How do we read these Old Testament stories?

 Lately, in my daily Bible reading, I have been using The Message, a translation of the Bible in contemporary language by Eugene Peterson. I like it because it sometimes expresses familiar passages in new ways that make me think.

One bonus in the "Readers Edition" that I have, kindly given to me by my wonderful wife, is that at the beginning of each Bible book there is a short introduction by Peterson. Here is some of his Introduction to 1 & 2 Samuel.

Four lives dominate the two-volume narrative ... Hannah, Samuel, Saul, and David. ... These four lives become seminal for us at the moment we realize that our ego-bound experience is too small a context in which to understand and experience what it means to believe in God and follow his ways. For these are large lives—large because they live in the largeness of God. Not one of them can be accounted for in terms of cultural conditions or psychological dynamics; God is the country in which they live. 

Most of us need to be reminded that these stories are not exemplary in the sense that we stand back and admire them, like statues in a gallery, knowing all the while that we will never be able to live either that gloriously or tragically ourselves. Rather they are immersions into the actual business of living itself: this is what it means to be human. Reading and praying our way through these pages, we get it; gradually but most emphatically we recognize that what it means to be a woman, a man, mostly has to do with God. These four stories do not show us how we should live but how in fact we do live, authenticating the reality of our daily experience as the stuff that God uses to work out his purposes of salvation in us and in the world. 

One of many welcome consequences in learning to “read” our lives in the lives of Hannah, Samuel, Saul, and David is a sense of affirmation and freedom: we don’t have to fit into prefabricated moral or mental or religious boxes before we are admitted into the company of God—we are taken seriously just as we are and given a place in his story, for it is, after all, his story; none of us is the leading character in the story of our life. 

 For the biblical way is not so much to present us with a moral code and tell us “Live up to this”; nor is it to set out a system of doctrine and say, “Think like this and you will live well.” The biblical way is to tell a story and invite us, “Live into this. This is what it looks like to be human; this is what is involved in entering and maturing as human beings.” We do violence to the biblical revelation when we “use” it for what we can get out of it or what we think will provide color and spice to our otherwise bland lives. That results in a kind of “boutique spirituality”—God as decoration, God as enhancement. The Samuel narrative will not allow that. In the reading, as we submit our lives to what we read, we find that we are not being led to see God in our stories but to see our stories in God’s. God is the larger context and plot in which our stories find themselves.

[The complete text of this introduction is here.]

Where to from here? How should the West respond to its Christian heritage?

 Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind by Tom Holland is an amazing read. In just over 500 (!) pages he presents a compelling story of the interplay of Christian theology, church history, and the intellectual and political history of the Western world. 

This month in the theology reading group, we are discussing the third and final section, Modernitas, which covers 1645 to the present. The scope is amazing. The cast of characters includes Oliver Cromwell, Baruch Spinoza, Benjamin Lay, Voltaire, Marquis de Sade, Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, Karl Marx, Andrew Carnegie, Friedrich Nietzsche, J.R.R. Tolkien, the Beatles, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., ... The issues and topics discussed include the abolition of slavery, evolution, human rights, capitalism, communism, democracy, war, sexual morality, secularism, homosexuality, and the #MeToo movement.

A helpful summary of the main point of the book is at the end.

 If secular humanism derives not from reason or from science, but from the distinctive course of Christianity’s evolution – a course that, in the opinion of growing numbers in Europe and America, has left God dead—then how are its values anything more than the shadow of a corpse? What are the foundations of its morality, if not a myth? 

A myth, though, is not a lie. At its most profound—as Tolkien, that devout Catholic, always argued—a myth can be true. To be a Christian is to believe that God became man and suffered a death as terrible as any mortal has ever suffered. This is why the cross, that ancient implement of torture, remains what it has always been: the fitting symbol of the Christian revolution. It is the audacity of it – the audacity of finding in a twisted and defeated corpse the glory of the creator of the universe—that serves to explain, more surely than anything else, the sheer strangeness of Christianity, and of the civilisation to which it gave birth. 

Today, the power of this strangeness remains as alive as it has ever been. It is manifest in the great surge of conversions that has swept Africa and Asia over the past century; in the conviction of millions upon millions that the breath of the Spirit, like a living fire, still blows upon the world; and, in Europe and North America, in the assumptions of many more millions who would never think to describe themselves as Christian. All are heirs to the same revolution: a revolution that has, at its molten heart, the image of a god dead on a cross.

