Who goes up and who goes down?

A recent Facebook post reflected on the passage in Isaiah 10:12-15 that warns us against trying to exalt ourselves. In the NASB, it reads as follows;

How you have fallen from heaven,
O star of the morning, son of the dawn!
You have been cut down to the earth,
You who have weakened the nations!
But you said in your heart,
‘I will ascend to heaven;
I will raise my throne above the stars of God,
And I will sit on the mount of assembly
In the recesses of the north.
‘I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;
I will make myself like the Most High.’
Nevertheless you will be thrust down to Sheol,
To the recesses of the pit.

(Incidentally, I’m inclined to use the NASB because it seems to do a better job of preserving word order than the NIV).

On commenting on Mormonism, the Facebook poster commented, “It is kind of a problem when the goal of your religion is the first sin of Satan.”

This reminded me of a similar passage in Romans10:6-8, which was written some 700 years later. Reading the Isaiah passage again, I think the two passages have something to say to each other (by way of complement, not rebuttal).

But the righteousness based on faith speaks as follows: “DO NOT SAY IN YOUR HEART, ‘WHO WILL ASCEND INTO HEAVEN?’ (that is, to bring Christ down), or ‘WHO WILL DESCEND INTO THE ABYSS?’ (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).” But what does it say? “THE WORD IS NEAR YOU, IN YOUR MOUTH AND IN YOUR HEART”—that is, the word of faith which we are preaching...

I think that one of the issues that Paul is tilting at is unhealthy speculation about who will go up and who will go down. Another way of putting it is that Paul is urging us to avoid complicated schemes for allotting people to heaven or hell.

An important inference from this is that the Christian life ought to be focused on the here-and-now because the Word is here and now. That doesn't mean we should lose all concern for "eternal destinies", but rather they should not be our principal occupation. If we live by faith today, then we can rest assured that God will take care of tomorrow. And that applies to the rest of the human race, too.



Paul's ellipses are even more intriguing ("…(that is, to bring Christ down)"...). My reading is that Paul says something like "don't try to bring Christ down from heaven, and don't try to raise him up from the dead". Why not? Because God has already brought Christ down from heaven and raised him up from the dead.



This is of principal relevance to Paul's Gospel of Grace, because it's not our efforts that either bring Christ down or raise him up. These are the works of God, and it is our prerogative to live in the works that God has already finished (see Ephesians 2:10).



Paul previously argues that Christians are also already buried and raised from the dead, because they are "in Christ" (Romans 6:4-9). Like the resurrection of Christ, this is not something that we achieve by “trying”, but a work of God. The Christian life does require effort; however, it’s not an effort to secure our eternal destiny, or even to bring Christ into our present circumstances, but the effort to live out the (already secured) resurrection-life in our here-and-now. In other words, it's the effort required to align what we do to the reality of the situation that we find ourselves in, by the Grace of God.



Contrast this with the warning from Isaiah. In Isaiah the "Star of the Morning" tried to raise himself to heaven, rather than live by faith in God. The consequences worked out in exactly the opposite direction to those desired.



So, Isaiah and Paul unite in urging us to put our faith in God, rather than trying to exalt ourselves to Heaven. Our prerogative is not to try to lift ourselves up, or to speculate on who will go down, but to live by faith in the circumstances that God has put us in.

Restaurants without music, and Other Hen's Teeth

I hate hearing recorded music in Restaurants, Pubs or other eateries.

No, really, I hate it.

It makes me feel very uncomfortable and it seems to shut down my mental ability to initiate and sustain a conversation. My family think I'm weird, which is a sure sign that I'm in a tiny minority. That's OK, but I would like to be able to find that tiny minority of Restaurants that cater for my preferences and play no music. Yes, no music at all. Zero. What blessed relief!

I have found one - the sublime refreshment rooms at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The decor and ambience would render it a pleasure to drink molten lead but, thankfully, the victuals on offer are infinitely more palatable.

I thought I found another - the New Queen pub near Ringwood, Dorset but when, after a satisfying pie and beer, I congratulated the management on the brave stance it had taken against the rising tide of sound pollution, I was informed that the CD player was broken. It was an unintended coincidence for which I was most heartily grateful, but the prospect of the inevitable repair or replacement to the blasted machine would effectively deter me from ever returning.

This evening, my family and I sat down to an evening meal in Istanbul, which I anticipated with relish. I had hoped to savor the local cuisine in a genuinely indigenous setting, but then the patron decided to impose some globalized, generic Kenny Gee jazz on us by turning on the CD player after we had taken our seats. This produced in me a very gloomy mood, that prompted much chiding from my intimates. As the food had already been ordered, I was instructed not to spoil the evening by inviting a confrontation with the waiters, management, other diners present and, as far as I know, the entire population of Europe and Asia combined.

I would have loved to have listened to the wood fire crackling in the grate and the quiet murmur of the other patrons' conversations. But no, I had to endure some pre-recorded saxophony that I could easily have experienced in a car-park lift in Luton. I began to look forward to the trams rumbling outside the window for some relief, but half a bottle of red provided at least some degree of anaesthetic.

