when talking about the text. I want to try to look for how meanings might be read by people at different margins as well as those squarely in the center. This involves looking for who has power and lacks it in the text (and why), how this power is wielded, distributed, reinforced, and resisted. How do gender, color, class, and sexuality play out in the story-- how do roles conform or subvert? Who is given voice? In order to make sure I am being effective, I look for ways that I might be reinforcing systems, stereotypes, or harmful ideologies.

Thursday, August 29, 2019

Division in the Work of Peace

Based on: Luke 12:49-56

Delivered August 18, 2019 at Peace United Church of Christ in Santa Cruz, CA

When Damien called me earlier this week and asked if I could fill in for him today, and after I said yes, I went to the lectionary. For those of you who don’t know, the lectionary is a calendar of sorts that many churches, if not most, use to determine the scripture for Sunday worship. Without explaining too many details that many of you may not care about, it’s a three year cycle. There are 4 scripture options, one of which is a gospel reading. UCC churches don’t always stick to the lectionary, but Damien typically uses it, so I thought I would try to as well.

Now I’m up here in a robe, so as you might guess, I like the Bible. But it’s a big library of books, right? There is some stuff in there that is very approachable. Like, “love is patient, love is kind.” We all like that, right?

And then there are passages like today that start off with fire and division. My first instinct was to say, “oh, no no no no,” and preach on something else. But as often happens after my initial reactions to the text, it started to speak to me differently.

I’ll start off by saying that when I read passages like today’s, I often wish our biblical ancestors weren’t such fans of dramatic metaphor and hyperbole, but when I remember the moments of turmoil and conflict out of which some of these texts come, it’s easy to imagine how language begins to escalate.

The Gospel of Luke is written in a first century community that is divided. This Jewish community is arguing about Jesus and what his life and death means, their occupation and oppression by Roman forces, and how to live forward their religious life in the wake of the destruction of the temple, which most scholars believe this gospel was written after. The way that Luke tells Jesus’ story has to be seen in the context of that moment and its people.

Now, versions of this story exist in Mark and Matthew. Mark, the earliest writer, doesn’t talk about fire. Matthew uses the imagery of a sword. It has a little different flavor in each telling, but what seems clear is that in the wake of Jesus’ death, those who sought to bring the message forward ARGUED.

A LOT.

And it got ugly. Things felt turbulent. Everyone thought what THEY thought was the right way. Right? In some ways, the church is STILL having this fight, right?

One of the things that I love about the UCC is its theological diversity. One of the mottos the UCC has used over the years is “that all may be one.” It’s the idea that we don’t truly make change or work forward when we’re trying to make sure we all think exactly alike, but when we commit to diversity in a way that allows all of us to engage authentically and be seen in our truest, best light.

But now I’ve fast-forwarded 2,000 years.

Jesus was speaking to his own turbulent moment. To a time when the power structure wasn’t serving the people. When government and religious leaders seemed more corrupt and concerned with money than justice. When different leaders and prophets were popping up left and right, speaking to a tense population seeking security and safety in the face of a scary world. When the path forward seemed unclear and like it was a real possibility that we would all start heading down the WRONG path.

Wait, was that 2000 years ago?

I think prophecy is deep spiritual insight into human nature.

Like, many of us could not have predicted that the 2016 election would have gone the way it did. In fact, most of our established polls and institutions predicted that Hillary Clinton would be our president right now, and they were wrong.

Some of us did predicted it, though, right? Sometimes the signs of the times are written in fire right in front of us and we are unable to see it or we don’t believe people when they tell us a truth we’re not ready to hear.

And now there are 20-something candidates running for the democratic domination because there isn’t agreement on the way forward.

These are the times of change. And change can lead us to feel divided-- to be divided. It can be like cleaning a wound, but when we do, we can begin building scar tissue and building strength again.

Many of us have navigated these times of change in our personal lives, when the signs of the time become clear and the hard work, the seemingly turbulent work of change becomes necessary. Many of my LGBTQ-identifying beloveds have navigated senses of division within themselves and their lives as they have come to terms with their own truths. Some of us have navigated those divisions that come in the wake of living our truths outwardly.