(p.524-5, Abacus 2020 paperback edition).

A specific example of the type of argument Holland makes (and his beautiful prose) is the following. Even Marxism is deeply indebted to Christian theology.

 Marx’s interpretation of the world appeared fuelled by certainties that had no obvious source in his model of economics. They rose instead from profounder depths. Again and again, the magma flow of his indignation would force itself through the crust of his scientific-sounding prose. For a self-professed materialist, he was oddly prone to seeing the world as the Church Fathers had once done: as a battleground between cosmic forces of good and evil. 

Communism was a ‘spectre’: a thing of awful and potent spirit. Just as demons had once haunted Origen, so the workings of capitalism haunted Marx. ‘Capital is dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.’ This was hardly the language of a man emancipated from epiphenomena. The very words used by Marx to construct his model of class struggle—‘exploitation’, ‘enslavement’, ‘avarice’—owed to the chill formulations of economists than to something far older: the claims to divine inspiration of the biblical prophets. If, as he insisted, he offered his followers a liberation from Christianity, then it was one that seemed eerily like a recalibration of it. (pp. 441).

So what? What might be appropriate responses to this book? It is receiving considerable attention from those with a wide range of perspectives, both Christian and not. There seems little argument about whether the book is historically accurate. The debate is more about the implications for life today. Here is a caricature of two responses, briefly alluded to by Ross Douthat in a column in the New York Times a year ago.

An atheist who identifies with the secular political left may concede the Christian origins of many issues that are central to their vision for society: economic justice, human rights, equality,... However, they may say that we can take these good things and we can dispense with all the theology and Christian institutions. They are outdated, unscientific, superstitious, have served their usefulness, and on balance have been instruments of oppression.

A Christian who identifies with the political right will be proud of this heritage and argue that unless Western society returns to these origins, and institutionalises them in terms of law and education we are doomed to societal chaos.

I find both problematic and actually dangerous. Both seem to assume that all you need to do is legislate and institutionalise morality and values. Both may have a strain of self-righteousness. It is just different sins that they focus on.

As much as I love the book, Tom Holland presents a "secular" history of the human dimension to Christianity, which is almost one-dimensional. On one level this is fair enough as it is where his expertise lays and is the ground rules for public intellectual discourse.

There are some more fundamental questions that need to be addressed.

Holland highlights some aspects of the Western world that are distinctly "Christian" But, what about the many aspects that are not, such as individualism, consumerism, neoliberalism, ...?

Is there a role for the divine? Is there something amazing and powerful and transcendent also going on in all this history? Who was Jesus? Was he more than a profound teacher who died a brutal death? Did he actually rise from the dead? Jesus' death on the cross was certainly a powerful, counter-cultural, and inspiring symbol of suffering. But did it actually bring into being a new spiritual reality and achieve a real reconciliation with God (i.e. atonement)? Were Christians who changed their worlds able to do that just because they were inspired by radical ideas (power through weakness, the last will be first, the dignity of all humans, ...), or were they actually tapping into a powerful spiritual force that not just transformed them but also those they interacted with? Is the positive influence of Christian ideas and values on Western society an example of common grace?

In different words, what actually is authentic Christianity? Is it true? Is it real?

Has the modern church lost the radical and counter-cultural edge of the teachings of Jesus and Paul?

The book highlights the necessity of the western world to grapple with such questions in a humble, honest, and open manner. If Christianity shaped our past and present, how should it shape our future?

Emergence in science, theology, and mission

Emergence is one of the most important concepts in the sciences, both natural and social. I have also found it to be fruitful in engaging with questions relating to theology and mission. 

Tonight I am giving a talk on the subject for a session of the Write conference of The Simeon Network. It was canceled earlier this year and is now being held online. 

Here is the current version of the slides.

A gentle introduction is in a short article I wrote for Test of Faith.

A longer academic article is Emergence, reductionism and the stratification of reality in science and theology.

Last year I wrote a blog post about Emergence of Sin by Matthew Croasmun. A helpful review is at Marginalia: LA Review of Books.

Update. A complete video of the talk is below. The introduction is by Professor Peter Gill.