I have no idea why music is considered compulsory. Who wrote the rule? I know most peoples' experiences vary between indifference and enjoyment, but I'm not wired that way. I don't hate music either (I'm a competent hobby musician). I would just like to be asked.

And when my family tells me that I'm not in charge, I try (and usually fail) to tell them in my most non-confrontational voice that, actually, as the one paying the bill, I am.

The Church of the Holy Sephulcre

Recently, we visited the Church of the Holy Sephulcre in Jerusalem. Standing under the central dome, my wife commented that the place did nothing for her faith, and she asked me how I viewed it.

I can understand her perspective; centuries of tradition had overlaid the unadorned events of Christ’s passion with gold leaf. My wife was also mindful of the shameful fistfights that periodically break out amongst the priests and monks who share the church, usually because someone moved a chair, or left a door open.

Even so, if I were to sum up my feelings towards the tawdry hag of the edifice, it would be something not far removed from love. This might come as a bit of a shock to those who desire (probably rightly) to strip back the accumulation of tradition so that they can behold the un-guilded Jesus of the Gospels, but what I see in it is an allegory of the True Church – the spiritual building that God has built in the life of the community of believers.

Just like the Christian community, the building is in parts beautiful, in parts dilapidated; in parts light and airy, and in parts dark and oppressive. Some of its limbs are blind alleys, like the Chapel of the Invention of the Cross, and there are some corners that seem forever locked away. What explanations there are, are written in foreign language (for us English monolinguals), which is an alarmingly accurate parallel to how the True Church must appear to the uninitiated.

Looking up at the main dome

By far the most enchanting example is the story of the immovable ladder. It appears that some time before 1852, someone put up a wooden stepladder against one of the windows over the entrance, possibly to give it a bit of a clean. Unfortunately for the ladder’s owner, it was up there when the current Status Quo was enforced by the City Authorities, in which the custody of the church building was primarily assigned to the joint care of the Eastern Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, and Roman Catholic Churches. Doors and window ledges were deemed common ground and, to this day, no one has dared remove the ladder for fear of offending one of the other joint owners. How many of our modern traditions are still in place for exactly the same reasons?

Like the Church of the Holy Sephulcre, we have all overlaid our cultural expressions on the Gospel. My own faith tradition is rather Spartan and cerebral; we don’t like bells and smells and we tend to shun ritual. One of our particular failings, of which I’m becoming acutely aware, is that we have almost no idea of community, and no clue about how to create or sustain one. So, this is how I (and we) tend to view Jesus – as a plainly clad, solitary ascetic, who feels at home in the desert and concerns himself with deep theological meditations.

I think there is an aspect of Jesus that fits that description, but I miss the aspects that don’t. The picture that emerges from the Gospels is that though Jesus was radically different, he was still embedded in his community, and that means he would have joined in with the community life of a first century Jewish peasant, including weddings, funerals, festivals, and all the cultural expressions that came with them. Jesus was circumcised, and observed the rites; if he had not been he would not have had the free access to the Temple that the Gospels describe. My vision of Jesus as the lonely theologian is sadly skewed.

My point is that it seems unfair to accuse others of overlaying their cultural expressions onto the image of Jesus, when I (and we) subconsciously do the same. In any case, why deny the Orthodox or Catholics an expression of Christ within their own cultural vernacular, including the bells, smells and gold leaf? As in all things, I don’t think we have to embrace the whole to receive the good, and I think there is much good in these traditions that would benefit me in my devotions.

As I looked up into the central dome of the Church, I came to another realization. Say what you will about whether the Church’s cultural overlays had obscured Christ, but the fact remained that he was still there. In fact, he was there in the highest place, gazing down from the apex of the dome, so high that you almost had to break your neck to see it. Below him were the twelve apostles, and beneath them, set into the apexes of the four arches that supported the dome were the titles of the four Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

The community of Christians might not be united in everything it does, but it unites under the image of Christ, and under the scriptures that we now call the Gospels. What disunity there is amongst us usually comes from a perceived threat to this image, not because we want to supplant this image with something else.

If the image of Christ, and the message of the Gospels give shape to the heavens above us, then the Church of the Holy Sephulcre also gives meaning to the ground below. For, as far as we can tell from the archaeological record, these were the very stones that Jesus walked on as he went to the cross. I don’t know, and I don’t think anyone can tell for sure if this was the exact spot where his cross was posted into the ground, or if his lifeless body was prepared for burial on that exact stone slab, or if that tiny cave was the actual site of his burial and resurrection. But I believe that these stones, or stones like them, are the silent witness to these events.

The crucial thing for me is that the message of the Gospels is not some theoretical philosophy that has perpetuated through the centuries because it sounds like a good idea. It is something that is grounded in real events, and in real time, even if subsequent generations (especially mine) have struggled to interpret it within their own cultural context.

So, like the Church of the Holy Sephulchre, what I see is Christ himself in his Passion, seen and interpreted by the diverse peoples of the world and celebrated through their own cultures and traditions. The overlays are undeniable, but what is more undeniable is that they all emanate and radiate from this One Man and the one Gospel that He inspired.

