What is bread for, for the follower of Christ?

“The problem of bread for me is a material problem, but the problem of bread for my neighbor, for all, is a spiritual, religious question.” Russian philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev

 

I read this and thought of previous lines of discussion on this blog and with some of you who I know. I thought it was a quote worth pondering (or–can I help myself?–chewing on). Comment at will.

 

Jon Levenson on God and evil

A while back I posted on various Ancient Near Eastern sensitivities relating to “creation,” temple, “salvation,” etc., talking about the ways Jon Levenson‘s Creation and the Persistence of Evil. had both radically impacted my understanding of the Bible and had jump-started a new subset of my interests in ANE studies and contextualizing our Bible within its ancient worlds. Though this will probably sound arrogant, I recommend reading the earlier related post if you lack familiarity with what Levenson does in this excellent book…

For now, I want to share one of my favorite quotes from Levenson’s Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence. In part of the 1994 Preface, which itself warrants the price of the book, Levenson explains how and why he conceives of creation-thought, the persistence of evil, and the drama of divine omnipotence together in this exploration of the Hebrew Bible—how he conceives of these as “theodicy” (redefined) issues within the Hebrew Bible. In the midst of this discussion, on p. xvii, Levenson writes,

My failure to address the problem of evil in the philosophical sense, however, rests on more than my own obvious inadequacies. It rests also on a point usually overlooked in discussions of theodicy in a biblical context: the overwhelming tendency of biblical writers as they confront undeserved evil is not to explain it away but to call upon God to blast it away.

 

Daniel Kirk’s New Book: Unlocking Romans

This is a re-post, of sorts…

Daniel Kirk’s new book, Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God, is now available.

Many of the contributors of this blog, and certainly some of its readers, know Daniel Kirk. Daniel is a MDiv graduate of Westminster Theological Seminary (2000). He subsequently completed a PhD in New Testament from Duke University’s Department of Religion, studying under Richard Hays, E.P. Sanders, and Joel Marcus, among others. He wrote a fascinating dissertation on Resurrection in Romans, how Paul re-understood and re-told the significance of Israel in the light of Christ. His advisor was none other than Richard Hays, whose writings certainly molded my thought on Paul and the communal significance of Paul for the church more than anyone else’s writings. Daniel started his job as a professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary this Fall.

During and since his time at Duke Daniel has written a fair amount concerning Paul and the significance of recent scholarship on Paul for the contemporary church. He penned a helpful response to Doug Kelly (Professor of Systematic Theology at RTS-Charlotte) on the New Perspective and Reformed Theology for the PCA’s online news site. He also published a two-part article in the Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology (24 [2006]: 36-64, 133-54) arguing for a passive-obedience-only position both as Scriptural and within the bounds of the Westminster Standards. A shorter version of these articles is available online, as are google-documents versions of the original articles (1 & 2), which require some cleaning-up. Many of you have read, and probably frequent, Daniel’s blog. There, when he has time, he has continued to post refreshing communally and missionally-oriented reflections on Christ, the Bible, hermeneutics, and contemporary scholarship. His reputation as a cutting-edge but church-oriented scholar apparently grew enough that he was asked to present a paper on the New Perspective on Paul at last year’s meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. Daniel has written and published other reviews, essays, and articles in more academically oriented contexts as well.

 

Death and The Savages

I think the movie The Savages, starring Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman, exposes our tendency to avoid the reality of death.  Linney and Hoffman play siblings who are forced to take care of their father (who is battling dementia) after his ‘girlfriend’ dies.  Outside of a care facility Hoffman lays into his sister for being so choosy about assisted living centers saying,

“…the landscaping, the neighborhoods of care, they’re not for the residents. They are for the relatives; people like you and me who don’t want to admit what is really going on here. People are dying, Wendy. Right inside that beautiful building, right now, its a f-ing horror show. And all this wellness propaganda and the landscaping is just there to obscure the miserable fact that people die. And death is gaseous and gruesome and its filled with s*** and p*** and rotten stink.”

[This film is a great one for examining the human condition and coping mechanisms and living up to expectations, etc.]

 

You probably didn’t see this one coming . . .

This isn’t a political blog, but Art’s 8-19-08 post got us thinking about how Christians might work through their faith in deciding how to vote.  Yesterday, the choice before us suddenly got more interesting.   

I surely didn’t see Gov. Sarah Palin coming, although my high school aged son, who has been intently interested in the VP selection process for months, had her as one of his top three picks for McCain.  He had put her on my radar screen, but all that accomplished was to leave me impressed with the depth of his research.  Who knew? 

Gov. Palin’s CV is packed with broad experience  - chief executive; business person; whistle-blower; energy expert; tax cutter; mother of soldier, daughters, and special needs baby; outdoorsman; former union member and wife of union member; total commitment to life . . . the number of competing constituencies to whom she might appeal is staggering. 

I found her speaking style to be both bold and warm.  Although she is low key about her faith, Gov. Palin used the phrase “servant’s heart” in her Dayton speech, and it felt authentic. 

Not everyone is thrilled with Gov. Palin, of course.  She’s perceived as too unknown and too light to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.  Her experience has been ridiculed as having played out in too small an arena.  The pro-choicers are unhappy.  The patriarchal men are unhappy.  Some die-hard Clinton supporters are outraged that McCain seems to think that any woman will do to attract their vote. 

I don’t automatically cast my vote for Christians, and I won’t automatically cast my vote for a woman.  But I have to say that I have experienced the kind of reaction that so many African Americans have shared since Obama became the Democratic candidate.  There is something viscerally right about finally seeing someone who’s, as I said to a friend in the grocery store yesterday, “one of us,” in the last leg of the race.

