Master 276: Columbia River Vacation

I was delighted to be able to spend about nine days with family friends up at the Columbia River.  Nine days of relaxing, playing chess, backgammon, bocce ball, and card-games; kayaking and stand-up-paddleboarding; reading The Count of Monte Cristo (the first six hundred pages, at least); enjoying home-made frappes, the warm sun, and the cool water; skipping rocks; playing with the dog; and generally doing a whole lot of nothing was great.

For those with discerning eyes, that is not a real paddleboard set-up in that picture.  We tested out the activity with what we had at hand.  I'm sure that it's even more fun (and easier) with the correct equipment.

The mosquitoes were the principle nuisance.  I think I'm still recovering from a couple bites.  (I was chided regularly for scratching.)

  After spending a whole week with that Australian shepherd mix, the cats at home seem really, really small.

Winning a couple games of bocce ball made up for losing a dozen or more backgammon games toward the end of the week.

We had a beautiful view of Mt. Hood.

It was great to have some other friends of mine visit us on the Fourth of July, with their three kids, the oldest of which is going into junior high.  Time flies!

Up above the campsite at Maryhill is a replica of Stonehenge, built by Samuel Hill (founder of the town) and dedicated in 1918.  It's really something.

Lots and lots of trains and barges.  My goodness.

You'll have to ask the girls about the nest we found in the van--with one momma mouse and four little babies.

It was really great to get away.  Now I'm in the process of getting ready for my summer school class.  Have a great rest of the summer, everyone.

--

God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 275: James 2

There are two goals for this series.  First, I want to present some helpful reflections on the book of James.  And second, I want to offer some helpful guidance for studying the Bible.  (Using the book of James as my example, I want to highlight some helpful points and techniques that could be applied to one's study of other books of the Bible, especially to the other epistles.)

We started out (last time, Master 274) by looking at how an understanding of context can affect how we read a particular passage.  For instance, "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials." (1:2) This sounds like a fairly self-contained thought that we, as readers, can take as an instruction directed at us that we ought to begin applying.  But if we're not careful--especially if we're not very reflective--we may end up setting ourselves an impossible or, at least, needlessly difficult task.  Learning to be joyful in the midst of trials may turn out to be difficult on even the best approach, but people who take that as a straightforward instruction are likely to set themselves on a course that will only lead to a dead-end.  How can we avoid doing this?

It helps to remember that God's instructions always come with a context attached.  Here's a really simple example to illustrate.  In Matthew 5: 48, Jesus says, "You are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."  Now you could read that as a straightforward command: Be (morally) perfect as God is morally perfect.  But if you just take that command and start to run with it, you'll soon realize that you've set yourself an impossible task.  If you try to carry it out you'll fail and either come to the conclusion that God is unreasonable in His expectations or that He must not have meant what He said.  But consider this point: In saying that you ought to be perfect, God never intended that you should become perfect just through the application of your own natural abilities and efforts.  Being perfect on that basis is impossible.  But how does it change your perspective if you come to understand that God intended that God Himself (the Holy Spirit) would be the one that would make you perfect.  When the power and resources of Almighty God are brought to bear on the task, suddenly becoming perfect starts to seem possible.  Of course there's a whole lot more to the story.  I use this example just to illustrate this one point: Context makes a huge difference.  The difference between trying to be perfect on your own and trying to be perfect through God's power is huge.  But the fact that the Holy Spirit is supposed to be crucially involved isn't obvious from that one verse.  It might not be obvious based on that passage taken as a whole.  The contextual considerations that need to be brought to bear in order to understand this idea are drawn from the Scripture taken as a whole.  That's why study is important for unlocking that larger context.

Now given what I've just said, you might worry that in order to understand one passage you've got to understand the whole Bible--a daunting task indeed.  But don't be intimidated.  Certainly more knowledge about the Bible as a whole will help you to better understand each of the individual parts.  But you don't have to understand the whole thing before you can begin to gain some really helpful and beneficial insights from the various parts.  The point is that you should start now, as you read, to pay attention to the context.  And you should begin asking questions, as you read, about the author, audience, and situation in which the material is being written.