Families or relationships in phases of separation or divorce experience many divisions and scars that form, heal, break open, and heal again during the process of rebuilding. During these kinds of life moments, maybe when we are separating from a partner, when we or our parents or guardians are getting divorced or separating, when loss or illness in a family leads to new kinds of tenderness and the resurfacing of old wounds… people will tell us it gets better, and intellectually, we might know this and have faith that it will. But that doesn’t necessarily change the way things are now, right?

When I was in my early twenties, I found myself in a time of personal turbulence. I was in an unhealthy relationship, I had an eating disorder, untreated depression and anxiety, and I was working and going to school full time. I ended up dropping out of college and going through and making many life changes.

Now each of us have different journeys, but at that point in my life, I felt very low. I felt divided within myself about how I was treating myself and about how my boyfriend was treating me. I felt divided in my obligations and responsibilities. I felt like my struggles and failures were dividing my family. When I dropped out of college, I think I was catering to the chaos within me. I let my depression and eating disorder consume me. I let the failure that I thought I was become me. I started to feel like that moment was the whole story.

I started working full time and tried to brush my struggles under the rug. I tried to fight my disappointment in myself and the disappointment of others and pretend everything was fine. As anyone who has struggled with eating disorders or depression knows, though, pretending doesn’t help. It may get people to leave you alone or to allow yourself to hide behind a facade, but pretending you’re okay when you’re not only makes the pain worse. Like a dying star, you can begin to collapse in on yourself. You become alone in grieving for yourself and for the person you wanted to be. You lose sight of whatever light you used to have. Like a dying star, you become self-cannibalizing until you have no more of your energy left to consume.

Ignoring the signs of the time, like I tried to do for too long, only inhibited my healing.

Turbulent times in our lives require us to do the work. Sometimes it’s only when we acknowledge our division and brokenness that we can begin rebuilding a sense of unity. We can try to ignore the signs, or we can roll up our sleeves and do the difficult stuff. We can have the tough conversations, tell the hard truths, and try to heal.

Turbulent times in our larger lives require the same. This moment in the life of this nation has been years, decades, probably centuries in the making. The division is real. And so is the work ahead of us. But as I look around this room, I know it’s the work that we are engaging in.

In my early 20s, I felt divided and doubtful. I ended relationships. I dropped out of school. I treated by body poorly.
But then I confronted my wounds. I accepted help where it was needed. Now I have a partner that I have been in a HEALTHY relationship with for a decade. I have a masters degree. I have built up systems and relationships of support that I didn’t have and couldn’t have imagined then. I’m no longer trying to live into predetermined roles; I’m trying to live into my authentic self.

Resurrection happens in Jesus, in the grandeur of the universe, and in the smallness of our own lives. It happens in the times when it feels like it’s not happening at all. When we feel like we’re arguing-- with ourself, with our spouse, with our families, with our nation, with our neighbors, with our co-workers-- and that sense of conflict can make us feel quite uneasy.

It’s doubtful that the author of Luke could have foreseen what would become of the divided spiritual movement of which he was a part. There are SO MANY reasons he couldn’t imagine what we are doing here, right now, today.

It can be hard to discern what is next in our own lives-- where this moment will take us personally or where it will take our larger world. We may not always be able to read the signs of the time... and that’s when we can look to Jesus. Despite those who would try to keep him quiet, keep him out of the synagogue, keep him away from certain members of society, he kept going out into the people, doing the work.

As is evidenced again and again in our spiritual tradition, the life of the church, and the life of the universe, resurrection happens. The explosive deaths of celestial bodies lead to opportunities for Life. Our Earth exists because of a series of deaths and explosions. When we feel divided, let’s learn to put our finger to the wind. Our moments of division serve a purpose in the greater work. It’s the movement of change and re-formation. Reformation. It’s the work of making real peace, not just quiet.

As we all continue that work of making peace in our own ways, and in all the divided places in our lives, let us remember that the work is ongoing. I’ll draw from another spiritual ancestor today in closing, St. Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.