You could, conceivably, remove the tradition from Christ just as you could demolish the building (which is not something that I would recommend). However, the Gospel will remain and perhaps even inspire a new structure with dimensions and decorative overlays that we could scarcely visualize. What you cannot do is remove Christ. It would be like trying to remove the foundations from under the building and expect it to remain undamaged – the traditions are built on Christ, not the other way round.

Skeptics may point to the disunity in the shabby, old edifice that we call the Church as evidence of its failure to connect to God. To an extent, they are right. Too often we have broken out in fistfights over apparent trivialities. However, the Church of the Holy Sephulchre reminds me that, whatever cultural tradition we Christians come from, Christ is beneath our feet and over our heads, and it is ours to live and worship in the space between.

Hi, I'm Zelph and I'm a Modernist

This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God

(1 John 4:2)

If you find the Bible hard to read, it’s probably because you are a modernist.

This might be something of a surprise to you. You didn’t choose modernism, you didn’t convert to modernism, and you didn’t apostatize from anti-modernism (whatever that may be). Yet, you are a modernist, nonetheless.

Another thing you may not know is that modernism has a history. You probably think that people all through the ages think just like you. However, that’s actually not the case, and the fact that you have assumed it is a tell-tale sign that you are a modernist. Professors of the History of Philosophy put the genesis of modernism around the time of the French Revolution. From there, it took a grip on the Western World, and it’s fruit is found in you, whether you willed it or not. 

The Bible, as you probably know, was written before the French Revolution, which means that it is not modernist. It has an entirely different frame of reference, which is why "us" moderns have such difficulty with it. It’s as if we have to un-learn our modernism, or at least recognize it for what it is, to understand it. That’s also a sad indictment of what gets taught in church. If anything, churches need to teach people how to understand the Bible, and to do so, they need to expose our inherited modernist tendencies so that we can see them for what they are.

So, what is modernism, and why does it present such difficulties to people who want to understand the Bible?

In a nutshell, modernism tends to look to the future (well, the present, actually) with the belief that we are evolving into something better. Christianity, by contrast, tends to look to the past, to see what has happened “in the flesh”, as John puts it.

A more complete picture is well painted in an interview with Thomas Oden in 1990, who described modernism as the "idolatry of the new". His interview is reproduced in Christianity Today here. Oden, defines modernism thus;

Modernity is a period, a mindset, and a malaise. The period begins with the French Revolution in 1789. The mindset is that ethos reflected by an elitist intellectual class of "change agents" positioned in universities, the press, and in influential sectors of the liberal church. This elite continually touts the tenets of modernity, whose four fundamental values are

• moral relativism, which says that what is right is dictated by culture, social location, and situation,
• autonomous individualism, which assumes that moral authority comes essentially from within,
• narcissistic hedonism, which focuses on egocentric personal pleasure,
• and reductive naturalism, which reduces what is reliably known to what one can see, hear, and empirically investigate.

The malaise of modernity is related to the rapidly deteriorating influence of these four central values between roughly 1955 and 1985.

(I reformatted Oden’s list to  “bullet points” in an attempt to make them easier to digest)

Oden goes on to say that a Post-Modern is someone who “…has both seriously entered into the assumptions of modernity and transcended them by disillusionment.”

Yes folks, the ultimate destination of modernism, if we start to think about it, is disillusionment. Which means that if you haven’t thought about it much yet, you’re not a post-modern quite yet.

The second item in Oden’s list caught my eye. It probably describes “us” more accurately than we’d like to think. How many Disney movies have taught our kids to “trust their heart”?

Some people take it to the extreme. They argue that, if moral authority comes essentially from within, then they have a right to judge God, based on whether they like or dislike what they see God doing.

Atheists, of course, take God right out of the equation. Some of this might be rationally thought out (a position that I have some sympathy for), but much folk atheism is simply a visceral dislike of any moral authority that is higher than the individual (a position that I don’t). The latter group has judged God, and found Him wanting. That’s because they are modernists.

A symptom of modernism in believers it their tendency to remold the Gospel in an attempt to make people feel comfortable with it. The “I’m a Mormon ads” do this superbly. They say, effectively “You don’t have to be American, or religious, to be a Mormon, you just have to be normal.” Believers of all types and stripes will also say things like “I know it’s true because it feels true within my heart”. That's because they are modernists, too.

I’ve been on-line with Mormons on and off for some time. I see some profound difficulties with the origins and ethos of Mormonism, especially with its colorful founder, Joseph Smith. He set the agenda for Mormonism, and Mormonism is stuck with it until it becomes something that is not Mormonism.

When I start talking with Mormons, I find that some of them also share these concerns. Even so, some have argued that what a dead Prophet may or may not have said is not important (see the commandments to practice polygamy, for example) – it’s what Mormons believe now that is important.

Maybe I missed the memo about what a Prophet, Seer and Revelator is supposed to do (something other than make known the eternal and everlasting mystery of God, apparently), but it seems that modern Mormonism has no time for him. Joseph Smith does not feature in the “I’m a Mormon” campaign. Why not? It seems to me that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (which he founded) is trying modernism on for size. So, what’s driving their agenda here; an everlasting and eternal revelation of God, or the spirit of the times? My vote is with the latter.