Let's see now if I can distill what I've said into a few helpful key ideas.

As you study the Bible, it's important and helpful to pay attention to the context, including who is the author, who is the intended audience, and what was the situation in which the letter/work was written.

Also, as you study, especially the epistles, remember that the authors intend to be helpful.  This might sound like a really obvious point, but it's important because sometimes their advice, on the surface, may sound counter-intuitive, unexpected, or even foolish.  When you come across something like this, you should ask something like the following question: What must be true about God, the world, the author, the audience, humanity, and myself--what must be true about reality in general--in order for this to be a helpful piece of advice?  Go back, again, to James' words: "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials."  On the surface, that piece of advice sounds, frankly, stupid.  It's natural to think that the only kinds of people who are happy in the midst of trials are insane people or sadistic people.  Think about it.  Most people have as a priority in their life the avoidance of trials, difficulties, and suffering.  James' words cut in the exact opposite direction of the way in which most people are running their lives most of the time.  This is the point at which we can raise a question like: What must be true about God for this to be a helpful piece of advice?  Well, it must be the case that God is really, really good.  If God is not really good, then it must be stupid to rejoice in the midst of trials.  Only if God is really, really good--only if God really is able to bring phenomenally good things out of our trials--only in that case would it make any sense at all to rejoice in the midst of trials.

Once we've reflected that far, we can begin to ask other questions, like: "Do I really believe that God is that good?"  "How much time do I spend either avoiding or rejoicing in the midst of trials?"  "What does that reveal about my own beliefs about God's goodness?"  "Is there good evidence for thinking that God really is this good--that God really is able to bring phenomenally good things out of my trials?"  "If there is really good evidence for that, then what do I need to do to adjust my thinking about God to match this evidence?"  "What trials am I avoiding that might actually be opportunities for God to bring really good things into my life?"  "Do I want God to bring really good things into my life?"

Hmm… I'm not sure I'm doing a good job of distilling here.  The reason, I think, is that I'm not just trying to give principles but also to illustrate them.  If you're not used to studying the Bible, just telling you to pay attention to author, audience, and situation won't make clear to you how these pieces of information are helpful.  But hopefully, as you work through the examples I'm giving, you can start to make some of these helpful connections.

So, let's see.  Where do we stand?

As you study the Bible, pay attention to context.  Think about who the author is, who the intended audience is, and what the situation is in which the author is writing.

As you study the epistles, read the author's words charitably.  That does NOT mean that you should ignore or gloss over difficulties and confusing passages.  But one thing that you should do is reflect on the author's outlook and worldview.  What must the author believe about God, himself, his audience, and the world in order to make the most sense of what he is saying?  (You'll still have to decide whether you agree with the author, but at least you'll have more accurately represented what he actually intended to say.)  When you do this, pay close attention to the most obvious meanings of what's being said.  Especially for Christians who have grown up in the church, it's easy to just interpret texts in the same way that we've always interpreted them.  We hear, "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect," and we can overlook how absolutely shocking that statement is.  It may take some mental work to read passages anew.

Finally, as you think about application to your own life, here are two things to keep in mind: (1) Before you think about what the text means to you, figure out what it meant for the original audience.  (When interpreting James, you need to remember that he's writing for a first-century Jewish-Christian audience.  If you don't belong to that category of people, you need to take that into consideration as you apply.) (2) Don't think just about actions but also about worldview.  (Obeying God's commands, for instance, is always connected to being in relationship with Him.  If you're not in relationship, obedience doesn't matter.  Obeying God's commands is also always connected to being a certain kind of person.  If you're not interested in becoming  a certain kind of person, obedience doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  Don't apply just the required actions to your life but also the worldview, mindset, and outlook.)

Now, hopefully, as I continue to explore James, you'll see me doing all these things.  Take another look at James and read through it with all this in mind.  See if you notice different things than you did before.