Friday, March 1, 2019

That Bible Thing

“This reveals something I wish every Christian knew, and I say this as a deeply committed Christian myself: sometimes the Bible is wrong. It not only tells us about the wisdom and insights and experiences of our spiritual ancestors, but also contains their limited vision, their acceptance of things like slavery and the subordination of women. That’s not uniform, of course. There are also texts that proclaim the equality of men and women and forbid a Christian from having a Christian slave and so forth, but it’s all there, including mistaken notions about how the second coming will be soon.

We would escape a whole bunch of problems if only we all knew that and weren’t alarmed by it. The whole Genesis versus evolution controversy. For me, it’s not that the first chapters of Genesis are wrong, but they’re not meant to be taken literally. So, also the issue of whether women are supposed to be subordinate to men. That issue disappears if people are willing to say, “sometimes the Bible is wrong.”

So also with the texts that are quoted in opposition to same-sex behavior. Those passages, and there aren’t many, tell us what some of our spiritual ancestors thought and clearly they were wrong about that. So many conflicts in the church could be either resolved or handled in a very different way if only we didn’t have this uncritical reverence for the Bible.”

Marcus Borg (via affcath)

I am of the view that anything we love is something we should be critical of when that criticism is necessary. We discipline our children because we love them and we want them to be good people. We speak out against our government because we love our country and want it to be a good country. We speak out against the injustice in the Bible because we love our faith and want it to be a healthy, loving religion for everyone.

I sometimes feel like there is this dichotomy of fundamentalists and not. It goes both ways and I acknowledge myself trying to distance myself from the hurtful things that religious conservatives do, but I see the same thing happening on the other side. Progressives aren’t “real” Christians, we are DISREGARDING and CHERRY PICKING and justifying our sinfulness via Biblical criticism… even though I think that Biblical literalists are doing exactly the same thing.

So here’s today’s reminder that biblical literalism is a modern development, that I love the Bible and my faith just as much as my brothers and sisters who are part of the “religious right” and that I think I am doing it right just as much as they do.

I am critical of the Bible not because I want to justify my own worldviews but because I have a deep desire to get close to the real meanings and truths present within it and those truths are often times obscured by literalist interpretations and by human biases inserted into the text by its authors and translators.

Wednesday, February 6, 2019

What is Canon?

Scriptural canon is the collection of texts sanctioned by the religious governing body. For the Hebrew Scriptures, different communities accept and organize canon differently. The Protestant canon is roughly the same as the Hebrew Canon, although the books are divided and ordered differently. Roman Catholic and Ethiopic canons included additional texts. The Roman Catholic canon was based off of the Septuagint (the Greek translation) and the Ethiopic canon is the only canon to include the Book of Enoch.

Sunday, January 27, 2019

Lenses We Bring to Scripture

I think that transforming Christianity requires a continued search for new lenses and voices engaging with the text. Being aware of our own cultural and contextual influences is important to this process and can help us to uncover when our vision may be limited, but we can never fully remove our own predispositions and biases. Engaging alternative and varied voices therefore changes our own lives, perspectives, and helps us understand ourselves better, in turn bringing this varied perspective not only directly but indirectly to our interpretive work.

If our work as theologians is, in many ways, counter-systematic work of resisting cultural normativity in search of the interstices where divinity lives (which I think it is), then we should also seek lenses of resistance by asking where resistance is in our time and place (and others) to ask how their lenses might inform our search and how that search might help us to embolden active resistance in the world.

Saturday, January 19, 2019

Images of Leadership in the Hebrew Bible

Images of leadership in the biblical texts vary greatly between books and oftentimes within books. The first two books of the Bible, with focus on different time frames and different figures, can illustrate the differing of leadership figures we find within the text. Abraham, in the Book of Genesis, is willing to abuse and manipulate his wife and his concubine in order to get what he wants. His concerns as a leader are his homeland and his lineage. While Abraham is chosen by God to be patriarch, it is clear that he is incomplete and must transform in order to fill out his role. These themes repeat in Genesis as the patriarchs manipulate others and seek to continue their lineage and people. Moses, in contrast, reluctantly and violently begins his story. Moses acts as mediator between YHVH and the Hebrews through many divine encounters. He follows YHVH’s instructions and is able to liberate his people from oppression and deliver to them a legal system to form their society, but falls short of bringing them back to their promised land. While Abraham uses people in order to accomplish his goals, Moses liberates and defends his people.