But, the Mormons are not the only crowd to appeal to modernism. I’ve seen it too, in my denomination and in previous churches of which I have been a member.

Consider this; when someone gets up in church to give their testimony (life-story), they usually talk about how they became a Christian. These life-stories are usually interesting and challenging, but they typically affirm modernism by re-stating that it is what God is doing now in my life, that is important. The modernist might react to this by saying “that’s a nice experience for you, but what possible relevance is it to me?”

Contrast this with Stephen’s testimony in Acts Chapter 7. He’s on trial, and the words he chooses to say will determine if he lives or dies. Does he say something like “I asked Jesus to come into my life, and he made me into a better person”? No. Stephen gives a history lecture to the people holding the rocks. It’s only when the stones are going to fly that Stephen finally tells them what it means to him.

You see, Stephen, like the first Christians and authors of the New Testament is not a modernist. He does not evaluate the Gospel by what it means to him, but by what God has done “in the flesh” in history. It only means something to him because he sees himself within that history; a history that calls both him and his interrogators to account. We are not told of the state of Stephen’s inner state of mind, because Luke (the probable author of Acts) considered it to be something of an irrelevance.The critical point here, is that Stephen is not looking into his own heart; he is looking beyond himself (to Jesus Christ, specifically) and that is why he is not a modernist.

I don’t think I have the authoritative take on modernism, or on Christianity, for that matter. However, I do believe that Christians ought to be mindful of modernism, and they should not confuse it with the Christian Gospel, which it is not (as Oden’s list demonstrates).

Perhaps the best way to approach this is to ask “what is the Christian response”? I would say that the Christian response should not be to focus on the (supposed) impact of God on the inner workings of my heart. That would be to affirm modernism, and before you know it, everybody is affirming the leadings of their own hearts, and we are left isolated, alone and vulnerable. 

No, the Christian response ought to be to declare what God has done in “the flesh”, especially in the life, death and resurrection of His Son. That is certainly where the focus of the Bible lies, and modernists will search in vain about how it supports their agenda.

This is where John wants to lead us. It is a place where we can no longer say “I believe in an [imaginary] Jesus because he has appeared in my heart”, but a place where we affirm, with John, that he has appeared “in the flesh”. Crucially, Christianity looks beyond the self of the believer, and this is Good News because we have a redeemer who is not dependent on our efforts to make Him "true".

Nothing you or I will do, say or feel will change this Jesus of the Flesh, contrary to the ‘gospel’ of modernism. God forgive us for ever believing otherwise.

The ferocious zeal of God

“What prepares you for that?” asked my wife, in tears, after the surgeon had left us alone in the ward.

It was Wednesday morning and she had been admitted to hospital on the Monday with excruciating abdominal pains. The diagnosis had raised the possibility of cancer. She was not ready to die.

You see it in other people. You hear about it when it is someone else. But, no, nothing prepares you when it is your own mortality that stands up to you and slaps you in the face.

She was terrified. I was scared, but at least it wasn’t my body that had threatened to kill me. I decided to read the Bible. There was a Gideon’s Bible in the bedside cabinet (thankyou Gideon’s), so I opened it and found Psalm 23. I tried to read out loud, but the words stuck in my throat. In between monumental pauses, I managed to croak and stumble to the end. It must have been the worst reading heard in human history ever, and my voice probably conveyed more fear than faith to her at this time.

The LORD is my shepherd;
         I shall not want.
He makes me to lie down in green pastures;
         He leads me beside the still waters.
He restores my soul;
         He leads me in the paths of righteousness
         For His name’s sake.
        
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
         I will fear no evil;
         For You are with me;
         Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.
        
 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;
         You anoint my head with oil;
         My cup runs over.
 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
         All the days of my life;
         And I will dwell in the house of the LORD
         Forever.

As I came to the closing lines, I saw something that I had not seen before. This was not a Psalm about dying; it was a Psalm about living, even in the face of death.

This week, when I waited with Janna as they tested and scanned her, deciding the best course of action for surgery, I have had the privilege of spending much of my day thinking and reading. I read an entire book that I had been recently given, and on the Wednesday I got through two thirds of the Book of Isaiah. I earnestly believe I did not do it as an escape. I did it because our dire circumstances forced me to engage the reality of the situation that we had been thrown into. 

I grew angry at the mindless pap that the television churned out. Its voice was void and empty and unable to reach into our lives. The glass screen said it all. It presented a rigid wall between its imperious pontifications and the flesh and blood of our trembling lives. It existed to project its sound and vision onto us, but it had nothing to say. It could not touch us. The gods of the 21^st century western world were exposed in their impotence.

The Mater Hospital, where Janna ended up, was founded on a Catholic tradition, and it included an unadorned Chapel, where I whiled away some of the hours during Janna’s surgery. In Janna’s ward, and probably every other, there hung a small, stylized crucifix over the window. Here was a God whom I could worship; one that had entered into our humanity, to suffer and die that we might live. Unlike the proud gods of the television, sitting behind their hermeneutically sealed glass screen, this God not only touched our humanity, but humbled himself to come right into it. This God then picked up and carried away the things that contend against our humanity, even death itself, taking them into his own body and nailing them to the cross where they died.