--

God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 274: James 1

I'm going to be teaching on a passage from the book of James in a couple weeks--James 5:1-6.  During these weeks of preparation, I figured that I would post a few thoughts as I look at James' letter.  When I teach from the Bible, one of my goals is to help people to understand how I'm coming to my various conclusions about the texts.  Also, recently, I was asked by a friend of mine about how one goes about studying the Bible.

That's an interesting question.  Perhaps you have studied the Bible, even for many years.  But have you thought carefully about what you do and how you do it?  Could you teach someone how to study the Bible?  Could you list for them techniques to use and things to watch out for?  Or are you among those who would want to know, Exactly how does one go about studying the Bible?  As I look through James and share some of my thoughts, I'll try to say some helpful things about Bible study that will apply generally.

***

Let's begin by looking at just a few verses from the beginning of James.

"Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials…" (1:2)

"Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am being tempted by God'; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone." (1:13)

"But let everyone be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger…" (1:19)

"My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism." (2:1)

Think for a moment about what these verses mean.  What do they mean to you?

You might find this to be an interesting exercise.  Or you might find it to be a very dull exercise.  After all, it might seem, the meanings of these verses seem to be very straightforward.  Each one expresses a command or truth.  "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials."  Any person can understand what James has just said there.  When you're dealing with tough situations and circumstances, you should have an attitude of joy.  Or, you should respond joyfully when confronted with adversity.  And you might think: What more is there to study?  I understand what James is saying.  There may be some work called for when it comes to application.  Actually being joyful in the midst of trials is difficult.  But as far as understanding the command--that seems very straightforward.

Why is "study" called for and what does it look like?  What more should we expect to get from this text than the "obvious meaning"?  Doesn't further study put us in danger of seeing things in the text (allegorical meanings, hidden meanings) that aren't actually there?

Rather than answer that question directly, let me lead you on a bit of a journey.  We'll begin by looking at James 1:1 and asking questions like, Who is writing this letter?  To whom is this letter being addressed?  And what is the purpose of this letter?

James' letter opens with these words: "James, a bond-servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes who are dispersed abroad, greetings."

Now, who is writing the letter?  James.  James who?  James, the half-brother of Jesus.  Of course we wouldn't be able to know this just from reading the first verse.  That's why commentaries, Bible dictionaries, and similar resources are helpful.  For various reasons, most scholars agree that this letter was written by Jesus' half-brother, James.  What else do we know about James?  If you go back through the New Testament writings, you'll learn that during Jesus' life and ministry, James (Matthew 13:55) did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah, much less the Son of God.  He was probably one of those who tried to keep Jesus from teaching because they feared for His sanity. (Mark 3:21) But after Jesus rose from the dead, He appeared to James specifically (1 Corinthians 15:7) James had a radical conversion experience and he then went on to become an important leader of the church in Jerusalem. (Acts 12:17; 15; 21; Galatians 1:18-19)

Now let's move to the next question: To whom is this letter being addressed?  It's being addressed to "the twelve tribes who are dispersed abroad."  Now what does that mean?  Of course we today can learn from what James has to say, even if he was not consciously directing his remarks at us today.  But it's often helpful for understanding what an author says to know the audience to whom he intended to speak.  Now James is not addressed to the church in general but to the "twelve tribes."  In other words, he's addressing Jews--the people of the twelve tribes of Israel.  Further reflection leads us to conclude that he's not speaking to Jews in general but to Jewish Christians.

But then there's that phrase "who are dispersed abroad."  Without consulting a commentary, we can narrow down the list of options for how to interpret this.  Even prior to the first century, the Jewish people were very familiar with what it meant to be "dispersed abroad."  It was not a good thing.  Their home--the land of Israel--the promised land--was very important to the Jewish people.  But because of their sin and disobedience, God sent the people into exile.  In 722 B.C. and 587 B.C., large numbers of the Jewish population were deported to Assyria and Babylon.  Around 538 B.C., the people were allowed to return to their land and many did so, but others continued to live in small communities around the Mediterranean.  But even those Jews who continued to live abroad, there remained a special affinity for and desire for the homeland.  God had set up a special place for them, and to be separated from that was difficult.