When Abram, the apparent “father” of the Hebrew Nation is introduced, he is chosen by God, as the story tells us: YHVH promises Abram that YHVH “will bless [him], and make [his] name great,” further promising to bring fortune upon him and misfortune upon his enemies.(1) Abram goes to Egypt to avoid starvation, bringing his wife, Sarai, and uses her to gain better treatment. Sarai, a beautiful woman, is presented as Abram’s sister and the Pharaoh “took her for [his] wife.”(2) Calling back to this ancient people and their customs, we can recognize that Sarai, as Abram’s wife, would have been considered his property. He abuses his power society gives him over her and essentially trafficks her to the Egyptian ruler for personal gain. While we see little of how Sarai reacts to this affair and little explanation of how Pharaoh comes to learn of this deception, Abram and his wife are expelled with their wealth, offering a view of Abram and his family as nomadic herders. As Abram settles in Canaan, YHVH promises to give Abram and his lineage an expanse of land in that region (“for all the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring forever”).(3) Sarai, however, appears barren.

Perhaps we can see in the themes of barrenness present in the patriarch stories (Sarah, Rebekah) as a very real fear of a nomadic people. A wandering, herding people concerned with In-Group markers may feel that infertility threatens their people: the theme, arising in Genesis multiple times, likely marks a concern of the authoring people. However, as with the other figures who struggle with barrenness, Abram does have children and continues (or in his case, begins) the people. This begins, again, with an abuse of power (though not considered such at the time), this time by both Abram and Sarai. Sarai offers her servant, Hagar, (also considered property) to bear children for her husband. Hagar has a son, Ishmael, but in a story that may reflect origins with another tribe or histories of conflict between tribes, Ishmael, like other biblical figures, loses his claim when he (and his mother) are betrayed.

In later chapters, we see that when Abram and Sarai are chosen, they are incomplete– they are childless and must be transformed in order to have children. God gives them each an additional letter (Hebrew hei), renaming them and perhaps in this way, brings them under God’s “umbrella.” As we see in the earlier chapters of Genesis, predominantly in the “E” narratives, speech and naming is a prominent theme in creation. In naming Abraham and Sarah, God brings them under God’s care and claims them. This passage changes from referring to God as YHVH and progresses into usage of “God” (more often a translation of “Elohim” as opposed to YHVH). As the passage then reverts to the YHVH, anthropomorphic God who eats with Abraham and promises him a son by his wife, Sarah. In chapter 21, when Isaac is born, Sarah almost immediately calls for Ishmael and Hagar to be banished, which indeed they are.(4) Again Abraham, the leader of the tribe, abuses his power and sends of Hagar and his son, presumably because he now has a “better option.”

Abraham, the first of the Jewish patriarchs, begins the form for those that follow. Abraham needs to be transformed by God by naming (as does Jacob/Israel). He is portrayed as a nomadic herder, wealthy, as are those who follow. Abraham is deceptive, using and abusing others for his (and, presumably, his lineage’s) gain. He uses his wife in Egypt, uses Hagar, and then casts both Hagar and Ishmael aside. Similarly, Jacob will coerce Esau for power and his favorite wife, Rachel, will be barren (like Sarah) until she finally conceives. Perhaps in a turning from this story line, Joseph is coerced by his brothers because he is Jacob’s favorite. His brothers sell him into servitude and he no longer dwells in the family of his ancestors, but in Egypt, setting the stage for the Exodus storyline/s. Abraham is a manipulative leader, clearly willing to hurt others for his own gain and displaying ideas of people as property (as they were considered in the times these texts were written). His concerns, like those of the men who will continue his lineage, are for his tribe and their success and continuance as a people. As the stories of Genesis unfold and lead us back to Egypt, where Joseph dies with hope of his people returning to the land promised to them by God.

