Reading the Bible Without All Those Numbers 2

6 comments | Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Let me offer a few examples of this disassociation of verses and chapters from the surrounding, relevant material, which is an unfortunate (but ever-present) byproduct of versification.

Example One: "Hebrews 11" is a famous passage of Scripture known for its clear and passionate explanation of faith. It is often known as "The Faith Chapter" of the New Testament, much like 1 Corinthians 13 is known as "The Love Chapter." However, Christians usually approach the section as a stand-alone discussion of faith—something like an individual article that contributes to the overall conception of the subject of faith in the larger volume of the New Testament. We start in chapter 11 verse 1 and read up to the last verse (don't hear what I'm not saying), but give little thought to the sentence right before verse 1 or the sentence right after verse 40. Let me ask you, answer for yourself: Do you know how this discussion of faith relates directly and logically to all of the rest of the book of Hebrews?

...Read More

Example Two: "1 Corinthians 13" provides a beautiful description of true love right from God's dictionary. Sure, it is a beneficial discussion in itself, but why did God inspire Paul to write this literary and spiritual treasure exactly where it is in the Bible? Do you just think of it as "The Love Chapter," or do you think of it as a convincing argument that love is the most desirable of all God's wonderful gifts—to be sought before all talents and virtues and means?

I say to you, we frequently have a tendency to see a passage in the context of the whole Bible and how it relates with ideas over in some other book or how it harmonizes with the overall Biblical narrative before we see a passage in the context most immediate to it.

A parable: A certain man began reading Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" series of books. Each time he sat to read, he would choose a random page and read a selection. Sometimes he would read a sentence, sometimes a paragraph, and sometimes a whole chapter. However, after a time, the man found that no matter how frequently he read like this, he could scarcely find any enjoyment in the reading, and no matter how hard he tried to understand the story, he found that the process was so slow and confusing as to be an almost prohibitively monumental task.

The only sensible way to seek to understand the whole Volume of God's Word is to seek to understand the individual books that make it up. But how often we look over the grains of sand, expecting to see a beach! And that just makes no sense at all.

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posted by Dave Gregg

at 8/20/2008 09:28:00 AM Permalink

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I'm Such a Nerd

2 comments | Sunday, April 06, 2008

WARNING:  If you understand the following, then you are at least as much of a nerd as I am. But fear not, oh geeky one! I have discovered how to discuss theology in computer languages! What follows is a JavaScript devotional on the subject of faith:

<html>
    <head>
        <script language="javascript"><!--

            function processfaith(object){

                var f = self.present.faith;
                var e = self.present.experience;
                var t = object.trustworthiness;
                t = object.ability + object.character;

                while(e){
                    if(f<t && e>f){
                        f=f+(e-f);
                    }
                    else if(f<t && e<f){
                        f=f-(f-e);
                    }
                }
            }
        // -->
        </script>
    </head>
    <body>
        <a href="javascript:processfaith(God);">Increase your faith in God here.</a><br />
        <a href="javascript:processfaith(self);">Decrease your faith in self here.</a>
    </body>
</html>

Nerds! If you have successfully parsed the faith equation, leave a comment to stand for all ages as a monument to your abounding nerdity.

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posted by Dave Gregg

at 4/06/2008 05:27:00 PM Permalink

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What Kind of Dictionary is THAT? (part 2)

1 comments

While doing some reading on Five-Point Calvinism for a possible future series of articles, I read the following on the subject of Total Depravity. On the first read, I didn't catch the problem, but there was something that just didn't seem right to me. I went back and perused the context of Romans 14. Here is what the article said:

  • Romans 14:23 says, "Whatever does not proceed from faith is sin." This is a radical indictment of all natural "virtue" that does not flow from a heart humbly relying on God's grace.
    The terrible condition of man's heart will never be recognized by people who assess it only in relation to other men. Romans 14:23 makes plain that depravity is our condition in relation to God primarily, and only secondarily in relation to man. Unless we start here we will never grasp the totality of our natural depravity.
    (John Piper & Bethlehem Baptist Church Staff, "What We Believe About the Five Points of Calvinism", revised March 1998, source)*

Let's not look at whether Piper's points are correct yet. Let's just decide whether the passage he cites does in fact teach these points. Don't think I'm nitpicking. The points Piper is trying to make are very critical ones. Whether they stand or fall will make a significant impact on our theology one way or another. So, ensuring that these points have a Biblical basis is very important no matter where you stand on the issue.