Christendom was not very Christian

Tom Holland presents a fascinating story of how in the past two thousand years Christianity shaped Western society in his recent book Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind. This month in the theology reading group, we are discussing the second section, Christendom, which covers 754 to 1420 AD.

The first section, Antiquity, traces how Christ's death on the cross, full of suffering and humiliation, shaped what Christians believed and how they lived. This was radical and counter-cultural, and paradoxically increased the power and influence of the church. 

However, reviewing the rise of Christendom there is no room for Christians to feel pride or triumphalism. Rather, we should feel shame and embarrassment at the failure of church leaders and members, particularly in relation to power, wealth, violence, division, pride, and self-righteousness. Church leaders were quick to align themselves with rich and powerful rulers and support violence, often from unruly mobs, as a means to expand their territorial influence and to deal with perceived heresy.

These areas are intertwined and represent clear violations of the teachings of Jesus and Paul. It is worth considering each of these in turn. I quote a few representative texts but claim that these are central themes of the whole New Testament.

Power 

In Matthew 20:25-28, Jesus warns the disciples.

Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave— just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Henry Nouwen comments

One of the greatest ironies of the history of Christianity is that its leaders constantly gave in to the temptation of power—political power, military power, economic power, or moral and spiritual power—even though they continued to speak in the name of Jesus, who did not cling to his divine power but emptied himself and became as we are [Philippians 2:5-11]. 

Wealth 

You cannot serve God and money (Matthew 6:24). Caring for the poor and needy is the same as caring for Jesus (Matthew 25). Paul warns Timothy about false teachers (1 Timothy 6:3-10).

Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

Violence

Genesis 6 describes how God was grieved that the earth was full of violence. In Matthew 6 Jesus says "turn the other cheek" and

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous."

Do not respond to evil with evil (Romans 12:17-21).

Division

Jesus' followers are to aim to live in peace with one another. Their unity is to be a sign that Jesus is from God.

Pride and self-righteousness

Followers of Jesus are not to be the "first to cast the stone" or to look at the speck of sawdust in their brother's eye when there is a plank in their own. Surely, this does not just relate to lifestyle but also to hairsplitting about doctrine.

On that note, it is easy to pass judgement on these past leaders and church members who joined violent mobs. Why didn't they read their Bibles? Well, it was not quite so simple. Many were illiterate. Even if they were there was no mass publication. There was no Bible in their own language. The church liturgy was in Latin.

An intriguing example of the moral complexities church leaders faced was the relationship between the priest Alcuin and Charlemagne, the King of the Franks who became the Roman emperor. The example of King David was used by Charlemagne when in 782 he ordered the beheading of 4500 prisoners in a single day. He became a sponsor, friend, and student of Alcuin, who was able to convince the warrior king to stop his practice of forcing pagans to convert at sword point. Alcuin pointed out "faith rises from the will not an act of compulsion.''.

This period of church history was not all bad. There were rays of hope. Alcuin laid foundations for literacy and education, that fully blossomed into the first universities, Bologna and Paris. The notion of equality of all humans before God led to that of human rights and equality before the law. There was also the seeds of modern science being sown in universities.

Although in the Western world today church leaders are rarely involved in physical violence, that does not mean that there is not verbal and relational violence, both at the individual and corporate level. Furthermore, the allure of power, money, pride, and self-righteousness seems rampant. May we repent and sit at Jesus' feet and be challenged to live as he wishes us to live.

A spirituality of strengths

Humans are incredibly diverse. We are all very different. There is a diversity of personalities and backgrounds. No two people on the planet look exactly alike. No two people have exactly the same DNA. This concept of uniqueness and diversity plays a central role in the theology of the church. Different people have different gifts and different callings. Yet, all are to work together for the good of the church and for the glory of God.

As part of a team working for IFES, I recently took a test called the Gallup strengths finder. The aim is to identify your particular strengths particularly ones that are relevant to working on projects. These strengths are not just what you are good at doing, but also what sorts of activities energise you rather than drain you. There are 34 different strengths. My top five are Learner, Intellection, Input, Strategic, and Responsibility. It is almost embarrassing to read the description of each of these strengths because they so clearly capture who I am.

So what might be a Christian perspective on an exercise such as this? 

A good place to start may be in Romans chapter 12,

3 For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. 4 For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5 so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 6 We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. 