As Exodus begins, it illustrates that the Israelites have remained in Egypt, but are oppressed by a new Pharaoh who “did not know Joseph.”(5) In Chapter 2, we are introduced to Moses, who becomes the new leader and liberationist for the Hebrew people. Moses, although having an Egyptian name, is said to have been born of Levite lineage, qualifying him to be part of the Israelite tribe. The Egyptian king, then-ruler over the Hebrew people, is painted horribly as a ruler who not only enslaves the Israelites but then demands the murder of baby boys. When Moses reaches adulthood, he clearly has a concern for the wellbeing of his fellow Hebrew people, despite having been raised in the wealthy Egyptian family of the Pharaoh. He murders an Egyptian who is beating a Hebrew man and thereafter flees. Moses appears to be a reluctant leader who cannot help but follow the call of God. He must resist the suffering of the Hebrew people, even to the point of murder, which we might not advocate in our modern Western society, removed as it is from the death and disease that was more pervasive and on-the-surface of the ancient world. In self-exile, Moses takes on the role of shepherd, like the generations of Hebrews before. In Midian, he encounters YHVH (in the first of many divine encounters that mark his leadership) and is informed that he is to lead the Hebrews out of enslavement. Moses’ leadership involves a series of miracles/plagues, unlike the leaders who came before him. Through these miracles, done in concert with YHVH, Moses and the Hebrews escape from Egypt. Moses leads his people in their encampment, though the people are demanding of him in a way that Genesis leaders did not seem to face. He acts as mediator with YHVH, petitioning for them when they are thirsty,(6) warning them not to look at YHVH,(7) giving them God’s law,(8) and defending them after they formed a golden calf (whether as another god or a throne to their god).(9) Moses, the leader of the Israelites in Exodus, is liberator and mediator.

Moses begins his journey hesitantly and violently, killing a man in defense of a people he seemed never to publicly claim kinship with. After self-exile and an encounter with YHVH, he returns to Egypt to free the Hebrew slaves from an oppressive ruler. While Moses accomplishes this task and is able to keep the Hebrew people together in encampments for the next 40 years by acting as mediator between the people and YHVH and delivering the Law for the Hebrews to follow in order to live into their covenant; He does not ultimately bring them back to their homeland.

Abraham, the model patriarch, and Moses, the liberator of the Hebrews, show changing views of leadership between Genesis and Exodus. Abraham, concerned with building and preserving a lineage in covenant, uses those beneath him, often abusively so, in order to accomplish his goal of building his people and populating the promised land. His lineage will use other forms of manipulation and struggle with barrenness/threat to their people. When Genesis closes, this formerly shepherd/nomadic people arrive in Egypt to survive. As Exodus begins, Moses is reluctant to embrace his heritage but does so in violent defense of another Hebrew man. He flees until a divine encounter. Henceforth Moses acts as mediator between YHVH and the Hebrews, defending them at times from YHVH’s wrath and informing them of YHVH’s will. With miraculous powers, Moses and YHVH help the Hebrew people escape oppression and come into their own identity. Moses delivers the covenant law (perhaps a new way to guard their lineage and tibe) and continues to defend the Hebrews when YHVH becomes angry with them. While both leadership models are strongly rooted in an ethnic identity and its formation and protection, Abraham seems to abuse those beneath him (“making the hard decisions”) in order to walk his path, while Moses liberates his people from an abusive power and protects them both from government and, at times, YHVH.

1. Wayne A. Meeks, The Harpercollins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version, with the Apocryphal/deuterocanonical Books (New York, NY: HarperOne, 1993), 20.
2. Wayne A. Meeks, The Harpercollins Study Bible, 21.
3. Wayne A. Meeks, The Harpercollins Study Bible, 21.
4. Wayne A. Meeks, The HarperCollins Study Bible, 31.
5. Wayne A. Meeks, The HarperCollins Study Bible, 79.
6. Wayne A. Meeks, The HarperCollins Study Bible, 110.
7. Wayne A. Meeks, The HarperCollins Study Bible, 115.
8. Wayne A. Meeks, The HarperCollins Study Bible, 115-135.
9. Wayne A. Meeks, The HarperCollins Study Bible, 138.

Works Cited

Meeks, Wayne A. The Harpercollins Study Bible: New Revised Standard Version, with the Apocryphal/deuterocanonical Books. New York, NY: HarperOne, 1993.