Upon reading Romans 14, one will discover that Paul is not using the term "faith" in the sense of "saving faith" in this passage at all. He is discussing sins of the conscience and referring to personal convictions.
...Read More! Verse 23 and the two preceding verses read as follows:

  • It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything that causes your brother to stumble. The faith that you have, keep between yourself and God. Blessed is the one who has no reason to pass judgment on himself for what he approves. But whoever has doubts is condemned if he eats, because the eating is not from faith. For whatever does not proceed from faith is sin.
    (Romans 14:21-23 ESV)

The New Living Translation, Second Edition, renders the same passage in this way:

  • It is better not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything else if it might cause another believer to stumble. You may believe there's nothing wrong with what you are doing, but keep it between yourself and God. Blessed are those who don't feel guilty for doing something they have decided is right. But if you have doubts about whether or not you should eat something, you are sinning if you go ahead and do it. For you are not following your convictions. If you do anything you believe is not right, you are sinning.
    (Romans 14:21-23)

Remember that "faith" (pistis) in the New Testament can refer to intellectual belief, moral conviction, reliance, trust, or a system of belief (only with the direct article "the"). Ouk ek pisteos (οὐκ ἐκ πίστεως) is often rendered "not from faith" and is functionally equivalent to "from doubt." Therefore, pan de ho ouk ek pisteos hamartia estin (πᾶν δὲ ὃ οὐκ ἐκ πίστεως ἁμαρτία ἐστίν) can be translated, "furthermore, all which is from doubt is sin." The phrase ouk ek (οὐκ ἐκ) ("not from" or "not out of") can also mean "against." The Greek word pistis can be translated any one of the following English words, depending on the context: faith, reliance, assurance, belief, or conviction, among others. In other words, Paul is saying, "everything that is done against moral conviction is sin" or "everything you do that is against what you believe is sin."

Robertson agrees: "Faith (pistis) here is subjective, one's strong conviction in the light of his relation to Christ and his enlightened conscience." The Contemporary English Version (CEV) has it, "anything you do against your beliefs is sin." And Eugene Peterson paraphrases it, "If the way you live isn't consistent with what you believe, then it's wrong."

John Calvin even commented on Romans 14:23:

  • The word faith is to be taken here for a fixed persuasion of the mind, or, so to speak, for a firm assurance, and not that of any kind, but what is derived from the truth of God.
    (John Calvin, "Commentary on Romans", source)

A good summary of what Paul is saying might be: "In these morally-ambiguous sort of issues, follow your conscience. If you believe it is wrong according to God to eat meat that has been sacrificed to idols, then don't, because though it may not actually be sin, you are sinning by your intention to commit what you do believe is sin."

While Bethlehem Baptist's statement indicates that "faith" in Romans 14:23 is referring to "a heart humbly relying on God's grace," the context doesn't support that interpretation. The points Piper and Bethlehem Baptist are trying to make could be true, but we would never know from this passage. Interpreting Romans 14:23 in this way is going beyond Paul's authorial intent—something of which we've all been guilty with one scripture or another.

Another man attempted to take Piper's first point using this text and take it to a logical conclusion. He wrote,

  • Romans 14:23 says, "Whatever is not from faith is sin." If you are not a believer in Christ, everything you do is sin. Going to church is sin, being kind to your room mate is sin, being honest is sin, coming to Campus Crusade for Christ is sin, its all sin! Everything is sin!
    (Dustin Shramek, "The Supremacy of God in the Depravity of Man", source)

Is that true? Is everything sin? Is being honest sin? No. That statement is exactly the opposite of the Ninth Commandment. Isn't that silly? Now, you can have a motive that is wrong while telling the truth (such as, hoping for another's unjust downfall), but the honesty itself is not wrong, your heart is. Jesus settled this in the Gospels. The heart is indeed deceitfully wicked. But there are worlds separating the idea that every deed is a sin for the unconverted and the idea that any action could be done with a sinful motive.

I tell you, it takes just one sin to garner the full and just wrath of Almighty God! Every sin is "exceedingly sinful," and an everything-is-sin theology of sin is unnecessary to a complete theology of salvation and unsubstantiated.

Honesty doesn't have to be sin in order for everyone to deserve Hell—"all men are liars" (Romans 3:4) and "all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone" (Revelation 21:8). That's both succinct and complete. If you are a liar, you are bound for Hell. And everyone is a liar. (It's just that Jesus has provided a way for them to be rescued from their "part.")

I'm not saying that there aren't often unrighteous motives underlying good actions. I'm not even saying that it's not likely that most good deeds are in fact done out of impure motives. I wouldn't argue with that. I'm saying, let's not call the actions sins if they aren't sins. That's not sending the right message. It's not pointing out the deeper problem.

Blame the marionetter. The heart pulls the strings.


*  I agree with John's point that "depravity is our condition in relation to God primarily, and only secondarily in relation to man," but Romans 14:23 doesn't speak to this point.

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posted by Dave Gregg

at 4/06/2008 05:09:00 PM Permalink

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What Kind of Dictionary is THAT? (part 1)

0 comments | Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Until recently, whenever I have read Romans 14 and reached verse 23, I have tended to stop and think, “That verse doesn’t sound like it fits here.” In particular, I am talking about the phrase “whatsoever is not of faith is sin” (KJV).

The problem, I’ve decided, is the ever-present problem of assumptions. When I read the word “faith” in the New Testament, I often either think of “saving faith” or “the faith” (as in the orthodox Christian belief system). But there is a problem with that, and it's a common problem I would think. It is a problem that needs to be addressed. That is, we very narrowly assume certain words always mean certain things. We sometimes narrow the meaning of words unnecessarily. We come to the Bible with a twenty-first-century theological mental dictionary (that’s a mouthful, I know). Truth is, when first-century Greek speakers heard the New Testament, they did not bring a theological dictionary along, but a secular one—the one they used everyday in the markets and workplaces.