This idea of being an exile or alien was carried over into the Christian community.  Jesus said of Himself, "I am not of this world." (John 8:23) Of His followers, Jesus said, "If you were of the world, the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, because of this the world hates you." (15:18-20) All Christians living in this world are, in a sense, living in exile.  Their true home is in heaven with God, but for a time they sojourn in foreign lands.  When James then refers to his audience as those "who are dispersed abroad."  At the very least, he is addressing people who are familiar with what it means to be exiled and who are "exiles" and "aliens" in the same way that all Christians are exiles and aliens.

But it is also very likely that James is writing to people who are not only dispersed abroad spiritually but are dispersed abroad physically.  It may be that he is writing to Jews who have lived their whole lives abroad but are hearing about the message of Jesus and believing it.  Or it may be that he is speaking to Jews who used to live in Jerusalem, heard and believed in Jesus, but were scattered by the persecution that took place there.  (See Acts 8; 18:1-3) Very likely James has both audiences in mind.

So to whom is James speaking?  He's speaking to a persecuted people, people who have been forced out of their homes, out of their jobs, and away from everything familiar because of their faith in Jesus Christ.  In many cases, their lives may have been threatened.  Some of their relatives may have been imprisoned or even executed.  They've had to travel long distances, faced many dangers, and their futures may still be in serious doubt.  It might be helpful to think of the refugee camps of our own day where people go to flee political or religious persecution.  These are the one's to whom James speaks.  And what does he say to them?

"Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials…" (1:2)

"Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am being tempted by God'; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He Himself does not tempt anyone." (1:13)

"But let everyone be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger…" (1:19)

"My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism." (2:1)

Do these phrases touch you differently than they did before?  When you read, "Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials," what sorts of trials came to your mind.  Maybe you're not dealing with any serious trials right now.  Maybe you are facing serious, serious challenges.  Maybe you're facing a situation that you thought was tough, but when you now compare it to the challenges that James' audience was facing, you begin to see that your trials are very small by comparison.  A bit of study and a bit of context can go a long way toward helping us to see a passage differently.  It might not be enough to just read the instruction about considering trials joy and move on to application.

After all, once we've got the context, a host of other questions should come to mind.  For instance, "Isn't James being callous in his advice to the Jewish Christians."  People who have spent a long time in the church may have been desensitized to this point, but it's an important question to raise.  If someone has just lost a spouse to cancer, or if someone's baby dies in child-birth, or if someone's lost all their money to a bogus law-suit, if someone discovers that his or her spouse has committed adultery--is THAT the time to come along and tell them, "Consider it all joy when you encounter various trials."  If we think about it for a moment, we might start to wonder about whether James isn't a jerk.

But if we're willing to withhold judgment for a few moments, we might stop long enough to wonder: Could it be that James' message actually is very appropriate and very helpful?  What is James trying to say here?  He's probably trying to give helpful advice and not be an insensitive jerk, so how should we understand what he is trying to say?  What would have to be true of James, of his audience, and of God, for his words to really be helpful, instructive, and encouraging?  These are some of the questions that get us started on the road of Bible study.

I'll say more as I continue to study this letter and post what I'm learning.  Obviously this is just the introduction.  Consider looking at the rest of the verses that I listed.  And then start reading through the book of James.  Think about how your interpretation changes depending on how aware you are of the context and James' audience.  And I'll see you next time.

--

God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus, through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.

Master 273: Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective, Part 4

In his contribution to the volume, Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective, Garrett J. DeWeese offers helpful suggestions about how to think about the two natures of Jesus Christ.  That Jesus had two natures (divine and human) is something that Christians affirm on the basis of strong evidence and support, but that does not mean that how this can be is clearly understood.  In "One Person, Two Natures: Two Metaphysical Models of the Incarnation," DeWeese looks specifically at how to think about the mind and will of Jesus Christ, in light of his having two natures.