Thursday, January 17, 2019

Genesis

I think the Genesis accounts demonstrate different conceptions of God, although trying to make a linear story from that is difficult for me. I can see in the text roots from polytheistic people, people who understood their God to be quite physical and anthropomorphic, and people who saw their God’s power as more removed and perhaps privileged speech and naming. I love that all of these roots are still in the text; in that sense I think it shows how people wanting to add “another way” in later years still honored the tradition before them and sought to avoid stamping out what we might consider contradictory. That these early authors and collectors/protectors of these traditions sought to maintain the multiplicity of viewpoints is promising to me for the future of religion. Perhaps we can understand and experience God in diverse, contradictory ways, and still come together in worship and community.

Wednesday, January 2, 2019

So I've Started a New Project

I'm writing a book. I'm calling it "The Heretic's Bible" and it is a telling of Bible stories... or maybe a translation? It's something. I'm a few chapters into Genesis so far...

I think it's like, "Bible stories for a modern mind" or something.

Trying to figure out how to publish and whether starting online might be good? I dunno. I need to think on that some more.

Anyway, I am starting with the Torah and may do the Gospels after that...

Tuesday, May 29, 2018

Women Preaching

"In the New Testament story of Luke-Acts Anna and Mary speak as prophets, as do the four daughters of Philip (Acts 21:9). Mary learns from Jesus the teacher (Luke 10), and Priscilla teaches. Yet, when the women face the empty tomb and embrace the mission to tell the disciples what they have seen, ‘the story seemed like nonsense, and they refused to believe them.’ Women are taught by Jesus and speak for Jesus. They pray and they prophecy. Yet, even so visibly embraced, welcomed, challenged, and given the task of proclamation, the world will not listen."

— Turner and Hudson, “To be Saved From Silence” in Saved from Silence: Finding Women’s Voice in Preaching (St. Louis: Chalice Press) 1999, 88.

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

That Bible Thing

We would escape a whole bunch of problems if only we all knew that and weren’t alarmed by it. The whole Genesis versus evolution controversy. For me, it’s not that the first chapters of Genesis are wrong, but they’re not meant to be taken literally. So, also the issue of whether women are supposed to be subordinate to men. That issue disappears if people are willing to say, “sometimes the Bible is wrong.”

So also with the texts that are quoted in opposition to same-sex behavior. Those passages, and there aren’t many, tell us what some of our spiritual ancestors thought and clearly they were wrong about that. So many conflicts in the church could be either resolved or handled in a very different way if only we didn’t have this uncritical reverence for the Bible.”

—

Marcus Borg (via affcath)

(Source: religiondispatches.org, via 2ndhalfoflife)

I am of the view that anything we love is something we should be critical of when that criticism is necessary. We discipline our children because we love them and we want them to be good people. We speak out against our government because we love our country and want it to be a good country. We speak out against the injustice in the Bible because we love our faith and want it to be a healthy, loving religion for everyone.

I sometimes feel like there is this dichotomy of fundamentalists and liberals. It goes both ways and I acknowledge myself trying to distance myself from the hurtful things that religious conservatives do, but I see the same thing happening on the other side. Progressives aren’t “real” Christians, we are DISREGARDING and CHERRY PICKING and justifying our sinfulness via Biblical criticism… even though I think that Biblical literalists are doing exactly the same thing.

So here’s today’s reminder that biblical literalism is a modern development, that I love the Bible and my faith just as much as my brothers and sisters who are part of the “religious right” and that I think I am doing it right just as much as they do.

I am critical of the Bible not because I want to justify my own worldviews but because I have a deep desire to get close to the real meanings and truths present within it and those truths are often times obscured by literalist interpretations and by human biases inserted into the text by its authors and translators.