I’ll come back to Romans 14:23 in part 2. For now, let’s look at a few other examples of this.

...Read More!

When Greek-speaking people heard the word “baptizo,” they didn’t think immediately of “a religious water ceremony.” They thought of “an envelopment or immersion.” You could “baptizo” your hands into a washbasin. You could be “baptizo-ed” (swallowed up) by death—which is one way they really did use the word. You could be “baptizo-ed” into a culture. You could “baptizo” a spoon into a dish of Jell-O. It was a regular word—one that they could, in turn, use in a theological context if they wanted. So, when they heard the word, it didn’t always refer to the same event, only the same type of event. The context and the intention of the speaker indicated what they understood the word to mean in each occurrence. So, when they heard that John “baptizo-ed” people in the Jordan River, they knew basically what that meant (even if they didn't yet understand the religious significance) before anyone gave them a Strong’s Concordance, a Life Application Study Bible, or a Sunday School lesson on flannelgraph.

The same goes for many other terms. “To save” is an example.

  • And he told us how he had seen the angel stand in his house and say, 'Send to Joppa and bring Simon who is called Peter; he will declare to you a message by which you will be saved, you and all your household.' (Acts 11:13-14 ESV)
  • By faith Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. (Hebrews 11:7)

Does the writer of Hebrews mean to tell us that Noah was able to barter with God for the eternal salvation of his family by consenting to accomplish this construction project for Him? No. But it sure sounds like it if you assume “to save” always means “to save spiritually.”

“To justify” is another example. Just as we use the term today, Greek speakers sometimes meant “to make righteous” and other times meant “to show to be righteous.” That really is a big difference, and the context is the clue.

Read the following three passages very carefully:

  • What then shall we say was gained by Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness." Now to the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but trusts him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.... Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. (Romans 4:1-5, 5:1-2)
  • Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness"—and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? (James 2:21-25)
  • We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified. (Galatians 2:15-16)

Remember that Sesame Street song: “One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just doesn't belong. Can you tell which thing is not like the others by the time I finish my song?”

What’s the problem with these three verses? If you read those chapters in assumption-mode, one of them seems to contradict the others. Certainly this is not true. So, what is the problem? There isn't one. Two different writers are trying to make two different points, using similar terminology but meaning different things by them. Just because I use a term in one way doesn’t mean that my friend who believes just as I do necessarily uses the term in the exact sense. Read Romans 4. Paul leaves no room for justification by works at all. Read Galatians 2. Paul again leaves no room for it. Read James 2. Read it like you’ve never heard the term “to justify” used in any theological sense.

What do you suppose I would mean if I were to say, “Quit justifying yourself!” In a normal conversation you would never assume I’m telling you to quit trying to make yourself innocent! You would assume I’m telling you to quit trying to prove that you are already innocent. When you are justified in a court of law, the judge weighs the evidence and declares that you were innocent the entire time.

Greek scholar A.T. Robertson, commenting on James 2:24 concurs: “Present passive indicative of dikaioō, here not ‘is made righteous,’ but ‘is shown to be righteous.’ James is discussing the proof of faith, not the initial act of being set right with God.”

This is why Paul can say “a person is not justified by works” and James can say “a person is justified by works” and they both be right. These two phrases sound contradictory when we cut them out of their books and paste them next to each other, but they’re not meant to be treated that way. It's like quoting "he said, 'I love pintos'" and "he told them, 'I can't stand pintos,'" when not only is one quoted from a book on the life of George Washington (the president) and the other from a book on the life of George Washington Carver (the botanist), but "pintos" is referring to a breed of horse in the first quote and a kind of bean in the second. Paul and James are not even talking about the same thing. They didn’t hold a conference to discuss which words they would use for what purposes . They aren’t coauthoring a book or even writing to the same group of believers. Paul and James are trying to make two very different points with everyday words. Their vocabularies overlap, but their usages do not. Paul is trying to explain how a person is made righteous in the first place (by grace through faith). James is trying to explain how a person is shown to be righteous in daily life (by obedience out of faith).

But more than that, remember that the word “faith” is also used in different ways in the New Testament? When Paul says “a person is... justified by faith in Christ” and James says “a person is justified... not by faith alone,” they are not using the term “faith” synonymously either. Paul is talking about “saving faith”—genuine, complete, and humble trust in Christ. James is talking about mere “belief”—intellectual assent. The Believer’s Bible Commentary remarks, “Faith apart from works is head belief, and therefore dead belief” (italics mine).

We can get ourselves in trouble when we approach the Bible like it’s not written by—get this—forty different authors... in sixty-six different books... with their own purposes... and messages... in multiple genres... and various literary styles... over the span of more than 1,500 years. And we can get ourselves in trouble when we approach the Bible assuming certain too-rigid terminologies. There is no substitute for the application of logical Bible study methods.

Part 2 will finish up this article by explaining Romans 14:23 and questioning a popular interpretation. What was John Piper thinking? All this and more after the commercial break.

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posted by Dave Gregg

at 1/08/2008 02:42:00 AM Permalink

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