This leads me to several questions. 

How should I think about myself?

I should be humble and thankful. I should humbly accept who God made me. Psalm 139 tells me that I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I should not wish that I had different strengths. I should not wish that I was someone else. Unfortunately, I have spent too much of my life doing this, at least on a subconscious level. I should also be humble about any achievement, as it will flow out of my strengths; they were given to me at birth.

How should I act?

Name it. Claim it. Aim it.

I should develop and use my strengths. Again, too much of my life I have spent trying to imitate others who have very different strengths from me.

I should particularly use them for the good of others. Their ultimate purpose is not to increase my social status, my wealth, or my power. As I enjoy using my strengths and gain energy from their use I should not be self-indulgent. For example, my top strength is Learner, which means just learning is a joy and can be an end in itself. However, this can get carried away and I may do it just for the benefit of myself and not for the benefit of others. Things I may learn in researching background for a project may not be of interest or value to others.

I need to be willing to take on tasks that involve my weaknesses. God's power is made perfect through weakness. (2 Corinthians 12:9). Just because I don't have certain strengths doesn't mean that God can't use my weaknesses. I may be asked to or required to do things that I'm not good at and that drain me. (But, I also need to be realistic; if that is all I'm doing may not be sustainable).

How do I relate to others? Particularly if we are working together on a common project.

I should be patient with others. I should learn about other people's strengths and encourage them to develop them. I need to realise and accept that specific tasks may seem easy and fulfilling for me, but these tasks may be difficult and frustrating for others (and vice versa). What may seem obvious to me may not be for other people (and vice versa). The best teamwork will be where there is synergy and energy because we are each working with our strengths and appreciating those of others. Ideally, job descriptions should be designed around strengths.

 I would say that this exercise can be and should be a deeply spiritual exercise. It requires humility before God and before others, a servant heart, listening well, and the fruits of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, gentleness, and self control)! 
 

Science is wonder-ful

 Many books have been written about science and Christianity. Many of them I don't like, find helpful or recommend. I do like some because they present a good understanding of both science and Christianity, and engage in a constructive dialogue between the two. Even then, many books rehash the same old topics and same old arguments about creation, evolution, big bang cosmology, free will, reliability of the Bible, ...

The introductory book that I recommend is A User's Guide to Science and Christian Belief, by Michael Poole. Unfortunately, it is now out of print.

Writing a new book that brings a fresh perspective to the subject is necessary but also daunting. I am very happy that David Hutchings and Tom McLeish have done this with Let There Be Science: Why God Loves Science, and Science Needs God. The book is at the basic/popular/introductory level and is very accessible, so some non-scientist friends tell me. This accessibility may have been aided by the experience of Hutchings as a high school physics teacher. I am not surprised that McLeish would be involved in producing such a wonderful book given that I loved his Faith and Wisdom in Science, which is at the advanced academic level.

The book has many strengths. It is clear, engaging, interesting, creative, original, invitational, and balanced. The authors succeed because they believe that science is a human endeavour. Indeed, science is wonderful because `doing science is a fundamental part of what it means to be human'. Hence it is natural to use stories.

Stories get us thinking about people – their motivations, hopes, or pain; their moments of inspiration or moments of disaster. Stories are how we best understand ourselves and our beliefs. Stories, as we shall see, can be key in the search for a bigger picture.  

Some of the main ideas that are developed are the following. 

Science is a way of thinking. 

 ... we will count something as true science if – and only if – we can show it meets three distinct criteria. First, there must be observation of something in nature. Second, there must be a discussion of a possible physical cause. Third, there should be some form of analysis or testing involved. This last requirement might be through planned experiment, physical interaction, or by further observation. 