This thought infuriated me, and it still does. It was that same feeling of frustration as I read Isaiah. My knowledge of Hebrew is, to be generous, rudimentary. However, I know enough to know that our English Translations struggle to convey not just the technicalities of the text, but also their beauty and raw power. In Isaiah 1:2, the prophet declares “Hear, o heavens; give ear, o earth; for the LORD has spoken”. It took me a whole evening the week before Janna’s emergency to read three words in the Hebrew of the Dead Sea Scrolls on-line, and I was amazed at the musicality of its native language. Yet, I could not hear it well. I did not have the tongue to annunciate the words. I determined to learn more Hebrew, so I could more fully appreciate those verses that so tantalized me.

Yet, there was something else that was tantalizing me. I could sense it like a giant wave building in the ocean. I could not see or hear it clearly, and the other waves disguised its presence, but I sensed it was there. I can only describe it as the ferocious zeal of God.

I could see glimpses of it in Psalm 23, and in the voice of the prophet. I could see it in the image of the crucified man over the window. I could see it in the kindness of our family and friends as they offered their love and support. God, whom had called the cosmos into being with His indomitable Word, was filled with a ferocious zeal for our living. He was committed to our living in a way that we could only faintly sense. We can hardly assemble the language to describe it. It was this ferocious zeal of His that had called us into being, and this same zeal had given us the capacity to surprise Him. This same ferocious zeal compelled Him to enter into our flesh and blood existence, and to do whatever was necessary, at whatever cost, to secure our living. 

And it was not simply an existence that He brought about for us, but true living. God’s single-bloody-minded and whole-hearted commitment to our living is not a religion, or a set of parameters in a mathematical equation, nor even the certainty that comes from accurate or reliable predictions. It is nothing less than life itself; life in chaos and uncertainty; life in which choices make a real difference; life in defiance of death, which seeks constantly to subdue, stultify and cow us.

It’s the Gospel of Grace, but in a context that we rarely get to experience. Janna’s reaction to the Surgeon’s bad news was perfectly natural; “Why me?” She quickly recoiled at the thought. She was humble enough to know that the flip-side to this question was “Why not?” The Gospel of Grace tells us that we don’t pre-qualify for God’s love; we cannot earn it; we cannot make ourselves ready for it. We cannot be prepared for it. Like the baby entering into the world through a borrowed manger, God’s life invades our lives in unexpected ways, whether we deserve it or not; whether we are ready for it or not; whether we are prepared or not. Why? So that He is vindicated in all He does. So, if He deigns to act on our living in ways that seem best to Him, why should He also not act on our passing in the same way?

This, of course, is nothing new. The ancients knew that their lives were held in the hands of the gods. They knew their mortality in ways that we have forgotten in our modern, headlong retreat from the thinking life. What was a revolution to them was the news of God’s ferocious zeal for our living; borne to them by the despised of the world - women and Jews.

It was like God had betrothed Himself to us humble creatures, made from the earth. What business had the Divine with us sons of the soil? And, as a man would seal the oath by cutting his own flesh and shedding his own blood, so God had scourged His own flesh and shed His own blood at the cross. This was serious, and we had better take it seriously. We had better take life seriously too, not because we had done something to deserve it or enhance it, but because God had committed Himself to our living. Misuse the life He had given us, or the life that He had given to our friends and neighbors, and it would be His ferocious zeal for our living that we would ultimately answer to.

In the face of such a ferocious zeal for our living, it ceases to be a question of what we deserve, but what we do. Who knows what will come tomorrow? Tomorrow has enough worries of it’s own, as the preacher from Nazareth said. Today is the day, and we will live in it, even if we see the shadow of death lengthen over it.

Nothing can prepare you for that day when you know you will die. But you can say that until that day, you will live. What is more, beyond that day, you will live because God’s ferocious zeal is with you in your living, and it will not be extinguished or diminished in your dying.

Janna’s surgery was a success, though she had her ovaries, tubes, uterus and appendix removed. The Surgeon found no signs of cancer, thank God (and all the medics involved). It was an endometriosis.

It would be wrong to call this a reprieve because we would be saying that death, not God, had done the reprieving. We live another day. Death has receded from us, but God has not. There will come a day when death has exhausted its terrible arsenal on us, but God, and His ferocious zeal for our living will remain undefeated.

I pray that I will never forget the glancing blow that this day dealt to us, and the tantalizing glimpse it gave me of God’s ferocious zeal for our living. I pray that I might find the language to speak this zeal into our lives, my life, Janna’s life, your life, that we can celebrate the living that God has given us, in all it’s unpredictable and surprising wonder and variety.

This is a song about living, not dying.

Can you trust the archaeological evidence?

In a follow-up query from a FaceBook friend, I was asked, “Can you trust the archaeological evidence?”

Here is my reply; In short, it would be wise not to ignore it.  