When subjected to certain scientific experiments, light exhibits wave properties.  When subjected to other scientific experiments, light exhibits particle properties.  The wave properties of light are used to explain certain phenomena while the particle properties of light are used to explain other phenomena, but how any single "entity" (say, light or an electron) can exhibit both of these properties remains unclear.  Still, the fact that we cannot explain why or how light can exhibit these distinct (and some might think, incompatible) sets of properties does not show that there is something incoherent about ascribing both sets of properties to the entities in question.  It just shows that our models and ways of understanding those entities fall short of adequately capturing their complete and true character.

A similar concession is called for when we try to wrap our minds around the two natures of Jesus Christ.  On good evidence, Christians affirm that Jesus Christ is fully divine--God, the Son, the second person of the Trinity.  Simultaneously, and on good evidence, Christians affirm that Jesus Christ is fully human.  That Jesus is both fully divine and fully human is essential for the work that He came to earth to accomplish, but how any single "entity" can be both divine and human remains unclear.  Still, the fact that we cannot explain why or how Jesus can be both divine and human does not show that there is something incoherent about ascribing both natures to Him.  It just shows that our models and ways of understanding Jesus fall short of adequately capturing His complete and true character.

Granting that, it's still perfectly legitimate and appropriate for Christians to pursue a deeper and more adequate understanding of Jesus Christ's nature(s), just as it is perfectly legitimate and appropriate for scientists to pursue a deeper and more adequate understanding of the nature(s) of elementary particles.  Even if we cannot make things perfectly clear, we can get clearer or at least clearer-in-a-way-that's-helpful-for-various-purposes.  What does it mean, then, to say that Jesus had (and has) two natures?  How can one person have two natures--and as radically different as the human and divine?  Is that idea even coherent?

Now you might wonder, Why do we even bother with such obscure-sounding questions?  All this talk of 'natures' and 'persons' might seem so far removed from anything we might care about.  But it's actually just a way of helping us to grapple with the character of Christ.  If you study the New Testament writings you'll find that they point to two "somethings" in Jesus.  He was human, but He was not just human, for He did things that no mere human could do.  He did things that only God could do, but He was not just God, for the particular kind of salvation that He came to offer or enact was one that required Him to be able to do things like die a human death.  The weight of the evidence pushes us to confess that there are clearly two "somethings" in Jesus.  But what are those "somethings"?  Were there two persons in Jesus?  Was there a divine person and a human person inhabiting the body of Jesus?  For various reasons (I'll leave you to explore that on your own) that understanding of the "two-ness" of Christ was rejected.  This picture of Jesus makes Him out to be something schizophrenic.  The New Testament writers indicate that there was a unity to Jesus that would be lacking if two distinct "persons" were inhabiting His one body.  Could it be that there was really only one "something" in Christ that blended the divine and human into something new and different from either of those?  For other reasons, that view was also rejected.  How then can we make sense of the "two-ness" in Christ while preserving the unit (or "one-ness") in Christ.  It must be that in some respects, Jesus is "two," and in other respects, Jesus is "one."  The church adopted the vocabulary of "nature" and "person" to refer to those respects in which Jesus is "two" and "one."  Jesus is one person with two natures.  Light exhibits wave properties and particle properties.

If you wish, you can leave that at that.  But the philosophically-minded (like the scientifically-minded) person at least wants to try to understand how these things ("two natures" and "one person," "wave properties" and "particle properties") fit together.  And there's also the important task of responding to the skeptic who asserts that the notion of two natures and one person is flatly incoherent.  The theologian may not be able to show how two natures and one person do fit together, but he or she can attempt to show that their connection is not flatly incoherent.

DeWeese addresses himself to this kind of task as it pertains, particularly, to Jesus' will.  As he tells the history, the Eutychians were concerned to preserve, in their thinking about Christ, His unity (the "one-ness" and thus rejected the two-nature language of Chalcedon and held that Christ had just one nature.  (Partially) motivating this concern may have been the thought that to affirm two natures in Christ entailed affirming two persons in Christ--a divine person who willed to endure suffering and a human person who resisted such suffering.  (Such a view sometimes seems to be operating implicitly behind the way people talk about Jesus' distress in the Garden of Gethsemane.)  Ultimately the Eutychian view was anathematized but there remained the question of how to preserve, conceptually, the unity of purpose and will in Jesus when there are also these two "somethings" in Jesus.