Although the term "scientist" did not exist until the nineteenth century, "science" has been around for a long time. Isaac Newton did natural philosophy, which might be defined as "Loving wisdom about nature".  (Chapter 2)

It is remarkable that humans can do science at all. The universe is rational and we do have the capacity to understand it. Furthermore, this rationality is seen in our ability to make connections between phenomena that may appear to have no connection to one another. (Chapter 3)

There are parallels in the manner that people change their minds about scientific theories, about God, and about how they should live their life.  (Chapter 4)

Science does not always go smoothly. It can be a source of personal pain for the scientist. Nevertheless, they persevere because they have scientific hope. (Chapter 5)

 “Order consistently emerges from apparent chaos, even at the very deepest levels of our current understanding.’’ (Chapter 6)

 In both science and theology it is important to ask the right questions. (Chapter 7)

 Love is even more important! (Chapter 8)

 our science stories will intermingle with faith stories – the two are bound together far more tightly than some modern commentators might have us believe. The big pictures painted by the history, the people and the findings of science look very much like those that emerge from the pages of the Bible – and we will go on to find, in Chapters 9 and 10, that this connection might just be of universal significance. 

The stories are captivating and the authors beautifully weave together sets of apparently disparate stories into single stories with a profound point. For example, chapter 3 covers silk, the philosophical question of the existence of numbers, the axioms of Euclidean geometry, weaving looms, the shape of pomegranates, Charles Babbage and the first computer, error correction in computers, and the book of Job. What is the point of all this?

The Bible’s answer to the mathematical debate we began this journey with is simple but profound: the reason that we can know about numbers, despite their lack of physicality, is because God has put wisdom in our minds. Far from being opposed to reason, Christianity gives us the basis for believing two things that are absolutely crucial if good science is ever to be carried out: that we are reasonable beings, and that the world is a reasonable place.

How did the Cross of Christ shape the Western mind?

 In the Western world today, certain values are dominant, even if largely implicit: human rights, equality, democracy, helping the weak, the rule of law, justice, ..

Where did these values come from? ancient Greek philosophy, the Enlightenment, cultural evolution, Judaism, Christianity? These are the questions that the popular historian Tom Holland grapples with in his recent book Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind. In the theology reading group we are discussing it over the next three months. In more than five hundred pages he offers a breath-taking and engaging ride through more than two thousand years of history. 

The main argument of the book is that "a cult inspired by the execution of an obscure criminal in a long-vanished empire came to exercise .. a transformational and enduring influence on the world.."

Last night we discussed the first one-third of the book, Antiquity, covering from 497 BC in Athens to 632 AD in Carthage. Here are some of the main ideas that stood out to me.

Image: Issenheim Altarpiece by Gruenwald

1. It all begins with The Cross of Christ. It leads to an intellectual, theological, cultural, social, and political revolution. Victory is found in defeat. God identifies with the weak, marginalised, poor, suffering, ...

2. Equality. All humans are made in the image of God. Hence, they are all of equal value and should be treated with respect and dignity. Followers of Jesus have only one identity: Christian, that transcends gender, nationality, citizenship, ethnicity, wealth, position, social class, ...

3. Followers of Jesus live to embody the Cross. They live sacrificially to serve the poor, share wealth and possessions, heal the sick (including in plagues), comfort the dying, rescue abandoned babies, liberate slaves,...

4. Although, the thinking and actions described above may seem admirable and heroic today, at the time they were completely counter-cultural: it went against Greek philosophy, Roman rule, and how people lived. Crucifixion was a brutal means to exercise political control: it involved not just incredible physical suffering but also public humiliation. The heroes were the strong. The most powerful became gods. Violence was good: a means for social control and stability. There was a "brute truth" that most in Rome "took for granted: the potency of a Roman penis. Sex was nothing if not an exercise in power" (p. 81). 

Holland illustrates how context matters. We need to understand the context in which the New Testament was written and how the development of different church doctrines and institutions, were influenced by their cultural and political context.

5. History shows that the church has an ambivalent relationship with wealth and power. The New Testament and the lives of exemplary Christians are incredibly radical and counter-cultural. Wealth and power are intertwined and have a pernicious ability to corrupt mind and spirit, even among the well-intentioned who seek to use wealth and power for the good of others. Church history is a continual cycle of radical service and renewal, institutionalisation, and corruption.

6. The church seems to have had the greatest influence when it was radical and on the margins and when it had an integrated approach combining head, heart, and hands. Or in different words, study, contemplation, and action.

If you want a brief introduction to the book see

A review in The Guardian by Terry Eagleton, a Marxist and distinguished literary critic.

An interview with Tom Holland at the Centre for Public Christianity and another on ABC Radio.

A related book, with a shorter historical scope, is by the sociologist Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity.

In another post, I will consider some missing dimensions to Holland's perspective on the Cross of Christ.