Welcoming the evidence

The Christian world-view ought to fortify us for honest enquiries, and I think Christians should not be as terrified of archaeology and the sciences as some would like us to be. As I noted previously, Jeremiah says the word of the Lord came to him and asked him what he saw (Jeremiah 1:11, 1:13). Note that it is not what God saw, but what Jeremiah saw that's under consideration here, and he wrote the book, so we should notice what he says about his own oracle.

This point is worth pondering. The Bible is consistent and persistent in valuing truth and truthfulness. Jesus declared that “…the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32). The Wisdom literature in the Biblbe urges us to look and ponder what we see. Proverbs 3:5-7 states;

Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding
In all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.
Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD and shun evil.

I have a particular concern about this verse at present, because it is often quoted in Christian culture as a reason not to think about what we see. How silly! The entire Book of Proverbs enjoins us to think, learn and to gain understanding above all else. Are we to believe that the author committed his life’s wisdom to the book, then some evil apostate sneaked in a verse that up-ends the entire work? I don’t think so. What the verse refers to is the exact opposite of what it has often been used for. It says “you will not find wisdom or knowledge by looking in your own heart; what you need to do is to learn from God, who speaks to you by His word; And, you will need to allow what’s in your heart to be shaped by what is outside it.” It’s an instruction to allow our thoughts and our understanding to be shaped by what see outside ourselves, not by the predispositions, prejudices and motives that we find in our own hearts. It’s a command to submit to the discipline of thinking, not to avoid it because what we see might make us feel uncomfortable.

What are those things that are outside ourselves? Two obvious answers are the world in which we live, and the Word of God. Our Christian faith ought to predispose us to welcome the evidence, not to ignore it. Indeed, despite the propaganda of prevailing culture, the Christian faith has more to drive us to understand the world in which we live than any other world-view, particularly atheism and magisterial religions such as Islam and Mormonism (which stultify the search for knowledge for different reasons).  

Data and inferences

The Bible, in my reading of it, presents a holistic view of understanding and wisdom by saying that if we understand the world in which we live; we are likely to make right decisions. I don’t wish to contend with it, but it’s a different question than the one you might be asking, which is; can we trust the data?

My personal response is that the data are neutral. What is important is what we infer from them in our decision-making, which is, to me, the essence of wisdom. In other words, I believe the data are important, and it is important to get good data, but they will not direct us in our thinking – we do that, and we do it for the entire smorgasbord of reasons, good and bad, that make us human. Acknowledging this (and, again, it’s a Christian perspective) ought to fortify us as we look at the data, and the inferences that people draw from them.

An important feature of this is to acknowledge why the data have been collected in the first place. I’m an anti-conspiracy-theorist, which means I don’t buy some of the more sinister motives that anti-scientists ascribe to the scientific community. But, even if the scientists' motives for collecting and publishing data are nefarious, the good news is that the data they collect are neutral. In other words, we can look at the data, but we can be discerning in what meaning we draw from them, and the meaning that I draw from them might not coincide with the archaeologists' or scientists' original inferences.  

Digs

You asked about archaeological evidence, so that’s what I’ll address next. Please forgive the lengthy preamble, but I would like to illustrate how my hermeneutic relates to some of the archaeology.

Before going to University, I took a gap year and spent about six months on a Kibbutz in Israel. At one point, I took a few days off to join in with an archaeological dig at Gamla in the Golan Heights. Gamla was sacked by the Romans in AD68, when they crushed the Jewish revolt. Next to fall were Jerusalem in AD70 and, finally, Masada in AD72.

After I had left the dig, I found that the location I was digging in was near the Synagogue that the dig-leaders were anxious to find. They had thought it might be near the centre of the settlement, but as it turned out, it was at the wall that the residents had erected as a defence against the Romans, where I had been active with my shovel.

To understand why the dig-leaders thought that finding a Synagogue was important, we need to understand what it meant in the current geo-political context. The Golan heights were (and are) disputed territory. The discovery of a Jewish Synagogue would do two things 1) reinforce the reasons for the dig, and hence allow the dig-leaders to appeal for more money and 2) legitimize modern Israel’s occupation of the Golan heights by staking a claim on the territory based on antiquity.
 
Even though you might disagree with these motives, the fact remains that the dig now gives us a better picture of Jewish life around that time, and we are richer for it. For instance, we can see a real-life example of the kind of Synagogue that Jesus would have taught in. We can also see what happens when a people put their faith in their ethnic/cultural/religious identity before faith in Christ (I’m referring to the Jewish revolt and the consequent annihilation of the Temple-system by the Romans).

Again, what I’m saying here is that you should look at the archaeological evidence, but you’re not compelled to agree with other people’s inferences of it.

Archaeological evidence around the New Testament

I’m going to refrain from using the phrase “archaeological evidence of the Bible”, because I believe that such a statement misunderstands the issue.

The good news for Christians is that much of the evidence supports the narratives of the New Testament; it attests to the New Testament accounts. The environment, culture, place-names, people of the Bible fit well into the environment that the extra- Biblical archaeological evidence and historic sources describe. However, there are some contentious areas and it would be unwise to ignore them.