Thursday, February 23, 2017

The Prologue of the Fourth Gospel: Wisdom, Word, and Unity

The Fourth Gospel begins with one of the most beautifully written passages in the whole of the Bible and sets the tone for the encounter with Jesus. Using language laden with symbol and scriptural parallel, the authors of the Fourth Gospel paint a picture of Jesus as connected to God in a uniquely revelatory way. As Genesis begins with the Word bringing life, so does the Fourth Gospel. However, Jesus brings life not as a creative force, but as revelation of life’s potential fullness and the divine connectedness that can make such expanded life possible. In understanding the “Word,” the scriptural parallels that convey the author’s understanding of Jesus, and the Jewish context of the Gospel, we can bring out the mystical meaning of the text that offers expanded life to those who can widen their circles of compassion and seek the divine within themselves. The Prologue also hints at the tensions and real-world issues that challenged the community from which this text comes: tension with their synagogue community, whom they feel wronged by and whom they considered suppressors of the Jesus narrative that missed the truth manifest in the life of Jesus. The Fourth Gospel is a unique theological perspective not offered by the synoptic authors and often missed by modern Gentile interpretation.

The Prologue’s most obvious literary parallel is with that of the first chapter of Genesis. Both documents begin with the words, “In the beginning.” The author, calling Jesus the “Word,” connects him to the voice that speaks creation in Genesis. John Ashton argues that “creation is indeed one of [the Prologue’s] themes, but it would be closer to the mark to say that it is a hymn about revelation that culminates in incarnation— the incarnation of the revealing logos” (Ashton, 528). I would like to suggest that Ashton is indeed correct about the revelatory nature of Jesus in the gospel, but that Jesus revealed not incarnation but the fused nature of God with Humanity. In calling to the books of Proverbs and Genesis, the author fuses the identity of Jesus with the feminine Wisdom, God-as-verb, and the scriptures of the Jewish tradition and their ongoing capacity for life-giving creativity.

While many Christian circles emphasize the use of “Word” as a sign of Jesus’ fulfillment of scripture, such a suggestion is a misleading representation of the Prologue. The Greek word Logos, translated as “Word,” is “the divine principle of reason that gives order to the universe and links the human mind to the mind of God” (Meeks, 2013). This mystical understanding of divine connection is expanded upon and is a major theme of the Fourth Gospel. Jesus uses “I Am” sayings (the divine name of God) and is called “light” (a common symbol of God in scripture) throughout the gospel narrative, two of the most obvious connections made between the identities of Jesus and God. While such symbols are often interpreted as evidence of incarnation, given the signs of the Jewishness of the author and the consideration that the community from which the text came was primarily Jewish-identifying, it makes more sense to give precedence to a Jewish explanation of such language. The Jewish mystical tradition offers an alternative paradigm that more aptly encompasses the themes and symbols used in the Gospel.

Continuing to dissect the “Word” identified in the prologue, we can further delve into its meaning for the theology put forth by the author. Dabar, the Hebrew corollary of logos, “had power to shape the world, to reveal the presence of God, to call people to a heightened sense of selfhood, a heightened consciousness” (Spong, 44). Again, the Hebrew understanding of the word supports an understanding which sees Jesus not simply as preexistent, but intimately connected to the mind of God and revealer of the presence of God. Jesus’ work “has two aspects, life and light, and these correspond to the two facets of God’s work: creation and revelation” (Ashton, 528). This revelation through Jesus, as the author will show through sign and symbol throughout the rest of the Gospel, breaks down the barriers between human life and the ultimately life-giving light of God, enfolding us into the creative verb, into the oneness of God. Jesus represents the height of human potential. “…In him was life, and the life was the light of all people” (1:4) (Meeks, 2013). In essence: what is manifest in the person of Jesus, the divine quality of selfless love and a deep connection to God, is within each of us and is the ultimate truth toward which Jesus’ life points and which is revealed through his person in the Fourth Gospel. In Jesus, Wisdom, Word, and God are flesh. The boundary, the distance we perceive between God and ourselves, dissipates.

The narrative form of the Prologue calls to Proverbs and parallels the Word with Wisdom. Wisdom, in the Jewish tradition, is feminine. I believe that this connection offers yet another barrier to be broken: the conception of gender. The author here brings together the masculine Word with the feminine Wisdom, bringing their sentiments into a singular form. While Jesus may have been male, the light, the divinity which he reveals, encompasses the feminine. The author of John challenges us to rid ourselves of our dualistic ideas regarding divinity and life and to open ourselves to the reality of a God that is “all and more,”— a God that brings fullness of life and is yet beyond our capacity, unboxed. “God must be understood as a verb, calling, informing and shaping us and all creation into being all that we were created to be” (Spong, 57).