Over to you.  How do you receive McCain’s selection?  Do her credentials bring elements of social justice to the Republican ticket?  Does the Vice Presidential candidate make a difference?

 

you probably saw this one coming…

Any comments on the Obama/McCain appearance at Saddleback over the weekend?

In case you missed it, Kevin has put together a post with all of Obama and McCain’s answers put side by side. You can find that here.

My question keeps coming down to this: how do we, as followers of Jesus and partners in the mission of God to this broken world, choose a candidate? What issues do we focus on? What characteristics or viewpoints in each candidate do we value as a result of our faith commitments?

I’d love to jump on the whole Purple politics bandwagon or put forth the idea

 

Enacting Kingdom Mercy: Imitating God for The Epistle to Diognetus & Excelling in “Grace” for Paul in 2 Corinthians 8

Yesterday I posted on The Epistle to Diognetus and the striking passage within it articulating the significance of what God did in/as Christ—especially in terms of the “…sweet exchange…that the sinfulness of many should be hidden in one righteous man, while the righteousness of one should justify many sinners!”

 

 Today I thought I would post part of the following passage from the same writing, one discussing what it means to be an imitator of God.

 

…By loving him you will be an imitator of his goodness. And do not be surprised that a person can become an imitator of God; he can, if God is willing. For happiness is not a matter of lording it over one’s neighbors, or desiring to have more than weaker man, or possessing wealth and using force against one’s inferiors. No one is able to imitate God in these matters; on the contrary, these things are alien to his greatness. But whoever takes upon himself his neighbor’s burden, whoever wishes to benefit another who is worse off in something in which he himself is better off, whoever provides to those in need things that he has received from God, and thus becomes a god to those who receive them, this one is an imitator of God. Then you will see that though your lot is on earth, God lives in heaven, then you will begin to declare the mysteries of God, then you will both love and admire those who are punished because they refuse to deny God, then you will condemn the deceit and the error of the world, when you realize what the true life in heaven is… (Epistle to Diognetus 10.4-7a)

 

Bart Ehrman Vs. William Lane Craig: “Did Jesus Raise from the Dead?”

This is a 2006 debate between Bart Ehrman and William Lane Craig on the the historical data for Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. It’s easily the best, highest level debate on the subject I’ve ever heard. It’s long–133 minutes–but worth listening to (very slowly). Part of the reason I think it’s so valuable is that Ehrman cogently raises legitimate historical problems with the resurrection in general (and Craig’s arguments in particular), and builds a compelling case against it; and that it offers about as informed a Christian response as one could ask for. The kind of argument that Ehrman makes is the same sort that is being taught to college students around the world and is (imperfectly) filtering into pop culture, and which regularly leads to the many Christians young and old to leave the faith. It’s the kind of argument that Christians need to become very intimate with if they’re hoping to seriously engage the modern skeptic, and of which the avoidance has irreparably weakened the applicability some recent treatments (I may offer a review of this book here at some point–I don’t like it). Ultimately, Craig fails to persuade, and I think his failure is emblematic of why so many folks leave: we haven’t come up with good responses to some valid(!) fundamental critiques of Christian faith, and often the responses we have either avoid the issues or equivocate. By response I don’t mean disproof, though in some cases that might be what we need; by response I mean a reasonable answer that makes sense of the faith-decisions we make over against objections.

As a historian, I’m more with Ehrman than I’m against him. At risk of spoiling the video, I think Christians need to, for instance, consider why we privilege one set of data over others, whether the resurrection is the “best” explanation, how trustworthy our documents are, and how literary/theological agendas in the biblical texts effect how we receive the information the purport to offer.

I have opinions on these matters, but I’ll hold my cards for the moment; I’m curious what you all think (that is, only after you’ve heard the debate–btw, don’t miss the Q&A, it’s prb the best part). But let me take the opportunity to recommend a great book: James D.G. Dunn’s _Jesus Remembered_, who doesn’t exactly answer the questions, but offers a model for handling the texts that I think ultimately does.

 

Harvie Conn’s “Evangelism: Doing Justice and Preaching Grace,” Preface

As I indicated in my previous post, I want to work through Harvie Conn’s Evangelism: Doing Justice and Preaching Grace here on the blog. This book, along with Conn’s Eternal Word and Changing Worlds: Theology, Anthropology, and Mission in Trialog, had a radical and profound impact on me. My whole approach not simply to conceptualizing theology and to studying the Bible, but also to living out Christ and the Gospel as part of a community (or at least trying to do so) was set on a new trajectory through Conn’s writings. This book very much stands at the start of this new trajectory for me.

 

Hopefully I can offer further reflections, or at least promptings to discussion, on how this book so radically impacted me, why it was so challenging, and why it was and remains so compelling now—as we work through it. Hopefully we can grapple with some of the basics of Conn’s refreshing and edifying challenges and what it might look like for us to continue (to start?) taking them up today. Where and why is he helpful to us? How do we see him working to challenge us (and himself) to live out Christ in quite challenging, missional, and rich ways, with the broader church for the glory of Christ?

 

I think looking at the Preface is a great place to start. Since it is so short, I decided to quote most of it below. In this way we hear from Conn himself what he wanted to do through this book. I left out some parts, mainly where he notes parts of the book stemming from previous publications…

 

Campfire Discussions and Divisions

Here is “The Message’s” take on Judges 5:15-16, from the Song of Deborah and Barak. It’s regarding the tribe of Reuben’s relationship to the God-led victory over the Canaanites:

“But in Reuben’s divisions there was much second-guessing.
Why all those campfire discussions?
Diverted and distracted,
Reuben’s divisions couldn’t make up their minds.”

Any commentary? Applications? Just plain honest thoughts that come to mind?