It has been my interest, and my joy, to release the Biblical stories back into their “native environment”, which is described by the archaeology. I have found that this brings the stories to life in ways that are quite unexpected and sometimes challenging. I refer you to some of the earlier notes I made on Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan Woman at Jacob’s well to see what I mean. For example, being able to project this story onto its archaeological background, like one of the son-et-lumiere presentations you sometimes see projected on mediaeval castle walls, has got me reading the Gospel of John in a new and refreshing light.

The biggest problems that I am aware of in the New Testament are;
• The details of the death of Judas (compare Matt 27:5 with Acts 1:18-19)
• Whether there was a census under Qurinius around the birth of Jesus, as described in Luke 2:2

It’s a very short list, and I don’t think these problems are insurmountable, though I concede that we might need to stretch the text a little. For instance, Judas might have strung himself up (per Matthew), then his corpse might have fallen off the gibbet causing his guts to explode (per Acts). In any case, the point of both accounts seems to be that he died a shameful death. The census might be resolved if we accept that Quirinius was the de-facto governor of Syria, and that this particular census didn’t find it’s way into the annals (which would be unusual, but not impossible). Still, there was a Quirinius, there was a Syria, and they did censuses, according to all the available extra-Biblical evidence.

Archaeological evidence around the Old Testament

This is a huge subject, which is hotly contested by a number of learned societies. I’m not going to do it justice, so I trust that you will forgive my rather cursory treatment of it. Much of the controversy relates to time-lining the development of the Biblical texts. I’ll try to give you an overview and to do this, I’ll work backwards.

The later Biblical texts are usually accepted as extant (the events they describe to occurred at the time of writing, or soon before). These texts are usually identified by the language (late Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek translations), and the consensus is that they comprise much of the Wisdom Literature (I understand). The Psalms, for example, seem to be a very mixed bag, including many of the earlier works, but many phrases, language and ideas appear to have been re-cycled in the later Psalms. (Incidentally, this “recycling” causes me no problem whatsoever, because that’s exactly what we do in our modern hymns and songs of praise.)

The earlier texts are more contentious, and there is much speculation. Humanistic scholarship insists on dismissing anything that might have the slightest hint of the miraculous, so it ascribes the origins of the stories not in some miracle, but in folk-religion. The critical period, according to this perspective, is around the centralist reforms of King Josiah. The redaction camp use this to argue that the Priests of Josiah commandeered and formalized the folk-religion of Israel and Judah to legitimize Josiah’s reign in Jerusalem. There is actual support for this from the Biblical narrative itself - 2 Kings 22 describes the rediscovery of the Book of the Law, and we could legitimately ask what they did with it when they found it. We honestly can't be certain, but the more negative inferences would tell us that characters such as Abraham and Moses were not real people, but rather mythological constructs on which the folk-stories were projected, rather like the legends of King Arthur or Robin Hood (which vary according to who is telling the story).

Importantly, the humanist camp dismisses any idea that the Exodus was a real event, or that David and Solomon actually reigned over a united kingdom, and these are the areas in which the archaeology can be called as a witness.

As far as the Exodus is concerned, the humanists have a point. There is no archaeological evidence for the kind of mighty upheaval that you might expect following the conquest of Joshua in the 12th Century BC. Why the 12th Century? Because that’s the date you get from the calculations of lifetimes and years in the Biblical record. However, if we adjust our math, and allow for Abraham to live “in Egypt” whilst in Canaan (which is possible because Egypt did project its power over the region), then we’re not stuck with the 12th Century, and we can look earlier for an Exodus-like scenario.

There is plenty of evidence that such a scenario might be found in the 15th Century BC. This was a time of massive upheaval and cities being sacked and rebuilt. Basically, the land of Canaan was caught between the competing super-powers of Egypt to the south and the Hittites to the north. Such regional instability would fit well with some of the statements in the Bible, such as the metaphorical “hornet” that God sends ahead of his conquering people (Exodus 23:28, Deuteronomy 7:20, Joshua 24:12) and the sense that the conquering Hebrews are God’s judgment on a violent and lawless people (see Genesis 15:14-16).

Then, there is the etymology of the word “Hebrew”. It is possibly derived from the Egyptian “Apiru”, which means “wanderer” or “vagabond”. Could it be that the chosen nation was not an established earthly kingdom, like Egypt, but a bunch of displaced refugees, who wandered in from the desert and found a home under YHWH’s protection and reign? I find that tidbits like these actually help my theology come to life.

In these cases, the archaeology challenges our perceptions of the Exodus story, but I believe that if we allow the archaeology to speak to the text, and for the text to speak to the archaeology, we have a better chance of building up a true picture of what the archaeology and the text are about.

But what do we make of the opening chapters of Genesis – the stories before Abraham? My personal view is that these are mythological, in the sense that they could have been co-opted from neighboring cultures, though they might have arisen from real, historic events.