Without considering the narrative form of the Prologue and the claims made by these connections, “we are not in the world of the Fourth Gospel” and we miss the intent of our author (Ashton, 249). Bultmann proposes that “Jesus does not reveal the mysteries of God or man or the cosmos, but one thing and one thing only: that he is the revealer” (Bultmann in Ashton, 53). Jesus does not reveal these “noun” qualities— literalistic understandings— of God. Jesus does not draw a map of the universe or the pathway to Heaven, nor does he box God in an easily digestible way. Instead, the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel displays the life-giving power of God by continually destroying the barriers we’ve constructed and living in the reality of God. This light, this God within, cannot be extinguished or overcome.

Opening our eyes to these ways of interpreting the Gospel allows us to adopt a non-literalistic framework that compels us to see the Fourth Gospel as primarily symbolic in nature. Kasemann asserts that “… John is ‘the first Christian to use the earthly life of Jesus merely as a backdrop for the Son of God proceeding through the world of man and as the scene of the inbreaking of the heavenly glory’” (Kasemann in Ashton, 72). Indeed the author’s goal in storytelling is to offer us a transcendent truth beyond the narrative creations of his Gospel. By drawing from the Genesis creation narrative and the Proverbs Wisdom, we are offered a clearly nonliteral lens through which to find a theology that breaks down our constructs of God and asks us to seek God within ourselves.

While this message is appealing to our modern Christian ears, the evidence in the Prologue is clear: the Johannine community was rejected by their parent Jewish community. The author tells us that “his own people did not accept him” (1:11, Meeks, 2014). Despite the reality that the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel continues to pour out compassion and love even through his crucifixion, the Johannine authors clearly feel betrayed and hurt by their Jewish brothers and sisters whose “darkness” it seems tried to overcome the light of the Jesus story. Throughout the Gospel we find an unfortunate dichotomy drawn between “the Jews” and the followers of Jesus, who were also decidedly Jewish, although the text does much to suggest that Judaism need not be a qualifier for the path of Jesus. We can see, however, the Jewishness of the text and the flaws of a deeply hurt population whose community rejected their deeply-held convictions. With the distance we have from the time that the document was written, we can see that the Johannine community, while at odds with the orthodoxy of their synagogue, was none the less a Jewish community who certainly did not reject the whole of Judaism. We see believers hurt by their friends and family who react in human ways that have had a damaging impact on Christian relationship with our Jewish brothers and sisters and has led to anti-Semitism and an unfair portrait of the Jewish faith.

Despite the flaws of the author/s, they still convey a deeply Jewish identity and interpretive framework. In 1:17 of the Prologue, the Word is paralleled with Mosaic Law. As the Law entered the Jewish narrative in a particular time and place, so did Jesus (the Word). Jesus is clear that his glory must manifest only at the proper hour. An author without Jewish connection and respect for the Jewish tradition would certainly not draw a connection between Jesus and the paramount figure of Judaism. Jesus is, however, continually wrapped into the trappings of scriptural figures. It is impossible to reject Judaism and interpret the Fourth Gospel.

The Fourth Gospel’s Prologue offers a unique Christology and an interpretive framework often missed by modern readers, ignorant of the Jewish themes present in the text. Using language that overflows with layered symbolic meaning, the authors of the Fourth Gospel unveil a manifestly connected Jesus in whom is offered a pathway to seek the divine. The Prologue connects Jesus to the Genesis creation narrative, to the Wisdom of the book of Proverbs, and presents through him the great “I Am,” the light that exists within us and was revealed through the life of Jesus— a life overflowing with love and interpreted symbolically through the framework of the Hebrew Scriptures. Jesus shows us a God that is in us and yet beyond. Connecting with the spirit of God, living aligned with the holy, we approach oneness with the totality; we break artificial, constructed barriers; we become part of God in a new and unique way. The Jesus of the Fourth Gospel offers us a God that is all and more and through which we can find the all and more within ourselves.