DeWeese writes, "The opinion that prevailed at Constantinople [III, A.D. 680] was that a will properly belongs to a nature.  Since Chalcedon made clear that Jesus had two natures, it followed that he had two wills.  To deny this was essentially to deny the incarnation.  In support of this line of reasoning, the bishops of the sixth council, following the soteriological maxim of Gregory of Nazianzus, "The unassumed is unhealed," argued that Christ must have a human will, or else our wills could not be redeemed.  To safeguard against the impious suggestion that Jesus might have been internally conflicted by his two wills, the council explained that the human will was always subordinate to the divine will." (124)

I won't go into the details of his argument.  (Go read his essay yourself.  It's great!)  DeWeese rejects this two-wills picture/model.  In response, he suggests that the will (along with mind and consciousness) is a feature of "persons" and not of "natures."  So the will belongs to what Christ is one of rather than what He has two of.  In this way, he can affirm that Christ had only one will without undermining the idea that Christ had fully divine and fully human natures.  Neither nature was lacking in anything with respect to the will because the will is not a feature of a nature.

DeWeese goes on to lay out the details of his view, defend it against objections (including the hypothetical objection of heresy), and present some of its practical implications.  He does not answer all the questions that might be raised by his view.  One big question, for instance, has to do with understanding how the mind of Christ could simultaneously operate in a manner consistent with His divine and human natures.  It is part of God's nature that He is omniscient.  But it seems to be essential to human nature that any (and every) person is NOT omniscient.

DeWeese does say something about this particular point.  "[T]he contemporary model explains the "self-emptying" (Phil 2:5) as Christ's voluntary self-limitation to exercise his personhood through his human nature, gaining information about the world through the perceptual faculties of his human body, learning and storing memories through the instrumentality of his human brain, living a perfect human life by his perfect obedience and complete dependence on the Holy Spirit.

"Certainly it becomes difficult to press an explanation of the relationship of the divine and the human in Christ much further, but this difficulty is shared equally, as we have seen, by the dyothelite [i.e. two-will] model.  On the contemporary model, we could still meaningfully speak about the "human mind" of Christ, but we would not be referring to a faculty or entity, and we would no longer be tempted to think of it as another person.  The "human mind" of Christ refers to the mode of operation of the mind of the Logos functioning within the constraints of (voluntarily limited by) Jesus' human nature and the organs of a human body.  At the same time, the mind of the Logos, functioning gloriously and perfectly according to the divine nature, never sleeps, never ceases to be omniscient.  But rather than constituting two minds, we should understand the human mind as sort of a limited subset of the divine mind." (146)

This is one of the main sections where I'm tempted to disagree with DeWeese or at least to point out that much more needs to be said.  DeWeese doesn't actually say (in this essay) what's essential to human nature.  Obviously one can't cover everything in a single essay, but I raise this point for the following reason.  Certainly there are limitations and infirmities that are essential to human nature.  But there are also limitations and infirmities that we have and experience because of our fallen and sinful condition.  Now Jesus took to Himself a fully human nature, but He did not take to Himself a sinful human nature.  Often people will assert that certain exercises of Jesus divine power would be incompatible with His human nature--but I want to question whether they would be incompatible with a human nature as such or just with a sinful human nature.  To what extent are we in a position, fallen as we are, to judge what is or is not compatible with a human nature?  That the divine person could be united with a human nature, that a human person could be adopted as a son of God, that the human body could serve as a temple of the Holy Spirit--these ideas rocked the conceptual world of the first-century believers.  Our thinking about Christ's human nature, I think, should take this into account.  (In fact, if anyone is in a position to serve as the model or paradigm of human nature, it's Jesus.)

This last section takes us beyond the material that DeWeese covers in his own chapter.  As preparation for these further explorations, look at his essay.

--

God is in this place,

And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.