The flood account in Genesis 6:9-9:17, is an instructive example, because the story-line shares so much with the Gilgamesh Epic. Returning to my earlier comments about inferences, I find it fascinating to see how the theology of Genesis varies so profoundly with Gilgamesh. The God of Genesis could not be more different that the “gods” of Gilgamesh, and that, I believe, is it’s true message, whether it was written before Gilgamesh, or not.  

Conclusion

There is much, much more that I could possibly relate here. In short, I believe that the Biblical narrative was derived mostly from actual historic events, which are attested to by the extra-Biblical archaeological evidence. The New Testament, being comparatively modern, has good attestation; the Old Testament is mixed; some parts have good attestation, some don't. The Old Testament might well have been redacted under Josiah, but one has to ask if they were doing what we are doing now – taking what they can see and inferring what they can from it.

The irony is that though the origins of the Biblical stories are sometimes obscure, we can see the agenda that the authors (or redactors) had when they committed their knowledge to writing. I believe that if we truly intend to treat the Bible as the Word of God, we need to listen to that agenda because that is the light that will make our paths straight, as the Book of Proverbs promises. The archaeological evidence, I believe, informs our understanding of this agenda and helps bring it to life. As I said at the start, we would be wise to listen to the archaeology, but discerning in what we get from it.

Has the Bible been redacted?

I recently received a query from a FaceBook friend, who asked “in your reading, what has been redacted, or more importantly, why? And what does it change? Anything important?”

Here is my reply;

The question of redaction can get highly contentious, especially if you're talking to someone who wants to capitalize the subject to say either "so, you don't believe the Bible, then", or "you can't trust anything that's written in there". Personally, I think the question of the extent of OT redaction is highly subjective, so I’ll stick to what can be demonstrated, and I'll remain circumspect about what can't.

For instance, the archaeological evidence (as far as I understand it has been demonstrated) points to the Chaldeans not arriving in Ur until about 900 BC. That's after Abraham (about 1900BC) and after Moses (about 1500 BC - though more traditional scholars put him at 1200 BC). So, when Genesis 11:31 etc refers to "Ur of the Chaldeans", you have to ask whether it was written or altered or redacted after Abraham and after Moses.

I find this quite an instructive example because it changes nothing in the Abraham story (Abraham came from the city that was later occupied by the Chaldeans), or the theology that the story tells (God still covenants Himself to Abraham and his children).

What it does change (or challenge) is our perception of how the Biblical texts have come to us. Not even the most hardened inerrantist would argue that, in the beginning, Moses sat down with a ball-point pen and wrote on a piece of paper "Genesis chapter 1, verse 1" (see how many anachronisms there are in that scenario). However, there is an expectation that God dictated the text, and it remained unaltered from that time on. (Ironically, this is the exact scenario that Joseph Smith was working to.)

I believe (and I could be wrong) that the text itself invites us to think otherwise, and I would argue this by citing Jeremiah 1:11 and 1:13 - the Word of the LORD asks us "what do you see?" (emphasis mine). There is, I think, a mystery here - it's not what we see that matters as much as what we infer from it, and this, I think, is where we need the Holy Spirit to guide us.

Now, here's the real problem, and I might not have come to a satisfactory answer. If the Biblical texts were limited by the human author's understanding of what happened in the past, how could we regard them as divinely inspired?

My two responses are these;

The first goes back to my "inference" idea - it's not the story that matters as much as what we get from it. In other words, God has given us these stories so that we might live by them, and many (all?) of the stories are actually historical. We don't have a decent word in English to describe this; "myth" has too closely aligned with fiction and "legend" is too closely aligned with super-heroes. This might sound quite esoteric, but I'm sure you're familiar with at least one concrete application; Christians are called to "live out" the story of Christ, and we get that story by reading our Bibles. Personally, I think the story of Christ is fully historical, but it doesn't change God's call on me to make that story a living reality by the way I choose to live. It just makes it more compelling.

Secondly, the delivery of the word of God into the world has much in common with the delivery of the Word of God into the world, and there is a deep mystery here. Jesus Christ is/was both fully human and fully God. How can he be both? How can he be so totally unlimited, and yet so confined in his human flesh? It is only by faith that we can even attempt to bring these two polar opposites into one, undivided person. By the same token, it is only by faith that we can bring the fallible, limited thoughts of the human Biblical authors and the perfect, unlimited Word of God into the same book. That doesn't stop us asking how, and it is right to do so. Maybe, if we spent time thinking about this, we might begin to understand what it means for God and us to be brought together in our limited, fallible lives.

Summing it up, my personal view is this; Jesus Christ is the intersection of heaven and earth. This is truly good news, because, like you and me, he is fully human, which means that you and I are also fully capable of this without the need to become what we are not. The Bible tells us about this in its own limited way, and it often mines stories from the past, however they came to us, to point us in Christ's direction. Even if (and that's a big "if") it gets some of its source data wrong, it still comes to the right inferences. Not everybody sees it this way, and it is right to wonder why. In the end, it's not my ability to convince myself of the historical and scientific precision of the Biblical accounts, nor even my faith in my faith that counts, but Christ's ability to work in me that counts. In this sense, I believe the Bible to be true.

And that's good news for those of us who, inevitably, might have missed the bus on some of these important issues.